Kindle Launch and Pricing Strategy

OK, book number two is up, and its only a year after the first one LOL!  The pricing and promotion strategy has been interesting. The decisions went something like this: 

Shall I put it in Select?

Main advantages of Select: Americans in the Prime program can borrow your book, at the moment borrows pay about $2 0o that’s similar to the commission I get for a $2.99 book.  In addition I can set the book to free for up to 5 days in a 90 day period. 

Why would I do that? Visibility, plain and simple. Downloads count towards sales rank, and sales rank makes your book more visible within Amazon. 

The downside – the book has to be exclusive to Amazon while its in Select, and that’s a 90-day period. I signed up, I don’t make huge sales on non-Amazon sites, what did I have to lose? 

Pricing Model

But then the next question is, pricing. Most of the books in the category are more expensive than mine, but they are longer too, and most are traditionally published.  Frankly I can’t imagine paying more than $4.99 for a book by an unknown author.  

For those are not aware of how Amazon does it’s pricing you have to options: 

• 70% revenue
• 35% revenue 

Yeah it’s a tough choice, there are some gotchas though. To get the 70% revenue option you must price your book between $2.99 and $9.99 . Plus, you will only get the the 70% if your buyers live in the “right” countries.  And at 70% Amazon has the right to price match and drop your price. Plus you pay for the download by the MB. 

Introductory Pricing At 99c

So why on earth do I have my book for sale at 99c? Particularly as I rather suspect that many readers skip 99c non-fiction eBooks because they have been previously burnt by slightly re-written outsourced fluff. That will be because I actually have …. 

A Marketing Plan For Indie Non-Fiction

There is precious little written about how to promote non-fiction on Amazon. Oh yeah I know Facebook, Twitter, blog blah blah. Well I must say having down quite a lot of that for the last year, and I rather agree with the approach described Make A Killing On Kindle by Michael Alvear, Amazon sells book far more effectively than all the social media in the world, unless you are already a world-famous blogger. The book makes the point that you need reviews to get buys. Initially I was going to go free first to get the reviews, but now I’m trying plan B, get reviews first. Why? So I can then got free with legit reviews, which gives me  a, hopefully, good star-rating. With that rating I can then get promotion on a number of sites which will promote free books but only if they already have stars. 

Why would I promote so that people can download my  book for free. Rankings, pure and simple, the idea is to give lots away free for a couple of days, and then hit payday when the book comes off free and reverts to its regular price. 

It’s an approach that’s worked for others so I am going to give it a go and see what happens. 

Can You Help Me?

LOL you know I was working up to this didn’t you? I would love you greatly if you would like my book’s page and agree with “all 13 tags” at the bottom of the page.

If you like Don’s review “Anything but boring!”  it would be cool if you’d click “YES” to the question “did you find this review helpful”. 

If you have an actual interest in travel, and can afford, it I’d really appreciate a buy, and particularly a review.

The idea at this moment is to get five or six honest reviews. Don’t have to be all 5-star, in fact I think it looks a little dodgy when books ONLY have 5-star reviews. 

As I said – the book will go free either this week (if I have time to get the promo in place), or more likely the following week, so really,  wait if the money is tight! 

And here’s that useful link to Safe Travel Guide buy on Amazon.com and Safe Travel Guide: on Amazon.co.uk (Interesting note – reviews on Amazon.com eventually display on the UK site, but not vice-versa.