Now, I’ve posted a lot over the years about publishing your ebook on different sales channels like Kobo, Apple, and Google Books. I’ve also encouraged people to use Draft2Digital (D2D), which is a great way to get your ebook out there to libraries and more, plus D2D has a REALLY nice ebook conversion tool that is free to use (although I prefer using Jutoh to create my ebooks).
However, with all of these options, Amazon still remains the biggest ebook seller in the world overall. Now, keep in mind that in some countries, other ebook retailers are bigger (such as Kobo being the biggest ebook seller in Canada), but overall, Amazon sells the most worldwide. But if you want to reach more people, hitting up Kobo, Apple, Google Books, and D2D is the way to go.
What about Kindle Select (Kindle Unlimited)?
Kindle Unlimited (or KU), is Amazon’s exclusivity program for ebooks. You sign up your ebook with them and make it exclusive to them (it means you don’t sell or give away your ebook anywhere else, with a few exceptions such as review copies). In exchange for this, Amazon puts your ebook in the Kindle Unlimited category and people who have paid their KU subscription can read your book for free and you get a little bit of money for each page read. It’s not much, but it can add up.
If you want to publish your book on other sites (that’s called “Going Wide”), you lose the ability to publish your book in KU. For many authors, losing KU is not a big loss as they don’t get an awful lot from it. Personally, I found I had very few page reads with KU. Most of my readers purchase the book. Certain genres, however, work well with KU. Romance, for example, is a big genre for KU.
One of the other perks with KU is that you can easily set your book to “free” for up to five days during every 90 day period. So, if you have a free giveaway, you just the date for it and away you go.
But if your book is wide (available on Kobo and Google and more) how do you set your ebook to free as Amazon does not allow you to do this through their site?
I’m glad you asked.
Here’s what you do…
NOTE: This process might seem complicated and difficult, but it’s actually quite simple. You should be able to work through all this with a price match in next to no time. Most of the time is just spent waiting on Amazon to do the price match.
First, you need to log into all your sites where you sell books (other than Amazon) and set your ebook to free. Amazon, unfortunately, does not have this simple option. The cheapest price you can select for your book on Amazon is .99.
The other sites, however, all have that option. In fact, it’s easy to do. I won’t go into detail about how to do it with each site here, but login, go to the pricing section in each sales channel (Kobo, Apple, Google Books, D2D) and set your ebook to free. The nice thing with most of these sites is that you’ll see the new price (free) reflected within minutes. D2D is perhaps the slowest of the bunch as they have to send the info to the different channels, but even so, your book should be free within a day.
Once your book is free on those channels, then you need to contact Amazon. This whole process with Amazon can take a day or a few days. Amazon is all over the place on how fast they get back to you, but there shouldn’t be a problem at all. Here’s what you do:
Head over to Amazon’s Contact Us page:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/contact-us
On the left hand side, Select “Pricing” and then “Price Matching”
You should then be given options to email, call, or ask the community. I would choose email (they’re relatively fast on this).
You’ll then be given a template on how to fill out this message to them. There are a couple things to keep in mind.
First, they are not looking for conversation. For me, as a Canadian, I’m wanting to be polite with my email (and I am), but they aren’t looking for conversation. They’re looking for information.
Second, when they ask for the regions, that’s an important issue. They will ONLY price match in the regions that you request by name. That means if you say to them, “Please price match this to free in ALL the regions” they will likely ONLY price match your book to free in the Amazon.com (US) region (because you didn’t request them by name). I hate to say it this way, but Amazon is not likely to go above and beyond on this. So, you need to list all the regions where you want your book price matched.
Here’s the list:
COM, COM.UK, CA, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, CO.JP, IN, COM.BR, COM.MX, COM.AU, .AE
When you submit this price match request, you are essentially saying to them, “My book is already free on these other sites, can you price match my book to free on Amazon as well?”
Here is a sample email of what I have sent in to give you an idea of what it should look like with listing the sites and everything. Keep in mind that if you look up the links I’ve included, the prices will not likely be free as I am not currently running a free promo on this book. But this gives you an idea. And… you’ll notice I still take the time in the email to be polite… but in a brief way. 🙂
Select type of request: [Add Price Match]
1. B0846ZWP3Y
Kindle Store: .COM, COM.UK, CA, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, CO.JP, IN, COM.BR, COM.MX, COM.AU
Current competitor region link(s):
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/annalynn-the-canadian-spy-1
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Shawn_P_B_Robinson_Annalynn_the_Canadian_Spy?id=qSbMDwAAQBAJ
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/annalynn-the-canadian-spy-shawn-p-b-robinson/1136268281?ean=2940163801169
https://books.apple.com/us/book/annalynn-the-canadian-spy-terrible-tissues/id1496668143
Current competitor price: 0.00
Thanks so much! I have some promotions coming up and need the book to be free.
Shawn Robinson
So, the message is short and sweet and to the point. They deal with a lot of requests, and I don’t think they want to sort through a lot of info.
It will likely take a day or two for this price match to happen and when they email you, it might still take another day after that, so give yourself the time you need to do this (don’t start the price match process a day before your promotions go live). Also, you’ll want to check the various regions before your promo goes live. Amazon can sometimes miss a region–even if you’ve pointed it out.
What about when I want it put back up to full price?
Now, after your promotion is done, you’re going to want to put the price back up. This follows the same process as above, except you’re not setting the book to free. First, you return all your books on D2D, Google, Apple, and Kobo to their full price. Then you contact Amazon using the same form as above with the same links showing the price is no longer free, and ask them to Remove the Price Match (change that comment at the beginning of the email to them).
When requesting that Amazon put the price back up, sometimes they miss a region and leave the book as free for a time. If they do, you’ll have to contact them again on that one.
It’s also possible that they might lock in a price, rather than remove the price match. That means, you might ask them to remove the price match so your book can sell for 2.99, but they might lock in your book at 2.99 so you can’t change it from 2.99–at all. This has only happened to me once or twice (and only with Amazon.ca), and it took me a while to figure out what was going on. If you, later on, try to change your price to .99, but they have locked it in at 2.99 or 3.99, then you’ll need to contact them about it, explain the situation, and let them know that your price is locked, and you need that lock removed. It’s annoying, but Amazon is kind of doing their own thing all the time. For the most part, we just need to navigate through their quirks. 🙂
Well, there you have it! Although this is a long blog, the process is actually quite simple! Enjoy!
Shawn
