It looks like you can only run one Countdown Deal per 90-day enrollment period in KDP Select.

I didn’t see any information about this on KDP’s Adding a Kindle Countdown Deal page or the Kindle Countdown Deals FAQ’s.

With a free promotion, you can schedule up to 5 separate days, or run them all at once. So naturally you would expect the Countdown Deals to run in similar fashion.

When you go to schedule the promotion at KDP, it does say, “You can schedule one Kindle Countdown Deal in each available marketplace during your current KDP Select term.”

Maybe they should also mention this in their FAQ’s. This one line could easily be overlooked.

Imagine if you had scheduled a one-hour promo to test it out, only to discover that you can’t use it again until the 90-day period renews. Ouch!

It seems strange that with a free promo, you can schedule up to five separate days or string them all together, but with a Countdown Deal you can’t run two or more separate promos.

Why is it okay to run a week-long promo, but not run two separate one-day promos?

There is something else that’s strange if you have a $2.99 e-book: Unless your file size is very large, if you selected the option to automatically set the UK price, your UK price will be less than 1.93 pounds. This means you can run a Countdown Deal in the US, but not in the UK (unless you first raise the price in the UK, but then you have to wait 30 days to run the promo). If your list price is 1.92 pounds, you may find this agonizing.

I love this new tool, but I wasn’t thrilled about these couple of details.

Love books? Check out Read Tuesday, a Black Friday event just for books (all authors can sign up for free) on Tuesday, December 10: website, Facebook page, Twitter

Chris McMullen, author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Volume 1 (formatting/publishing) and Volume 2 (packaging/marketing), Facebook page, Twitter

Volumes 1 and 2 will be on sale on December 9 thru 11 as part of Read Tuesday on December 10. These books haven’t been on sale all year, so this is a rare opportunity. The Kindle edition of Vol. 1 will be $1.99 (60% off from $4.99) in the US and 1.99 pounds (37% off from 3.14 pounds) in the UK, while Vol. 2 will be $0.99 (80% off from $4.99) in the US and 0.99 pounds (70% off from 3.25 pounds) in the UK. The paperbacks will also be 40% off ($5.99 instead of $9.99) at CreateSpace:

• A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 1
• Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00AA5CJ7C. CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/4049314
• A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers, Vol. 2
• Kindle: http://amzn.com/B00CSDUP66. CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/4233155