Kindle Daily Deal Gets It Done

This will come as no surprise, but the Kindle Daily Deal can make bestsellers out of pretty much anything. Here's a quick look at the last six titles in the program, with the rank at midnight just after their 24-hour promotion ended:

date	booktitle	publisher	author	ranking	price
10/1/11	Breakfast of Champions	RosettaBooks	Kurt Vonnegut	1	0.99
10/2/11	Mercury Falls	AmazonEncore	Robert Kroese	1	0.99
10/3/11	The Hangman's Daughter	AmazonCrossing	Oliver Pötzsch	1	0.99
10/4/11	The Justice Game	Tyndale House Publishers	Randy Singer	4	1.99
10/5/11	Winter Sea	Sourcebooks Landmark	Susanna Kearsley	3	1.99
10/6/11	Today We Are Rich	Tyndale House Publishers	Tim Sanders	4	1.99

There are a mix of recent releases, old releases, former bestsellers and 'never-weres' on this short list. What they all have in common is they were top-five titles just after their promotion, which reduces the price to either $.99 or $1.99. Let's look at the before and after impact on a few of these titles:

Winter Sea

This book was a bestseller in June, falling off the list in early July. It was the Kindle Daily Deal on Tuesday, as a result of which it jumped back up to #3 and is still selling (rank 15 on mid-day Thursday) at the original price of $7.69. Note that ranking reflects the previous days' activity since they are captured shortly after midnight each day.

date	ranking	price
7/1/2011	87	7.69
7/2/2011	87	7.69
7/3/2011	90	7.69
7/4/2011	90	7.69
7/5/2011	97	7.69
7/6/2011	97	7.69
10/5/2011	3	1.99
10/6/2011	10	7.69

Mercury Falls

This is an Amazon book on sale for about a year with no recent evidence of being a bestseller until 10/1 when it was a KDD title. It has remained on the top of the Kindle bestseller list for 4 days since the promotion and is still ranked 33 on mid-day Thursday.

date	ranking	price
10/2/2011	1	0.99
10/3/2011	4	2.99
10/4/2011	10	2.99
10/5/2011	18	2.99
10/6/2011	24	2.99

So the real value, as always, is in how well the books sell after they are off-promotion and back to their prior price, just due to the increased visibility they enjoy from their one-day bump.  So far, it looks like a strong winner.

Dan Lubart can be reached at dan@iobyte.com.
You can follow him on Twitter at @ebook_mktview