Marketing Changes - and Free Books!

I've recently been reading more and more about the Amazon Prime option of KDP Select.  The more I read, the more I'm interested.  While the program is still very new (3 months old?), it seems to have great potential and I'm reading a lot of success stories and reviews on the program.

So I've decided to jump in.  I've made my novel, Sweetwater Springs, available exclusively on Amazon Kindle and enrolled in KDP Select.  Here is some information about the program.

#1 - To be part of Kindle Select, you must offer your digital book via Kindle only.  This means I had to 'unpublish' the book from Barnes and Nobles Nook platform.  : [  This doesn't make me happy because I've been seeing more sales on the Nook than in the other platforms.  But, in an effort to increase my name recognition, to profligate my name and book out there, I've made the difficult decision to remove Sweetwater Springs from Nook, and from Smashwords and go exclusively with Kindle (for now).

#2 - Signup to Kindle Select couldn't be much easier.  Since I already had my book published through their KDP platform, I simply had to click the button and mark the checkbox.  It really was that simple.

#3 - The Kindle Select program is a 90 day contract.  My goal is to use the next 90 days to really offer my book and get noticed more.  I have more books getting ready for publication and name recognition is huge.  90 days seems to be a good starting point to focus on this goal.

#4 - During each 90 period (and they auto-renew you after 90 days unless you 'opt-out'), you get 5 'free days'.  These are promotions you must setup.  You set the price, you set the day it will start, and the day it will end.  The promotion takes effect at midnight (their time) on the day you specify, and similarly, ends at midnight their time on the day you select to end the promotion.

#5 - To get a good start on my marketing in this manner, I setup my first promotion to begin on day 1.  (that's today).  So, at 10:30pm MST last night, my book was enrolled in the KDP select program and at midnight (their time), my book went on promotion.  I decided to offer the book for free for the first two days.  Yes, that means for today and tomorrow, (until midnight tomorrow night), the Sweetwater Springs will be free to anyone who has access to the KDP Select program (Amazon Prime members).  Furthermore, the Select program offers the Borrowing feature, which I'm still learning more about.

#6 - Much to my surprise this morning at 7:00am MST, I had already had 150 'sales'.  And by 'sales', I really mean free downloads, because the book is currently listed for free.  The 'sales' numbers continue to climb and as of right now, 8:30am MST, I'm at over 200 'sales'.  (I'll continue to put quotes around the word 'sales' until I actually start making money.  :] )


And to close this morning, I had done lots of reading about people posting their book's rankings on Kindle.  For the life of me I just couldn't figure out where to get those numbers.  But after significant research, I finally found it.  Amazon Author Central: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing  There, after registering and logging in, you can see your book(s) and their current rankings.  Since I am still very new to this, I'm still learning and I'll post more as I figure it out.

For now, though - On we go with Kindle Select!  Free book all day today and tomorrow.  Check out Sweetwater Springs, FREE for a limited time, here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KYIZ76

And if you have more insight to the KDP Select program, or comments, please feel free to post below.