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Here at Book Cave, we want our readers to get the best deals, so price is one of the big things we review when deciding whether or not we accept a book for a promotion. If the deal price isn’t competitive enough, we may not accept the book.
But how do you discount your ebook on a big vendor like Amazon? There are a few ways to discount your ebook on Amazon, depending on whether or not your book is just published through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) or published through KDP AND enrolled in KDP Select. These terms are not the same thing. If you are in KDP, you can also have your book on other platforms like iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. If you are enrolled in KDP Select, you are exclusive to Amazon and cannot have your book on another platform for at least three months, which is the length of each enrollment session.
If your book is only in KDP and NOT enrolled in KDP Select…
Amazon does not let you lower your price by too much unless you change the percentage of royalties you’ll receive. Your choices are 35% for books priced at USD $0.99 to $2.98, or 70% for books priced at USD $2.99 and above. The dashboard will not allow you to set the price to free, but there is a way around that limitation.
Discount Your Ebook on Amazon Through Author Dashboard
If you want to discount your ebook on Amazon, you can do so easily on your KDP account—as long as you don’t want to go below USD 99 cents (the most popular sale price).
To edit the price for your book, log into your KDP dashboard, locate the book in the list, then either click the ebook’s price, or click the ellipsis button and select “Edit eBook pricing” from the popup menu.
If you want to go below USD $2.99 you must choose the 35% royalty box above the pricing. With the 35% chosen, you can then discount to as low as USD 99 cents, but you will earn only 35% of the overall benefit. However, you will not be charged delivery fees like you are with the 70% option.
Note that the 99 cents and $2.99 price points are for Amazon.com. If your “Primary Marketplace” is something other than Amazon.com, your own price breakpoints will be different and will be listed on the book’s pricing dashboard.
We recommend that you click the “Other Marketplaces” link to check the prices on international stores. If you’re relying on Amazon setting prices based on exchange rates, the prices listed may not be to your liking. For example, a USD 99 cent price would have been converted to CAD $1.29 on August 27 2018 (exchange rates change throughout the day and from day to day), so you may want to manually set that price to CAD 99 cents.
At this writing, unlike most of the other vendors, Amazon doesn’t have a way to schedule a sale and have the book return automatically to the original price. When your sale is finished, you must go back in and change back both your price (to regular price) and your royalty amount (back to 70%). Sometimes authors remember to change the price, but not the royalty share, so make sure to double check!
Normally, an author won’t earn a huge amount of money during a sale, but the sales will earn you more views and recommendations that should result in more regular sales once the book’s price returns to normal. If you have sequels, a sale or a permanent discount is a great way to bring attention to the series. If buying customers liked your first book, they’re usually willing to pay for the rest as well.
Have Amazon Price Match Your Book
If you want to discount your book to $0.00, it cannot be done on your dashboard. You first need to discount your ebook on a major retailer like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, or Kobo. Once your book is free at another retailer, you will notify Amazon from your KDP account, telling them about the lower price and asking them to price match.
To do this, log into your KDP dashboard, locate the “Contact Us” link at the very bottom of the page and click it. On the left side of the page, under the heading “How can we help?”, click the “Pricing” category, then the “Price Matching” sub-category. Now click either “Send us an e-mail”, or “Call us”.
Note that the “Call us” really means that Amazon is going to call you at the number you provide.
If you select the “Send us an e-mail” option, you may want to say something like “I am having a temporary sale on other platforms. Will you please consider price-matching this book?” on the subject line, then just fill in the template-like form, which includes links to where the book is currently free. Be sure to send the price-matching request to Amazon a week before your scheduled promotion so they have time to reply and to discount your book.
One more note about timing. Even if you request that Amazon price match on all of its stores in other countries, it is not uncommon for them to match on some stores and not others. You’ll probably need to contact them multiple times, the second and subsequent times listing the countries where the book is not yet free (rather than just saying “all”). Be sure to list competitor’s international links—for Kobo and iTunes and Google, locate the country code in the URL and replace it with the code for another country. For some reason, Amazon seems to care more about iTunes and Google links than Kobo’s. Here are some common country codes:
| USA | us |
| Canada | ca |
| India | in |
| Australia | au |
| New Zealand | nz |
| Great Britain | gb |
Important note: When doing a price match, be sure to not wait too long between the time your book becomes free on other retailers and the time you notify Amazon you’d like them to price-match. Having your prices lower on another platform is against Amazon policies and in violation of the agreement authors make when signing up with KDP, so you want to make sure Amazon knows you’re not trying to get around your contract.
If your book is enrolled in KDP Select…
If your book is enrolled in KDP Select, you’ll need to start what’s called a “Free Book Promotion” or a “Kindle Countdown Deal” to discount your ebook on Amazon. To do so, first find the book in your Bookshelf on Amazon.
Next to each book, you’ll see a “Promote and Advertise” button.
Free Book Promotion with KDP Select
This will open a page that includes the box below. Under “Run a Price Promotion,” choose either “Kindle Countdown Deal” or a “Free Book Promotion.” In the example below, the “Free Book Promotion” has been selected.
Clicking that brings up this page:
You have up to five days you can choose to make your book free during the three-month Select enrollment period. These free book promotions are simple to plan and create. You can do them the day before with no problem. You can use them all at once, one at a time, or several days at a time. The deals will automatically start just after midnight PST and end exactly at midnight (see here) after how many days you choose. Or you can end them manually any time you want (price changes in the middle of a day may take an hour or two to take effect). This is the best option if you have sequels because you will always attract more new readers.
Important note: You should never end a promotion halfway through a day if you have told Book Cave that your book will be on sale the full day. This makes readers upset and can make them unsubscribe, which hurts other authors’ promotions. Ending a promotion early will block your future deals from being featured.
Kindle Countdowns with KDP Select
The Kindle Countdowns can discount your book to as low at 99 cents for up to seven days. The advantage is that when you discount with a Countdown, you are paid your regular royalty rate during the Countdown, even if the price is below 2.99. So this means you’ll get the 70% of the 99 cents (minus delivery charges). The big drawback is that they’re trickier to schedule than free promotions because there are rules associated with them. For instance, you cannot have price changes 30 days before and 14 days after, the book must have been enrolled in KDP Select for 30 days, and you must schedule a Countdown at least 24 hours in advance. And you cannot divide the days into multiple promotions—you either use all seven at once or lose them. To see a list of the rules, click here. You can opt to have Amazon do several days at one price and then raise to another. However, once a Countdown is running, you cannot make changes.
To schedule a Countdown deal, click on “Kindle Countdown Deal.”
For a Countdown, you will choose a date and time. When promoting with Book Cave and other sites, the time is the important thing to change. The default is 8:00 AM PST, which is really too late for most promotion sites. Book Cave requires all books to be on sale by 1:00 am Pacific Time (PT) on the book’s sale date, so make sure to double-check the beginning time. You might as well get the most benefit of your sale and use all the hours, so change the time to 12:00 AM, which means you’ll start at midnight the morning of the date you choose, and end your promotion at 12:00 AM, and that means you will end your promotion at midnight on the morning after completing the 7 days. It may look like 8 days, but you’re ending that morning (at midnight) so it’s only 7. That last 8th day shouldn’t be included as a promotion day. Be sure to adjust the time!
Once you’re done, click “Add Promotion.” You can go back and edit or cancel your promotion up to 24 hours before it’s scheduled to start.
But That’s Not All
There’s one more thing to do on a Countdown. Unlike with the free promotions that automatically go throughout all of Amazon’s stores, a Countdown currently can only be scheduled in the US and in the UK, AND you must do them separately. So repeat the entire process again with the UK option so you can make the best of your promotion. So many authors, even experienced ones, forget to set up the UK option and lose out on possible sales.
We hope this helps you discount your ebook on Amazon as you set up your next promotion! If you have any questions or comments, let us know in the comments below.
I just randomly the part about the 1am vs. 8am timing issue and that is indeed what I have. So I guess I need to reschedule?
If I get a Bookbub Featured Deal at a discounted price, can I offer the discount only on KDP Select if i”m in Select, or can I also offer the same discount to Barnes&Noble Nook, Kobo etc. without violating the terms of KDP Select?
If you are in Select, you can only offer your deal on Amazon Kindle. It doesn’t matter where you get a feature deal. Those are the terms of your Amazon agreement. You can, however, wait for your Select term to run out, take the book wide, and then do a discount across all retailers. Many people who have their first books permafree do it that way.
Thanks, Shawn for your prompt response. I understand that I can only offer my “deal” on Amazon if i’m in KDP Select. However, what I mean to say is, that I have a choice in Bookbub Featured Deal (iff they accept me) to offer my discount on other platforms besides Kindle. My thinking still is that as long as I limited the Bookbub discount ot Kindle and reduced my price on Kindle to match that discount, I’d be in compliance with Select. As I see it, and as Bookbub has told me, they don’t publish but promote. Nonetheless, I would would not feel comfortable offering a discount on Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo etc. even though I would not be publishing on those sites and even though Bookbub says it merely promotes to various platforms. What do you think of my opinion that i’m okay if I tell Bookbub (assuming they accept me) that I want the discount promotion to go only to Kindle readers and make the corresponding adjustment in my Kindle price? Still waiting to hear back from Bookbub whether they’ll even accept m,y novel into their Featured Deal. Thanks again, Shawn, for you insight. Michael
As you understand, if you are in Select, you can only have your book on Select, regardless of what Bookbub or any other promotion company does. They do not publish books. They only send out links. Bookbub or Book Cave or any other promotion company will not post links to any other platform (like Barnes & Noble) if your book isn’t available there. So I’m a little puzzled by your question. If you are on Select, you can not have your book at any price on BN or Apples or Kobo. You either have it wide or you don’t. Our company, Book Cave, will promote Amazon Select books, but as for if Bookbub will do it, you should contact them directly.
I recently launched a book through a small independent press and signed a contract with them. As my book is sold on Amazon, I wanted to be able to offer librarians a code or coupon for a free Kindle download, and if a person is a member of a book club, I could offer another coupon for a discounted download. Is this possible? I don’t know if belonging to Kindle Direct goes against anything I signed with the other publisher, I’ll have to check.
Will do. I appreciate and will remember Book Cave’s advice.
Michael
Belonging to Kindle Direct Publishing does not prevent you from publishing your book elsewhere (only signing the book up for Kindle Unlimited prevents that), but they do required that you have the lowest price you are offering elsewhere also on their site. So if you have a place where anyone can download your book for free, you need to make it free on Kindle too. But there are platforms that allow you to offer codes to certain people (Apple books and Google Books, for instance, and I believe Nook has a program as well), and Amazon doesn’t object to that. However, on some platforms, the individual-specific codes are limited, and others you must input the readers email, so distributing them to libraries to give out seems rather daunting. Book Cave Direct does have magnet program where you can offer your book for free to people, and you could make that private so only people with the code can download your book. They would have to learn to sideload the book to their device, but that might be the best route for wider library distribution to bookclubs. You’d have to contact the libraries yourself to give them the code. That’s the only thing I can think of at the moment. Wish I had a better answer!
When I am speaking at a not for profit, I want to be able to offer my book for sale and have the profits flow back to that charity. Is there a way to create a promotion code such that when I look at my royalties, I can use it to calculate how much I owe the charity?
There is no way to discount your book with a promotion code on Amazon.
Instead, you would need to temporarily discount your book on Amazon (which means anyone could buy it at the discounted price, not just those you tell about it). If you are an Amazon Affiliate, you can then generate a specific link that people click on to buy your book for the promotion. You’ll probably just want to direct people to a landing page on your website (maybe a page specifically set up for your event), where you have added your affiliate link for them to click on. Once your promotion is over, you can view what sales were made through that link on your Amazon dashboard.
However, if you’re using any promotion company (like Book Cave, for example) to spread the news, you will not be able to use your own affiliate link. In that case, it may be simplest just to donate all the proceeds you made on the days the book was being promoted.
Thank you for this. Super helpful!
Is it possible to give the free book away as a reward for sending me money through Patreon?
Thank you for the simple step by step instructions. Really useful!
I’m only on kdp but not kdp select. I only have a paperback version and would like to offer a discount. How can I go about this?
Hi Kikelola.
I’m afraid that advertising a paperback discount is not possible with our services. We only promote ebooks.
You can, however, submit the book for My Book Ratings. As long as the paperback is available at one or more retailer (Amazon, etc.), the book will show at https://mybookcave.com/mybookratings/.
You can also create an author page to show off your work (https://mybookcave.com/profiles/)
I want to provide 0.99% off on my KDP Kindle version.
Please help me with the process. How can I create a coupon for the book.
I also have a seller central account apart from the KDP account.
Please guide me
Its urgent
Thanks!
Is there a way to set a discount code so an author could track where sales come from?
Example: 20% discount using Facebook as code…
No, there isn’t. Amazon doesn’t support coupons.
I do have a ‘stand alone’ book published. It is the danger of being labelled ‘somewhat literary short stories told with an undertone of dark humour’. I have no idea where to go or what to do with them. I’m veering towards KDP SELECT just to see what happens. Any suggestions or advice where i could get reviews/ readers would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
David
P.S. I found Book Cave while i was stumbling around the web and think it is awesome!
Hi David.
Please checkout these two posts:
https://mybookcave.com/authorpost/6-ways-to-get-reviews-for-your-ebook/
https://mybookcave.com/authorpost/pros-and-cons-of-kdp-select/
Cheers.
Tony
I read and responded
Thanks Tony
d
How can I decrease the cost of my e book upto Rs 15 while on KDP selecct its price is 3 dollors.
Assuming that the dashboard looks the same in Brazil as it is in the US, go to the Kindle eBook Pricing tab, then click the “Other Marketplaces” link underneath the US price. Price for Brazil will be there as well as the price for UK, several European countries, etc.
You can also change the “Primary Marketplace” to amazon.com.br by clicking the amazon.com box next to the price in USD and selecting amazon.com.br instead.