For any veteran in the self-publishing game. Something like getting a book set to permanently free on Amazon is simple.
But just because many people may know how to do this. It does not mean that everyone understands how to do this. So this blog post will explain how to properly get your book or books set to free on amazon.
If you desire to have your book made free on amazon then in reality you actually want your book price matched to $0.00 dollars.
What Do I Need to Make My Book Free?
The first step to getting your book free is having a complete manuscript and a book cover. Once you have a book that’s ready for publishing you must submit that book to online retailors OUTSIDE of Amazon and make it free on each site.
Save the links to your book’s sale pages on each site because you will send Amazon these links for reference.
Once the book is free and available outside of Amazon, you can log into your KDP account and go to the help section. Inside of help there will be is a subcategory called “Amazon Product Page” under this section there is another section called “Price Matching”.
When you send a request for price matching, list the ASIN of the book, and also put the links to your book on the other competitor sites. The number of links you list is not important in my experience but try to list at least 2 different retailors.
Use Draft2Digital
The best way to go about getting your book listed on other publishing platforms is to submit your manuscript to Draft2Digital.
Draft2Digital is a self-publishing platform just like KDP except it excludes Amazon and includes 9 other retailers. Some of the retailors are Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, and Kobo.
Submitting your manuscript one time will send your book to all 9 simultaneously.
Apple Will Continually Deny Your Book if you Forget this Step
One important thing to remember when publishing with Draft2Digital is: make sure there are no links to Amazon in your books, or Apple will continually deny your submission.
Once you submit your manuscript to Draft2Digital wait a day or 2 until everything is up and ready for sale then find your “Book2Read Universal Link”. This link displays all your links in one page. Copy and paste all those links and send them to Amazon when you request for price matching.
After you follow these steps Amazon will take about a week or sometimes less to update the price on their end.
There is only 1 reason to make your book permanently free on Amazon and elsewhere. And that is for marketing.
Your goal when making a book permanently free is to get targeted email addresses to market products to, or to get targeted traffic to one of your websites, don’t be spammy and always publish high quality work, if you want high quality buyers.
8 Steps to Getting Your Book Permanently Free
- The following is a list of steps to follow to get your book permanently free. If reading long paragraphs is not your thing, then read through list:
- Complete your book’s manuscript and book cover, then remove all links to Amazon.
- Upload the book to KDP and set the price to something that is not free, get it published on Amazon.
- Upload the book to Draft2Digital and set the price to $0.00.
- Wait until the book is published on all 9 platforms on Draft2Digital then find your Book2Read Universal Link.
- Save all 9 links your book’s sale page on other retailers then inside of your KDP account go to Help > Contact Us > Amazon Product Page > Price Matching
- Send a simple message asking for the book to be made free and include the ASIN of your book plus the links you’ve saved from your Draft2Digital Account.
- Wait anywhere from 1 day to 1 week until the book is price matched on Amazon.
- Ensure that your book stays free outside of Amazon.
Important Links:
- KDP Support Page
- Draft2Digital