Nominating Books for the Kindle Daily Deal

I’ve probably mentioned on more than one occasion that advertising/marketing is a necessary evil in the world of indie publishing.  Simply put, unless you are very lucky, you have to advertise in order to gain visibility for your work. That wasn’t always the case. For instance, I personally did almost no advertising when I first started publishing my fiction. But even back then, there were marketing avenues that could provide great exposure. One of those was the Kindle Daily Deal.

For those who don’t know, the Kindle Daily Deal refers to ebooks that Amazon selects and discounts on a daily basis.  In essence, Amazon promotes your book.  How much is that worth?  Well, back around the time I started publishing, I recall one author saying that his book was selected as the Kindle Daily Deal and ended up selling thousands of copies that day (not to mention tens of thousands during the following weeks).  In other words, Amazon could act as a sort of kingmaker when it came to the Kindle Daily Deal, and that’s still the case today.  Plainly speaking, it’s probably the only book marketing venue that provides greater sales momentum than a BookBub deal.

So how do you get selected for the Kindle Daily Deal?  That’s always been a mystery – a black box that mere mortals couldn’t get their arms around.  Needless to say, however, it’s one of those things that authors hope and pray for (yours truly among them). In fact, access to those kinds of offers is one of the things I regularly cited whenever Amazon sent me a survey asking how to make the publishing process better.  Surprisingly, they listened. Yes – authors now have the ability to nominate their titles for Kindle Daily Deals.

Of course, it probably wasn’t just me pushing for that kind of option. I’m sure tons of other authors relayed the same thing to Amazon, and it’s great that we can now nominate our books for deals. Basically, you can nominate up to two titles not just for the Daily Deal but for various promotional opportunities. (You can also nominate a title to be included in the Prime Reading program.)  Nominations are good for 90 days, at which point they can be automatically renewed or changed.

However, there’s no guarantee that your book will be selected. More to the point, we still don’t know how selections are made, and there’s nothing to indicate that simply being able to nominate your book does anything for your chances.  (After all, Amazon still has the same task it had before nominations were allowed: choosing which books – from the millions on its site – to include in a deal.)  In short, there’s an argument that nothing’s really changed.

That said, I remain hopeful. There’s always a chance that Amazon will select one of my titles for a Daily Deal, and hopefully the nomination process really does increase the odds. (For those who are curious, I nominated Sensation and Terminus.)  In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to write good books that readers find enjoyable.