Websites for Marketing KDP Select Free Days for Your Amazon Kindle eBook

Last week I talked about the results of my 3-day KDP Select free promotion which you can read about here. This week I’ll share a key element of my promotion strategy—using websites that specialize in promoting KDP Select free promotion days. Regardless of the number of your social media connections or marketing reach this is a significant opportunity to reach more potential readers.

[Update: here is the third installment of this series.]

20 KDP Select Promotion Websites

I actually found and evaluated close to 40 websites before coming up with a final list of 20 sites to focus on. Some were closed to submissions. Some were for specific types of books such as children’s or fiction.

Noticing that many required or recommended payment, I then looked up each one on Alexa to check their traffic. I planned on paying something but I wanted to understand the potential for a return on that investment. Unfortunately there is no way to know who sent your free book buyer to Amazon.

The table below shows the websites I used, whether or not they charge and a note about whether or not my book was ever mentioned on their website. A few other notes:

• Listed in order of Alexa traffic ranking as of December 2012 (most traffic listed first)
• Payment policies may change as may submission requirements. Most require days or weeks notice, a few require submission on the day your book is free.
• Under Payment, R means they ask for a donation which in all but one case I paid. Yes means you must pay. If blank it is an editorial decision.
• Under Result, Listed means my book was listed. A bold Listed means I didn’t pay but was listed. Sort of what you’d expect but obviously not often the case.

Created with the HTML Table Generator 

What did I learn?

1. With rare exceptions you should expect to pay or donate. My book was mentioned by only three sites where I did not pay.
2. This takes a lot of time! I spent hours searching and ranking sites, listing my book and monitoring results. Figure an hour per site per campaign.
3. I was pleased with the personal attention paid by those that do charge. Keep in mind, most of these charge $5 to $30. Keep your expectations in line and you’ll find them to be responsive and honest people. I spent about $100 in all. Definately worth it.

Conclusion

One of the chief complaints I hear from authors about KDP Select is that you are giving your book away instead of selling it. But would many of these people have bought your book even for 99 cents? I highly doubt it. I call them eBook collectors and chances are they may never look at your book. In the meantime their download triggered Amazon’s algorithms which is the ultimate vote of interest as far as Amazon is concerned. That’s why authors experience a sales jump after their free promotion period ends.

New and unknown authors give books away to build awareness. Using these KDP Select free Kindle eBook marketing websites is one more way to help do that. Authors living on the hope of sales often end up dying from obscurity.

Have you used KDP Select promotion websites? What was your experience? Which sites did you use?
photo credit: geezaweezer via photopin cc