Amazon is Now Pitching Advertising to KDP Select Members
Indie Authors have long paid for advertising to promote their books, and now Amazon is pitching the idea directly.
Self Publishing Review reported this morning that Amazon is now pitching pay-per-click advertising to indies with titles in KDP Select:
According to the quoted parts of the FAQ, Amazon’s offering to run a targeted ad campaign which could either be broadly targeted or could be limited to only certain viewers. This includes the option of a focus as tight as a "customers who previously browsed the Kindle Store for a particular genre". The advertiser would pay for each time a customer clicked on an advert, rather than for each thousand times an ad is shown. The minimum ad budget is $100, and the minimum CPC is 2 cents.
Update: The related page is now live in KDP. Early results are mixed.
I must say, this is new to me. I’ve only ever heard of indies using email newsletter blasts and other offsite promotions, both of which have proven to be quite effective on occasion.
While it has always been possible for indies to buy ads on the Kindle, Amazon’s websites, and on the Fire tablets, this is the first I have heard of Amazon pitching the idea directly inside KDP. It’s almost as if Amazon has decided that KDP is mature enough that it worth pitching services to it.
What next, will Amazon start asking for coop fees?
In all honesty, that is only half a joke. In August 2014 Amazon extended the option of pre-order buttons to all users of KDP, both indie author and publisher alike. Now that Amazon is extending advertising into KDP Select, the next obvious step would be for Amazon to let indies stat paying coop and other promotional fees – just like the big boys.
I know some indie authors who have said that they have wanted to be taken seriously as publishers. Congratulations; Amazon is now taking you seriously.
I hope your pocketbooks are deep enough.
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