Today, the ebook for The 4 Minute Millionaire is $0.99 all across the world. It’s a promotion with BookBub, one of the world’s largest book discovery services with millions of readers.
Getting a deal with BookBub is hard but not impossible. It took me over a year and 12 rounds of submission to get my first one, and that is its own story. But on the whole, their system strikes me as tough but fair.
In order to run the promotion, however, I obviously have to discount my book. BookBub offers multiple tiers, from making your book free up to $5. I usually go with $0.99 for various reasons. So far, so good. Then comes the hard part: actually discounting the book.
What could possibly be hard about reducing my own book’s price? Oh, it’s easy almost everywhere. On my own store, the Google Play Store, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and dozens of other marketplaces, I can do it in a few minutes. But not on Amazon. Amazon is special. It also happens to be the top sales channel for most books, including mine.
Amazon does not allow authors to fully control the pricing of their own works. Depending on the book’s size and the geography you’re trying to sell it in, they’ll tell you what you can do. “Set a list price between $2.99-$9.99,” my dashboard reads. So, rather than making a quick update, I have to submit a request to Amazon to reduce my book’s price.
To do so, there’s a contact form, and submissions follow certain rules. For starters, Amazon won’t discount your book simply because you ask for it. The best they’ll do is match a price you can prove to them exists elsewhere. So once I have my promotion price in place on other platforms, I’ll share those links with Amazon in the request. Usually, this works well enough, but every now and then, Amazon will refuse to play ball. Out of a handful of price matches, I’ve now received pushback at least twice.
It is at this point, at the latest, that any self-respecting author will start sweating. Despite being highly selective, a BookBub promotion still costs money, and if your book is not discounted properly across platforms on the day, they’ll simply skip it. No refunds. Plus, you’ll miss out on all the sales. That’s why I’ve made a habit of contacting Amazon a week early or so. To make sure I can get the pricing lined up in time.
This is not ideal, of course. If the promotion is supposed to last for two days, why would the book already be discounted five days before? Because of Amazon’s system. That’s the only reason, and you’ll either have to adjust your communications around it or take a hit in credibility.
This time around, I put in my price match request last Tuesday. It took two days to get a confirmation, which came from a confused customer support agent. The message did not make it clear whether my book was now price-matched or not. It turned out it was reduced in price in the US but not elsewhere.
My BookBub deal went across multiple geographies, so I replied and asked Amazon to adjust the price in those as well. No response. Over the next few days, I followed up six times. The closer the promotion came, the more worried I got. Should I appeal to their good nature or yell at them? Why did I have to beg for them to reduce my own book’s price? Nothing changed.
With just over two days left to go, I finally found a chat option, where I could explain the situation directly to someone. That person helped, but the Australian pricing still stayed off. I hit the chat one last time and, finally, prices were set across the board. Now, I’m waiting for the results.
After the promotion, I’ll do the whole stunt in reverse. Revert pricing on other platforms, ask Amazon to match the price back to its original number, and hope for the best.
This system is obviously and utterly broken. Amazon should not have the power to tell any author how much they can sell their creations for at which time. But they do. And here I am. Choosing to play.
Often, the only way to change a broken system is to refuse to participate. Sometimes, a system can be changed from within, but only by its key players. But for you, the lone warrior on a mission, fighting against the current in a broken system is usually the only way to succeed in this lifetime. It’s a consequence of being in the right arena, and, as long as you’re keeping score, it’ll take you a while to achieve the luxury of opting out or building something better.
Don’t let the gatekeepers spoil the fun. Keep knocking on doors, and show them you’re here to stay.
