When you get this email from Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), you’re thinking, “Excellent! Amazon is going to discount my book for a whole month and advertise it for me. I get those Kindle Daily Deal emails every day — listing today’s special $1.99 deals. This will be a big deal. I’m so happy!”

“Congratulations! We selected the following title(s) for a Kindle Deal on Amazon.ca. Amazon will handle the price updates during this period. Lethal Voyage: A Mike Stoneman Thriller will be discounted to CDN$ 1.99 in a Kindle Monthly Deal which runs between Nov-1-2022 – Nov-30-2022.”

In this case, I was already scheduled to run a bunch of promos for Lethal Voyage during the second week of November at 99-cents. But, since the Kindle Deal was for $1.99, and the instructions were to not change the price of my book or run any Kindle Countdown Deals during the month-long Kindle Deal period, I was happy enough to cancel the promos, or run them at $1.99 instead of 99-cents. After all, with Amazon pushing out a Kindle Deal ad for me, that was way better than any promo on a bargain book site. It would be worth it. “Please do not update your title(s) price prior to the Kindle Deal date, including using Kindle Countdown Deals and/or Free Book Promotions. If changed, the title(s) will be removed from the Kindle Deal.”

So, I spent the month of November watching the daily Kindle Deal emails from Amazon, waiting to see Lethal Voyage featured in one of the daily ads. Except it never happened. Or maybe I missed it? After all, the deal was for Amazon Canada, not Amazon.com, so maybe I don’t get those ads. But my sales numbers never had a spike indicative of an ad going out to thousands of book buyers. So, I called up KDP and asked the question: “Can you tell me the date my daily deal ad ran?” The answer was — “The promotion was the discount to $1.99. There was no ad.”

What the F*%K? The “Kindle Deal” was only that amazon would drop the price of the book to $1.99 for the month? I could have done that myself, without any help, and without any restrictions. I could have run my 99-cent deals as scheduled, then bumped the price back up to $4.99. I could have then dropped the price back to $1.99 for Christmas — but now I can’t do that because there is a block on my book price for 30 days after the “Deal” period.

I was floored by the information. The “Kindle Deal” does NOT mean that amazon is going to advertise my book. It does NOT mean that there will be any emails pushed out to potential readers. It only means that they “selected” my book to have a price reduction. Big freaking deal.

So, the next time I get an email from KDP wishing me “Congratulations” on being selected for a Kindle Deal, I’m going to tell them, “No, thanks.” I suggest you do the same. Run your own discounts. If KDP isn’t going to advertise your book, then their “Deal” isn’t worth the cost of an email.