First, congratulations. It’s scary to spend that kind of money on a promotion, but in my experience it’s been worth it every time even with the ones that didn’t perform as well. (My worst took four days to pay for itself with sales of that book and followthrough sales and I’ve only ever had 99 cent deals on standalones.)
Second, on the day of the Bookbub do not freak out if the sales aren’t there when you think they should be. I’m in the middle of the United States and inevitably think my deal is a big dud because the Australian sales for me don’t report until the next day on Amazon and that’s always a big chunk.
Now, the reason I am writing this post is because I’ve seen one too many questions about how to adjust pricing for a deal, especially how that works for authors who are wide.
So I decided I’d just run through it here once and then anyone who wanted to could find it on the internet and I could just link to this post if it ever comes up in a group again. This is for a non-free deal. Usually 99 cents but I’ve seen a few $1.99 etc deals.
We’ll start easy:
Nook: Change the price to your U.S. deal price. Done, because it’s just U.S. sales.
Amazon: Change the U.S. price and then click on Other Marketplaces to show all other markets. Make sure that the prices in India, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia match the price listed in the Bookbub acceptance email. (For 99 cent deals that’s 0.99 for all except India which is 65 INR.)
Apple: Change the base price and then go and confirm that all of your Bookbub markets are the price you want. There is no India option to worry about.
Google: Two options.
Simple option is to have one USD World listing and then one listing for each of the Bookbub countries (Canada, UK, Australia, India) using the deal price. So USD 99 cent WORLD and the rest are CAD 99 cent Canada, AUD 99 cent Australia, etc.
Make sure the tax-inclusive box is checked for each country so that you don’t end up with a 99 cent book priced at $1.06 which will mean that country doesn’t run as part of your Bookbub deal. (I do it for every country rather than try to figure out which ones have a VAT in place.)
The more complex option is to leave your usual listings in place and then for U.S. WORLD, Canada, UK, Australia, and India to list a second price for each country that includes your dates of your promotion and your sale price. This should mean that the deal shows as a discount off your full price on the book page.
I’ve been bit on this one before when it didn’t override my normal price because my normal price was not listed as tax-inclusive but my sale price was so I sometimes just go with the simple option instead.
Kobo: Two options here as well. Start on the set the price page for the book.
Your first option is to change the default list price to what you need and then make sure that the price listed for each country in your BB deal is what it should be.
Your second option is to leave that section alone and instead use the schedule a sale option. Works the same, basically price-wise, except you set dates for you promotion. (I tend not to use it because I end up cancelling the sale early because I always want it to end on the 14th but when you put in the 14th that means it will end on the 15th.)
Draft2Digital: They have a promotion option that lets you schedule a promotion but last I checked it was USD only, which I don’t trust because of currency conversion. So…
I go to the Publish page for the book, click on Manage Territorial Prices, and make sure that the USD price is set to what I need and then all the other prices are set to their requirement as well. To customize a country price you check the box next to that country and enter the price you want. Click Apply Territories when done and submit the change.
That’s it for the ones I use. I assume other stores would work the same. Basically, don’t rely on currency conversion to get the right prices for your deal.
Also, be sure to check your listings in each country before the day of your deal.
For Google you can add &gl= and then the two-letter country code at the end of the URL to see the price in each store. For Apple change the current two-letter country portion of the URL to the one you want to see. Same with Kobo.
(The UK two-letter code is GB.)
For Amazon you need to change the amazon portion of the address to match the amazon url for that country. So amazon.com becomes amazon.co.uk, for example.
You won’t have buy options in each store, but you should be able to see pricing to confirm that you got it right.
M.L. Humphrey 