Do you read books digitally yet? Do you have a smartphone or a tablet? If so then you need to know about the Kindle Countdown!

Before you say “but I don’t have a Kindle!” don’t worry, neither do I.  I download books from Amazon.com to the Kindle App, which is free. It means I can read my books on any of my devices, from my Smartphone to my tablet (I use an iPad but it works on any tablet) to my laptop.

Initially I wasn’t into it, preferring to have the tangible experience of holding a physical book. But I also used to like playing music on C.Ds. Now all my music is digital, either coming to me via iTunes or Pandora.

I didn’t get on board with reading digital books until I started getting frustrated by having to waste space and weight on physical books while traveling. No one travel guide has everything you want, so I would end up with 2 or 3 travel books as well as however many novels I wanted to read while I was away. It was ridiculous.

So that’s how I got my first digital books. I got the Kindle App on my iPad (which automatically went to all of my devices) and started reading them there while traveling. After a while it just became the easiest way to read books.

My library connected with a service called Overdrive who then delivered library books to the Kindle App for me to read – it was (and is) fantastic!

When I wrote my book Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy my initial plan was for it to only be available as a digital book because I wanted everyone to have help at their fingertips while traveling in Italy. But Amazon has print-on-demand, so it made sense to offer it as a paperback as well.

Kindle Countdown Deals

As I started reading books on the Kindle App Amazon started sending me emails with other books I might like, at a discount.

The Amazon algorithm looks at the books you have liked and give 5 stars to and then finds books that other people have also bought when buying the books you enjoy. All good so far – but it gets better! Authors can’t really discount their hardcopy books too much because of the costs involved in manufacturing them. Digital books have no manufacturing costs, only a small downloading fee for the author, and as such can be discounted.

Amazon allows authors who meet certain criteria to do a Kindle Countdown every so often. This happens over the course of 5 days. The book will start as low as 99 cents or $1.99 and then go up in price by $1 each day of the countdown, before going back to the regular sales price.

When you buy books through Amazon on the Kindle App the algorithm will email you each week with Kindle Countdown book deals for books you would like. It’s fantastic! They know my favorite authors, so when there is a book at 99 cents or $3.99 or wherever it is in the sequence, I get an email and can download it with one click. It means that I can read a book for $1.99 or whatever the price is that day instead of paying $19.95 for the paperback.

This week my book Glam Italia! How To Travel Italy is on the Kindle Countdown.

Starting today, Monday October 22nd, the digital edition of my book is only $1.99. Tomorrow it will be $2.99. Each day this week it goes up in price by $1 and then on Saturday goes back to its normal price of $9.95.

This is the perfect time to download the book! If you have friends or family members interested in doing a trip to Italy at some point, you can even gift them a copy. All they have to do is download the Kindle App and the book will appear there under the All Books tab. It’s so easy!

Take advantage of the Kindle Countdown Pricing HERE

Amazon also offers a subscription plan for a service called Kindle Unlimited. With Unlimited you pay a monthly fee of (I think!) $9.95 and then can download as many books as you want each month for free. You can see details on it here:Kindle Unlimited Membership Plans

Happy reading!

xo