A look at gaining new readers through promos.

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Lesson #2: What is a Price Promotion? 


Not sure what we mean exactly by ‘price promotions?’ In today’s lesson, we will show you what they are and reveal the ways they can be used to boost your book and author brand.


A price promotion is an act of putting concentrated marketing activity around a title for a short period, while the title is free or priced under $3.99. There are three primary goals that authors have in mind when deciding to run a price promotion:

  1. Gaining new readers
  2. Generating reviews
  3. Spiking revenue

For independent authors, gaining new readers is the primary goal.

If you aren’t an award-winning or best-selling author yet, getting your book into the hands of new readers is the most important outcome of a promotion. Once you’ve hooked those new readers, they can then share it with their friends, talk about it on social media, and go on to buy your other books. While we recommend prioritizing the objective of gaining new readers, the next two goals on this list are also important.

Getting reviews will increase your conversion rate.

The more reviews you have, the better future promotions will perform. Readers are greatly influenced by reviews (in particular by the number of reviews a book has) when making their purchasing decisions.

Generating more revenue means having more to invest in your books.

Spiking revenue is when your books make more money than usual and you see a “spike” in your sales. As an author, you have two options for how to use that money. You can either keep it aside for your living expenses or re-invest that profit into further marketing for your books. 

A quick look at price promotions on KDP Select

When you enroll your book in KDP Select (if you’re exclusive to Amazon), your dashboard will feature the ability for you to run a price promotion. 


There are two types of promotions Amazon has sanctioned: 

  • Free days: you are permitted to price your book as free for 5 days every three months.
  • Kindle Countdown Deals: you are also allotted one Kindle Countdown every three months. More about these in the recommended reads.

The fact that Amazon has built price promotions into their publishing tools goes to show their effectiveness at promoting a book. In tomorrow’s lesson, we’ll show you a few less obvious reasons for running a price promotion.

Bottom Line:

A successful price promotion begins by setting goals. The three goals you can set are: 1) gaining new readers, 2) generating reviews for your book, and 3) driving sales of your title. 


— The Written Word Media team


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At Written Word Media we believe that books are a force for good in the world. Our mission is to empower authors and publishers to reach their audience and help readers find their next great book. We do this through our 4 sites: Freebooksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather Romance and  NewInBooks. We have a combined audience of over 800,000 readers, of which over 600,000 receive email book recommendations based on their genre and device preferences. Written Word Media has served over 30,000 authors, most of whom are self-published.