IT DOESN’T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS* – sale details below
Okay; I promised myself this one when my brain-fogged brain figured out that Kindle Countdown Deals are only available for the UK and the US: have a sale EVERYONE who has access to a Kindle or Fire device (or app) can take advantage of.
Amazon is not to blame; country regulations are to blame. At some point in the future, maybe France’s arcane regulations will allow online Countdown sales; don’t hold your breath – the French (or should I say the French government, for good or ill) have all kinds of regulations designed to keep prices for books high, digital books out of the marketplace, and bookstores in business.
It’s their country – their laws and rules and taxes.
The only time it’s my problem is when I wanted to hold a Kindle Countdown Deal for Pride’s Children in France.
I can, sort of, but I will be manually changing the prices daily (and hoping Amazon, which was very fast when I did it today, would continue to be fast – they don’t guarantee it). And I wouldn’t have the cute little Countdown deal image that goes on the product page, and tells people time is running out.
WAY too much trouble for moi.
*So that everyone who has access gets a sale (which ends May 1):
New authors need READERS, REVIEWERS, and RECOMMENDERS at the beginning far more than they need revenue; the small business that is a single-practitioner press (Trilka Press for me) has to become known, and that takes marketing and advertising and sometimes annoying everyone you know, on and off Twitter and Facebook.
(In fact, if you’ve heard this one before and have no interest, just skip the rest of this post.)
If the practitioner is slow, like me, the usual indie recommendation – write more books – is just another annoying thing ‘they’ say, with no bearing on your real life. Because you can’t.
Therefore, you want to make sure you don’t neglect anyone – which brings us to the following thirteen links for the marketplaces where Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sells mobi (and paper?) versions of your book if you set yourself up in business with Mr. Bezos.
How to do your own sale:
Nobody told me – I think they must have assumed I knew. Nope. Newbie here. Just figured it out this month: I can do my own sale. In India. Or Canada. And Mexico, Australia, Brazil, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, the US, and the UK.
But I have to do the work (I did: I checked out every link personally – they are not all carbon copies of each other with a tiny bit changed).
IF you have always wanted your own personal copy of Pride’s Children: PURGATORY, but you live in Mexico, today is your lucky day. You WILL need an account with the appropriate Amazon, but then you can even buy it cheap, and leave it on their website until you eventually break down and buy a Kindle. Or get the Kindle app for your iPhone or desktop or laptop or iPad – or wherever you consume your digital breakfast.
At this point I’m not even going to nag you to read it (next week).
But I can’t do this very often – you guys want me writing NETHERWORLD, not futzing about running sales for PURGATORY, right? It takes more time and energy than you realize getting all these details right (not sure I have!), and it has to come from the ‘good time’ I have relatively little of.
I read the self-publishing blogs daily, and stay current, and ESPECIALLY pay attention to ‘things that can go wrong if you mess up’ and don’t pay attention. Trust me – I can mess things up so bad I don’t know if I can straighten them out.
The links (finally – she is going to stop talking and cut to the links!) for the 0.99-equivalent sale ‘worldwide’:
- CANADA
- MEXICO
- AUSTRALIA
- INDIA
- UNITED STATES
- UNITED KINGDOM
- GERMANY
- FRANCE
- SPAIN
- ITALY
- THE NETHERLANDS
- JAPAN
- BRAZIL
PLEASE be so kind as to let me know if ANYTHING doesn’t work. You guys were WAY too kind to mention before that the sales weren’t available in Australia and the others – and I never meant to leave you out.
If you don’t want to buy Pride’s Children or read it – that’s absolutely fine, I’m very clearly not everyone’s taste, as so many people have kindly told me lately, some MUCH more nicely than others.
I’d love to hear 1) if I’m doing anything wrong, and 2) what your experience as a reader or writer and sales was like.
** Many thanks to Stencil for the ability to make a few images a month free – they have a lot to offer and it is VERY easy to use. If you make a lot of image quotes, get the paid version.
liebjabberings 
Hugs on the people who have no taste and didn’t like the book. You know I like it!
All those sales things look like a pain. I’m not looking forward to it.
LikeLike
Thanks for the kind words! You will do much better at it than I when you’re ready: it isn’t really THAT hard, and your brain and energy and intelligence will be up to the task. All you have to do is decide when you’re ready.
Or maybe when a particular book just doesn’t give you any more vibes on what to change?
As for sales, it’s your money or your life: if you can afford it and supervise it, you let someone else do the work. I you decide you don’t want to pay to have things done you can do yourself, you learn to do them.
And, unlike traditional publishing vs. self-publishing, you can switch back and forth at will between doing it yourself and hiring someone.
The third alternative, publishing and forgetting, doesn’t work for first books unless you have an easy ‘platform’ from something else. We all hope to get there some day, preferably prehumously. (If someone didn’t coin that before me, I claim it – and so love it.)
LikeLike
It’s all a matter of balance – knowing how much to hire and how much to do yourself. I’m watching you closely to help figure out for myself where my balance will be best.
LikeLike
Ah, I’d wondered about that. I figured you knew something I didn’t about TOS for price changes.
I hadn’t realized that Countdown Deals did not propagate beyond Amazon US and UK until you informed me of that important fact. 😀 Of course, I haven’t done any Countdowns for my books either, but I’m planning to try one sometime this summer. Since I have readers all over the world, I’ll follow your lead in manually arranging a non-Countdown sale for folk outside the US and the UK.
LikeLike
I think you can change your price, even in Select, any time you want to.
But the Countdowns have specific requirements: no change in price for a month before, up to 7 days for the actual Countdown, and then the price is required to stay the same as before the Countdown for 14 more days. So, altogether, you can’t change prices for a period of 51 days, which must fit completely within your 90-day Select period.
That still leaves space to do your own thing, and you don’t HAVE to have Countdowns – but they have their own little thing going if you do.
It still all depends on your own marketing and advertising, mostly – or how are your fans going to know you’re running a sale? All Catch-22 stuff until you are selling to more people than you have direct contact with.
But ignoring fans in other countries seems silly.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on PRIDE'S CHILDREN and commented:
Pride’s Children is on sale at ALL worldwide Amazon Kindle marketplaces April 26 to May 1, 2016 – 0.99 everywhere.
LikeLike
I have friends in Australia, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Canada, France, Brazil, and India, just off the top of my head.
Nobody said, “Oh, by the way, I can’t take advantage of your sale in my country.”
Possibly they do NOT want a copy, and only wish I would go away (which I’m doing asap). But it seemed mean to tell them about one, and then not make it available IF they wanted one.
As with most things, the first time take a bit of figuring out.
LikeLike
And if I hadn’t already bought a copy, I’d be at Amazon.com.au in a flash’!!!!
LikeLike
Thanks, Jennifer – the learning curve is still steep! ‘I’m working on it’ is my motto.
Someone said, I was told, that Pride’s Children is ‘the best 0.99 novel I have read.’
We’ll see. I’ve gotten things rear end forward all along – and this is temporary – but you never know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cool you figured it out. I’ve never bothered. Seems too complicated.
LikeLike
It isn’t hard – just took me a bit of time. They make it easy for you to find the links – on the KDP page where you set the price, a dropdown from the price gives you links to each site.
It didn’t occur to me until later that I didn’t even need to take the book out of Select. They only let you have 5 FREE days, but they don’t care what you do with the price otherwise. Except for 30 days before and 15 after a Kindle Countdown, where you can’t change the price.
Effectively, you can sell for 0.99 the other 45 days, if you wanted to, and can set the price the same worldwide – again, if you want to. Just don’t mess up your Countdown opportunity if you were planning to do one every 90 days.
LikeLiked by 1 person