[Spoiler – changing any content or details of your ebook may inadvertently result in a change of price in foreign marketplaces, locking out your account for 30 days from running a KDP deal in those marketplaces.]

            Independent authors face many obstacles when marketing their books. One of the most-used promotional options we have is a KDP countdown deal. Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing) allows us to run a discount off the regular sale price of an ebook for up to one week. The deal can be free, discounted to a fixed price for the entire period, or it can be a progressive discount, where the lowest price is at the beginning and the price slowly crawls back toward the normal price, incentivizing quick purchases. (Hence, the term “countdown” deal.)

            But there are restrictions. Your book must be enrolled in the KDP Direct program, meaning that your ebook is exclusively marketing on Amazon. The KDP Direct enrollment locks your book in for 90 days. You can run a Countdown deal only one time during every 90-day marking period. Also, you cannot run a discount if you have changed the regular price within 30 days before, or 14 days after, the countdown deal. (This prevents an author from jacking up the price, then immediately running a “discount” deal giving potential buyers the false impression that the discount price is a deal.) There are other restrictions that you can find HERE.

            Recently, I attempted to schedule a KDP countdown deal for both the US and the UK. (You have to schedule them separately.) I waited until the next 90-day marking period started and scheduled the US countdown deal. But, when I attempted to schedule my UK deal, I was restricted. The website informed me that I could not schedule a deal within 30 days of a price change. But I did not change my price! I had not changed the regular price of this book since it launched in early 2023. What the F*^% (heck)? I spent 45 minutes on a live chat with a KDP customer service agent, who then assured me they were “working on it” and would send me an email when the problem had been cleared.

            But what caused the problem?

            I now know – and you should be forewarned. A week before I scheduled my promo, I updated the backmatter in my ebooks – updating the list of “other books by Kevin G. Chapman” list, updating the author notes, and updating references to the upcoming “next book.” Nothing particularly significant, but helpful to get readers to click on one of my other books when they finished reading the promo novel. As you may remember from setting up your KDP ebooks, after uploading a new manuscript, you are taken to a Pricing page, where you input the price for your book in USD. The page then automatically populates the corresponding price in all the other marketplaces around the globe, including the UK, where the price of the book is expressed in GBP (pounds sterling). Easy, right?

            So, what’s the problem? You may have guessed. When I updated the backmatter, on the pricing page, the price in US dollars did not change. But, because of changes in the international exchange rates on any given day, the price in the other currencies – including GBP – changes slightly. My novel’s GBP price changed by a few pennies (pence). Ugh. There you have a “price change” in the UK. As a result of the price change, my UK account was locked for 30 days from running a countdown deal.

            Since I was actually running a double-feature promo, with two books discounted to 99-cents during the same week, with joint advertising for both books – and since I had already booked and paid for social media publicity in the UK during the promo – I was in a pickle. I had to run my deal during that week – or push the whole promo back by a month, which would make my ad copy featuring a beach scene and the tagline “your beach read is waiting” a bit out of step with a September promo. Ugh, indeed.

            So, as I write this post, waiting for the tech team at KDP to fix my problem, take this as a cautionary tale –if you plan to run promos in the UK (or in any marketplace outside your home market), DO NOT MAKE ANY REVISIONS TO YOUR BOOK WITHIN 30 DAYS OF THE DATE OF YOUR PLANNED COUNTDOWN DEAL! If you make a change of any kind, you may inadvertently change the price of your book in foreign jurisdictions that will lock you out from running the promo for 30 days. While the problem can theoretically be fixed (I hope!), it’s not worth the aggravation.

            Words to the wise.