It’s no secret that Amazon is currently the biggest marketplace for ebooks. If you can sell well there, you’ve got it made.
As we’ve talked about before, one strategy authors employ is to give away a free or a 99-cent ebook since this can entice readers into trying an unknown author. With luck, they’ll enjoy the first one and go on to purchase your other (regularly priced) ebooks.
But how do you get an ebook listed for free at Amazon? When you list your book through the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform, the lowest price you can input is $0.99.
The following trick has worked for many ebook authors, but not everybody, so be prepared to wait for a while if you give it a try:
How to Get Your Ebook Listed for Free at Amazon
You have to use a backdoor (and there are no guarantees, but Amazon has started making things easier):
- List your ebook for free at Smashwords.
- Go to the Distribution Channel Manager at Smashwords and opt in to having your ebook distributed to Barnes & Noble (you can tick the Amazon check box, too, but that doesn’t seem to do anything currently).
- Upload your ebook to Amazon as normal (via the KDP page) and set whatever price you want.
- Sit back and wait for a few weeks. Eventually your ebook will be listed at B&N as a freebie. Sometime after that, Amazon’s bots will notice your work has a lower price elsewhere and price match, thus making your ebook free in the Kindle Store.
If Amazon doesn’t favor you by listing your ebook for free, you can also try putting it on sale.
How to Get Your Ebook Discounted at Amazon
This is a similar process, though with fewer steps.
Right now, if you go to Amazon, The Emperor’s Edge is on sale for $0.99 though its “Digital List Price” is displayed as $2.99 while telling folks “You save $2.00.” Going by the psychology behind coupons, this may appear to be a better deal than if I simply listed it for 99 cents. Will it result in more sales? Who knows? But I’m releasing the second book in the series in a few weeks, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and draw in more readers (by the way, if you bought the novel at $2.99, I urge you to sign up for my newsletter, as I’ll be giving away a Smashwords coupon so subscribers can grab Book 2 for free).
But I digress. You’re more interested in getting your work listed for sale.
Just head over to Barnes & Noble and list your ebook for a lower price there than it’s selling for at Amazon. Again, it may not happen overnight, but Amazon should price match eventually and show your ebook as being discounted.
That’s all there is to it. Good luck!
Wonderful post. I think that’s what happened to my short story Control Freak a week or two ago. I got the impression Amazon sent out a mass email to a bunch of indie folks letting them know they’d be discounting their books to free. A couple of days later, Amazon followed through.
If the above steps don’t work, you might also consider ratting yourself out. When Shadow Cat came out in print, B&N listed it for $10.79 though I published it with Createspace for $14.99 in order to qualify for the extended distribution channel requirements.
As a side note, I have no control over what distributors sell the print books for. I set the retail price, they purchase at a discount, and then resale for the price they want.
Another side note: When Amazon cuts the prices for an ebook, they also adjust the royalty accordingly. When they offered Control Freak for free, royalties stopped. Not that it mattered to me in this case. After all, I listed as free other places. 🙂 The difference with print, my royalties don’t change because Amazon decided to match a price. It creates a win/win situation for both the author and reader.
So… back on the topic. B&N offered Shadow Cat for $10.79, and I shared the news with Amazon. A couple days later, Amazon discounted the print to price match.
If waiting it out doesn’t work for you, tattling on yourself might.
Ah, it’s nice to learn of these tricks.
So, you can offer print through Createspace, too? I’ll have to look into all this more. When I’m closer to ready. In the meantime, I’ll keep learning. Thanks for all the great information.
It’s a good trick, and one I’ve been trying for a while.
However, as far as I am aware, in order for this to work you have to choose the 35% royalty option from KDP. I’ve heard on the Kindleboards that your book could be de-listed if you make it free elsewhere but choose the 70% royalty option for Kindle. I’m not sure how true that is, but if you read the KDP pricing page, you will see that this free price match “trick” is mentioned under Article 1.a.iii (describing the 35% option), but not under Article 1.b (the 70% option).
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A29FL26OKE7R7B
A technical question . . I added an Amazon affiliate image link of my book, however the image is tiny. How did you get yours so large?
A totally deceptive and sleazy marketing trick to trick people into thinking there is a sale on your eBook…which is why I love it! I’m definitely signing up for your newsletter. Thanks for all the great tips.
Thanks for the informative comment, Reena! It does seem a little hit-or-miss on whether you can get that freebie on Amazon or not, but I’m seeing more and more folks with them over there now. IMO it makes a lot of business sense for Amazon to allow it if the author has more ebooks in the kindle store that aren’t free–if readers enjoy the first they should be more likely to go on and purchase more! (Though I think this tactic works best if you are doing books in a series. You’ll have to let us know if there’s much correlation between the free short story downloads and sales of your novel.)
Mary, I haven’t done print yet, but I’m planning to soon, and I’ll probably use CreateSpace. Reena did a nice post on them last week.
Brondt, interesting. I see the spot on the page, though it seems odd that it’d matter. If the ebook is free, we’re not going to get paid at any royalty rate, heh. Right now, I’m pretty sure EE is set at $2.99/70% (I’d actually intended to switch it back to $2.99 after a week of trying it at 99 cents with only moderately increased sales, and the “discount” was a result of B&N being slower to list the price change.) but I’m assuming it will automatically drop the royalty rate and I’ll just get 35 cents for those 99-cent sales. Clear as mud, right? 😛
Nicole, I use my own book images instead of Amazon’s. Then I just grab the text affiliate link and wrap it around the img tags with a little html. Feel free to shoot me a note if you want more details.
Geez, Paul, you had me questioning my morality there. 😛 Actually, I’m still not sure I’m in the clear. Hm! It seems like 90% of the junk on Amazon is discounted, so it only seems fair that we should be able to put our stuff on sale too. (Sound of author justifying herself.) Either way, thanks for signing up for my newsletter!
I’m not sure if there’s a correlation or not since I don’t have an inside view of whether people who download Control Freak for free also purchase Shadow Cat, but I’m going to take a wild guess and say it helped. Though the works are unrelated, I included the first four chapters of Shadow Cat in Control Freak. I went from one sale every few days to one-three sales every day. I might add, Shadow Cat is doing that discount thing also. Retails for $3.99 but is priced at $1.99. I have no idea where Amazon is finding the lower price though.
Hey I had been wondering if something like this might work. Nice to see that it does 🙂
Lindsay, I’ve tried the sale thing before and it does drop your royalty rate automatically. Also, I agree that a giveaway shouldn’t be affected by the royalty rate, and I am really only repeating what I’ve heard from others and pointing to what the page itself says. Amazon does seem to be a bit careful, even touchy, with its 70% programme. It knows what a fantastic deal it is for authors, and I think they don’t like people messing with it too much, trying to work the system. So far I’ve not encountered anyone on the KDP forums who got this to work at the 70% option.
Actually, what did happen to me right after my first novel went free at BN is my Amazon version was price cut from 2.99 to .99 for about ten days before reverting to 2.99. I have no idea why they just cut the price to .99, but I know it wasn’t because I had it listed at that price elsewhere. It was 2.99 or free everywhere else.
Why on earth would an author list his or her book for FREE? Authors need to eat!! Just trying to get read by giving it away for free hurts ALL authors who will have to work for free in order to compete.
All you people are shooting yourself in the foot by giving away your work on Amazon or Kindle or whatever.
I am not against E-books or authors taking control of their own work and self E pubs, but come on. Think for a minute!
Stop bringing common sense into the discussion. Everyone knows authors don’t need to eat.
Came back to read this. Getting ready to upload my free reads to Smashwords and wanted to see how to get it there on Amazon.