How to Prepare for and Announce Your Free KDP Select Days

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In the last blog post “Free Days on KDP Select – is it for you?” the pro’s and con’s of joining Amazon’s KDP Select program have been shown.  Today let’s look at how to prepare and advertise the free days for your Kindle e-book.
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A month before your free days:

• Make sure you have at least a handful of book reviews on Amazon
• Update the books file and add some promotional links
• Check that your book is in the right categories
• Set up the best days for your “free” promotion
• Write to all the free book websites and ask to announce your free days
• Write an article about your books free days on your own blog
• Raise the price for your book
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Twitter
A week before the big day, prepare a list with at least two dozen tweets (to post them at least every half hour), so you have them handy to schedule in Twuffer, Futuretweets, Hootsuite or whatever Twitter scheduler you use. Incorporate these hashtags into your messages: #FreeKindleBook, #freekindle, #freebook, #free, #kindlepromo, #freeE-books or #freeKindledays, just to name a few.
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Google+, Pinterest and News Release to blogs
Prepare lots of photos of you book cover, at least in 600 x 800 pixel (not the small one from your Amazon site).
Write a short description about your book and it’s free days with exact Amazon links for each country! and offer it to other bloggers, including your books photo. Do this at least a week before the free days, to give bloggers time to incorporate your article into their blogging schedule. A couple of them will post it, especially if you wrote guest posts for them before and you offer them a reciprocal.
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On your free days post your books cover and description several times on your Google+ site, with a variation of text and headline. Same with Pinterest, Chime.in and Facebook. Ask your friends on all these sites to submit it for you to their friends as well.
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Goodreads
Ask a couple of your peers at Goodreads to send out a book recommendation with a note of the free days to all of their friends (you cannot recommend your own books on Goodreads). Choose those with the most friends to reach a maximum audience.
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FREE Event ads
Both, Goodreads and Google+ have a free tool to advertise this event. Just type “event” into the search function on Goodreads, and on Google+ you can see the event planner on the right hand side of your timeline. Set it up a couple of days in advance and send out an email, to all your peers, write about it on FB, tweet it several times before the free days begin and don’t forget to announce it on Pinterest with a nice cover photo of your book.
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Double-Check everything!
Make sure your dates at the free book lists are correct! Most of these posts are scheduled in advance so if your book is not free, you could be blacklisted. Double-check your Amazon ASIN number if the link is correct when you submit to sites (copy and paste from Amazon rather than type it in). You certainly can shorten your Amazon link, e.g. Amazon.com/dp/B008Y15YYO.  However, do not use any of these commercial link shorteners (bit.ly, wp etc. or Amazon affiliate links) for submission to promotional free book websites, they will not accept them.
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Announce your FREE Book on KDP Select days here too:  Google+  Community “Author Marketing Club”     bit.ly/1a827Xv 

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Here are ten sites where you can advertise your free days – often for free – there are certainly many more. 

• Pixel Of Ink 
• FKB Books and Tips 
• eReader News Today 
• Free Booksy 
• Bargain eBook Hunter 
• Kindle Book Review 
• Ebook Deal of the Day 
• Book Goodies 
• KindleMojo 
• Indie Book Promo 

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Twitter accounts that re-tweet your free books 

@DigitalBkToday
@kindleebooks
@Kindlestuff
@KindleEbooksUK
@KindleBookKing
@KindleFreeBook
@free_kindle
@FreeReadFeed
@freebookdude
@4FreeKindleBook
@FreeKindleStuff

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Amazon has an abundance of lists, such as Top Rated lists, Bestsellers List, Hot New Release list, Gift Idea lists, Top-100 lists for each category, “If you like this you may …” lists, “So you want to” lists and Top Rated Author Lists. When someone downloads your book (for free or paid), it moves up the charts. A lot more people will see it then, compared to before your free days.  Being more visible when the book is reverted back to a paid download, means more people can find it, and will results in more sales.  When people download your book, it starts appearing in the “People who bought this book also bought..” and “Recommended for you” sections, even more increasing visibility.

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Once the free days are over, start to promote heavily lending/borrowing of your e-book, in order to get Amazons Prime members to borrow your book.

Possible Tweets could be:

• Did you know? Amazon Prime Membership allows you to borrow …..
• Amazon Prime Members can borrow …. for free
• The benefit of Amazons Prime Membership is: you can borrow ….
• Amazon Prime Members in the UK and Ireland:
• Amazon Prime Members in Canada: you can….
• Amazon Prime Members in Germany:
• Amazon Prime Members in Spain:

You get the idea…. Use the remaining weeks and months to further promote your books for lending. You will be paid for that!

Writer M.Louisa Locke reports:  “Having fewer free promotions increased the effectiveness of the promotions I did, placing the promotions near the end of the month did stimulate borrows, and publishing additional works did compensate for the lower royalties brought in by the first two books in the series.”  Good luck for your KDP Select promotion and let us know if you have more ideas how to publicize your book during this time.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars   Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/ to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

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