Last month I ran my first Kindle Countdown Deal, more as an experiment as anything. My book The Boy From Hell: Life with a Child with ADHD is on a niche subject and while it sells steadily it sells slowly – an “average” month sees me selling about 60 copies across Kindle and print, or two a day. So with that in mind, I set up a UK Kindle Countdown Promotion and this was the result:
My book normally sells for £2.99 so my Countdown Deal was a 2-stage one, selling at 99p for three days and £1.99 for three days before returning to its usual price. You can clearly see where the sale price kicked in, increased, and returned to the normal price – sales of 32 copies over the first three days, 25 over the next three and then dropping back to a more expected 5 over the three days following the promotion.
And it’s that last bit that concerns me. Yes, I sold 55 books during the promotion, which is probably 43 more than I’d normally sell, which is fab. But I haven’t seen any long-term effect yet …. it would be nice to think the added sales and exposure made a difference to my sales in the long run, but no, as soon as the promotion was over I was back to the average 2 a day.
However, this was a UK Kindle Countdown Deal, on the store where my book already sells steadily (if slowly). What I am interested in testing is how the Countdown Deal works in another country where the book isn’t currently selling. In the thirteen months since the book has been out I have sold over 1000 copies on Amazon UK but only a handful through the .com site. So I’ve set up a Kindle Countdown Deal to run next week in America, and I’ll let you know what happens!
