Listing Your Book for Free on Amazon
There are many benefits to listing your ebook for free, especially as a first-time author or self-published. It gives your readers the opportunity to check you out without a financial commitment, widening your audience instantly and sparking a greater interest in your ebook. Though it may seem like a setback on your path to the best-sellers list, making your book available to anyone on the internet is a great tool to use while you are kicking off your career. Amazon makes it very easy for authors to list books for free while keeping in mind that you need to make money. Here is some valuable information you need to know about publishing your book through the Kindle Marketplace and utilizing Amazon’s free sale period to launch your book to success.
Amazon’s Free Sale Policy
Amazon does not allow for ebooks to be permanently free; only 5 of every 90 days are allowed for book giveaways. As a part of this service, Amazon requires that authors who wish to list for free enroll in their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program. This means that your book will only be sold through Amazon, and you cannot list it through Barnes & Noble, Netgalley, iBooks or Smashwords. This could be a great resource, as Amazon is a top seller of ebooks and Kindle is the preferred ebook reader, but it is important to know your options and that entering this program is making Amazon your only outlet for book sales.
Sales Rankings
It is extremely lucrative to post your book for free, because this will temporarily remove your book from the Top 100 Paid list and drop you into a category with other free books. Most of the time, this pens you up against other self-published authors and people with similar goals to your own. It is very difficult to draw viewers on a Top 100 list that features famous authors and New York Times best-sellers; you are now able to join a ranking that is less daunting for a first-time author.
Hard Data
Amazon keeps track of all of your sales, whether during your free promotion days or full-priced sales. This is a good resource to track your progress and note whether or not listing your book for free is helping or hurting your book.
For more information, visit Amazon’s FAQ page or the KDP site to sign up!