In self-publishing parlance, a price promotion is when you temporarily lower the price of your new book while focusing your marketing efforts. Launching your new book with a price offer has two key advantages:
Attracting new readers.
It’s likely that you don’t have much of a following if you’re an independent author who is just getting started in the publishing industry. If a book is deeply discounted (or free! ), browsing readers are considerably more inclined to take a chance on an unknown author.
Discoverability.
Giving your book as much visibility as you can while it’s still new is the main purpose of a launch. Landing your book on Amazon’s Finest Seller list, which attracts a lot of browsing readers, is one of the best ways to achieve this. You want to be a part of the cycle where the more copies of your book you sell, the more frequently Amazon features it in its top charts and the more copies you’ll sell as a result.
Launch at free to score reviews.
As we have discussed, book reviews are a very effective sales tool since they show potential customers that other people are reading (and, ideally, loving) your book. Giving readers a risk-free opportunity to “purchase” your book for a few days increases the likelihood that you’ll get those priceless evaluations. You should be aware that only people who have signed up for KDP Select are able to set a book’s price to zero if you’re publishing it on Amazon.
Launch at $0.99 to get ranked in Amazon’s paid store.
A free book will always be superior to a $0.99 book in terms of drawing in as many new readers as possible. However, if you want to make at least some royalties (35% on Amazon for books under $1.99), you might want to steer clear of the free technique. Additionally, any sales you make on Amazon while your book is available for free will only help you move up the list of free books. Therefore, you may choose to run a $0.99 promotion to make sure that you keep your ranking after your free promotion expires.
Launch at $2.99 for maximum royalties.
$2.99 is still a good launch price, even though there is something to be said about the psychology of “free” or a pricing that starts with “0.” Launching at $2.99 has several benefits, but the biggest one is that it’s the lowest price at which Amazon will start paying 70% royalties to authors.
In order to reach a wider audience and get reviews, run a free or $0.99 promotion for new titles. To increase your sales, run a $2.99 deal on your already published products with positive ratings. But make sure you are well-versed in Amazon self-publishing royalty rates before you commit to anything.