When to do Free Promos?

If you’ve been writing books and publishing on Amazon for more than six months or so, then you have probably noticed that the results of free promos have changed.

When I first started publishing, I would run a 1-day free promo on a new book and, with any luck, my book would get to a free ranking of under #1,000, or hopefully even below #500.  Then, when I saw that my book’s ranking had reached the lowest point it would go, I could cancel the free promo and hope for a great paid ranking the next morning.

Now, things are a little different.  Perhaps as a result of the massive increase of published books on Amazon.

Now, I need to run a 2 or even 3-day free promo on a book to get the same results.  So, where I used to do a free promo once a month, now I plan to do either a 2 or 3-day free promo every six weeks.  Plus, the results are not as consistent as they used to be (my books don’t get as low as they used to every time) and the next day paid rankings don’t hold as long as they used to (meaning less overall sales per free promo).  But, I think it’s still worth doing for books that generally don’t ranking below #100,000 on a regular basis.

Here is how I determine when to run a free promo:

• go through my books to determine which ones I will schedule for free promos and which ones I will schedule for $0.99 promos
• print a 2016 calendar (month by month)
• choose which days would be best for a promo on each book, depending on niche
• add my books to the calendar
• make sure that I divide up my books by:
  • days, so I am not promoting more than one or two books per day
  • author, so if I have more than one book per day, they are of different pen names
  • price (whether I am doing free promos, $0.99 promos, or perma-free promos)
• once I have a rotation for my books, I continue the same rotation every six weeks

After I have my schedule of free, perma-free, and $0.99 promos set up, I implement my new schedule.  Every Monday morning, I look ahead to the following week to see which books I have scheduled.  Then, I use KDROI to submit each book for either a free promo, perma-free promo, or a $0.99 promo.

If you decide to do the same thing, remember that, if you are using KDROI, it requires at least seven days notice to submit a book, which is why I do the following week each Monday.

Good luck!

Barb Asselin