JULY 15-16, 2019: AMAZON PRIME DAY

Every July, Amazon has a special day of deals just for Prime members.

This year (2019), the event will actually span two days: Monday, July 15, to Tuesday, July 16.

It’s like a Black Friday in the summer just for Amazon Prime customers.

The event attracts much attention.

There are millions of customers who have Amazon Prime.

If you have that membership, naturally you want to make the most of it.

And thus you are enticed to check out Amazon on Prime Day, to see if there might be a good deal on something that you’d like to buy.

Occasionally, Prime Day, Black Friday, or even Cyber Monday can be very big even for Amazon.

Not only does Amazon often achieve record sales of some sort (like Kindle devices), but sometimes there is so much traffic early on that customers have to wait patiently for little delays relating to internet usage. Amazon surely works hard to resolve and prevent such issues, since these are huge sales days for Amazon. But even Amazon can occasionally be surprised by a huge surge in customer activity.

Many customers associate Amazon with books and ebooks, but Amazon has a huge inventory of all kinds of products.

More customers are regularly shopping on Amazon for birthday presents, holiday gifts, household items (with Subscribe & Save benefits), groceries (if you live in a metropolitan area where Amazon Fresh is available), and much more. You can even buy services from Amazon, like getting a ceiling fan installed.

It reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein’s hard-to-find short story, “We Also Walk Dogs” (one of my favorite stories).

Amazon’s big sale days, such as Amazon Prime Day, encourage more customers to explore Amazon’s other products (that is, way beyond just books).

Though you can usually find some books on sale, too.

Unfortunately, Amazon really hasn’t tapped into its KDP author base on the big holidays.

Even if an author’s KDP published print books are periodically on sale at Amazon (with Amazon paying the full royalty even when it’s on sale), they have seldom been on sale on the big sale days.

Kindle authors can run a Countdown Deal (if in KDP Select) or a temporary price reduction (though in this case it isn’t obvious that the book is on sale), but it may actually be better to schedule the promotional price at another time. Many customers are too busy chasing the main deals of the day. At another time, your book might be more likely to get noticed, or your own marketing might be more effective.

I keep waiting. One of these years, Amazon will announce to KDP authors when Prime Day is coming, along with plans to include some KDP books, encouraging KDP authors to help spread the word. Or at least include more of the KDP paperbacks on sale. I can list dozens of amazing ways that Amazon has improved KDP over the past ten years, including things many people said would never happen (like the ability to make a preorder, advertise KDP books, or add x-ray features to Kindle ebooks). So maybe including KDP authors with Prime Day will be one of those things someday. With over a million authors, there sure is potential to help market millions of books along with the big day.

Well, a couple of times over the years, CreateSpace or KDP has preordered one (or more) of my books for Amazon Prime Day. Like Amazon does for the holidays, stocking up on its better selling books helps Amazon meet its logistical challenges. I appreciate that the preorders help keep better selling books available during peak sales days. That’s a great start.

In the meantime, as a Prime customer, I will check out the event and see if any of the deals interest me this year.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides