My Kindle Countdown Continues

Opur's Blade, here we come! During the second week in December one of my most popular books will be discounted on Kindle.

It is easy to see why Amazon has risen to the forefront in book sales and marketing. Kindle has developed a neat promotional tool. With a 90-day commitment to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select an author can choose several different options in an attempt to increase exposure.

For my first experience I elected to try the Countdown Deal program. Essentially I chose the starting price of my book and the number of price changes that would occur during the 6-day promotional period. The drawback was that I could not offer the titles in any other eBook format.

During the first week, Lifetime Loser, my first novel that kicked off the Prairie Winds Golf Course series, was offered at discounted prices. To stay in real time KDP Select updates their sales statistics almost immediately. While the number of units sold was lower than expected it was encouraging to see my author and book ranking soar from a percentage standpoint as one-click purchases were made. My marketing on all of the social networking sites increased as well as my presence on some book sites that marketed directly to Kindle users/readers.

During the second week of the promotion, Opur's Blade, will be offered. This is the 4th book in the series. After a freak accident the child prodigy (Opur) perfects his putting stroke using a tired, worn-out putter. During his journey he has to deal with family hardship, a future without aim and a sudden love interest. Through a stroke of good fortune he rises to the top of his profession and earns an opportunity to play opposite the world's number one player in the most elite golf tournament in the US --- The Classic.

While it appears that this story might interest golfers only I think that reader comments will confirm that there is a lot more going on in this story than just golf. This character-based novel draws male AND female readers into the heart of the action.

Pabby's Score, my latest, will be promoted the following week. After that we will sit down, analyze the sales and where they came from as well as the publicity that was generated to see if another promotion will be considered. I will say that the preliminary results have been very encouraging. I love the way Amazon provides recommendations based on genre, hot sellers and Kindles users. Up to this point my experience could be categorized as -- so far, so good!