Publishing a book on Kindle Amazon isn’t enough to generate sales; an author must also take proactive steps to increase their sales. In this article, you will learn seven essential tips to increase your e-Book sale potential on Amazon.
When an author drafts a book, they at first scribe it because of the love of writing. They are passionate about their characters and their riveting plot. Driven to author a bestselling novel, they pound away at their keyboards day and night to create their masterpiece. After pouring their heart and soul into their manuscript, they either create or hire someone to design the cover, and they publish it on Amazon dreaming of raking in millions of dollars. Their ultimate goal is for their book to sell.
Author’s dream of being a bestselling author, but unfortunately, that goal only occurs for less than two percent of all authors who published. The reality for authors sets in after they release their e-Book and sales stifle. There must be a reason, right? Of course, there is. Consider the following factors:
- The book’s interior contents, and layout,
- The cover,
- The category or categories appended to the book on Amazon,
- The keywords,
- The author’s branding,
- The language used, and
- The marketing strategies applied to receive rankings and reviews.
Each factor plays a critical role in increasing sales for an e-Book. When aligned, e-Books fly off the shelves on Amazon. When one or more of the ingredients are missing, authors are most likely only to sell one hundred books. That isn’t a high return on an author’s heart and soul of their writing investment. So, now what? To sell more e-Books on Amazon, let’s dive into the critical factors.
1. The Book’s Interior, Contents, and Layout
When it comes to a book’s interior, readers are spoiled, and in a good way. They expect for the book to be free of spelling and grammar mistakes, for the layout to meet industry standards, and for the contents to be what they are interested in reading or to learn. Therefore, if you want to sell more e-Books on Amazon, invest the time to have your book professionally edited and professionally interior designed. Ebookifi, provides an excellent service in eBook conversion & formatting, and the finished layout is reader-friendly with links, notes, embedded fonts, and a clickable Table of Contents. More importantly, Kindle is known for rejecting e-Books that were formatted using a free online program. With Ebookifi, an author can be assured that the formatting meets industry standards due to the strict quality assessment they provide. Additionally, Ebookifi specialists perform a capability check across multiple platforms.
Also, keep in mind that when you publish your e-Book on Amazon, a reader can look inside of your book. That is their first impression of your book’s interior, and if it is a mess, they don’t buy your book. You only have that one shot at making the first impression.
2. The Cover
The saying, “You can’t judge a book by its cover,” doesn’t apply for e-Books, especially those listed on Amazon. With millions of e-Books available on Amazon, your book’s cover must be attention-grabbing to stand out. Authors often make the mistake of using Amazon’s pre-loaded templates for their book’s cover. When you do that, your cover looks like most of the others for sale and doesn’t stand out. To sell more books on Amazon, invest in a graphic designer to create the cover, and take pride in the fact that you are setting your book up for a favorable first impression. The mistakes author’s make in their cover designs include:
- The cover doesn’t represent the book,
- Too much writing on the cover,
- Blurred images or poor-quality images,
- Doesn’t represent the genre, and
- Too many different fonts used.
3. Keywords and Categories on Amazon
There are several things you need to know when adding your e-Book to Kindle Amazon; you must choose your keywords and your categories. Both of these have a direct impact on Amazon rankings and potential sales. If you use the wrong keywords or list your book in an inadequate category, you lose your potential in rankings. That is why it is essential to do both a keyword search and category search before selecting yours.
The first consideration in choosing a category is to research the categories available on Amazon. Search for books in your genre and style and identify the top-selling books. Scroll below and investigate what categories those books are listed, how many other books are in that category, and the ranking. Consider, if a book has 360,096 books, and a book is rated at #468 in the category, who wants to compete with that? Do you know how many books you would have to sell to get close? You must sell at least two hundred within a twenty-four-hour period to become close. So, move on. Look for another book down the list until you find one where there isn’t that much competition.
When you find another book, with a different category with lower rankings, that is the one you should list your book in Amazon. Look at the listing below. For that category, there are only 34,620 books. This one is better, and you would only have to sell less than twenty books to get into the top.
4. Keyword Search Optimization
To search for keywords that best fit your book and genre, use the free keyword search tool that Amazon provides which is extremely easy to use. Primarily you can search for your book’s topic, and it provides the keywords most used. Look at the following example for a topic on reincarnation.
Once the topic is clicked on the red search tab, the following results immediately surfaced.
The results provided the most used keywords; therefore, when the author lists the book title, the top seven should be used.
5. Author Branding
The first step to branding yourself as an author is to start building your author platform from the moment you decide to publish a book. There are two types of platforms necessary in your branding – your author website and your Amazon Author Central Page. Remember, you are selling yourself as a brand and not the book. Yes, this takes time, but it’s worth it. Think of authors like J. K. Rowling, James Patterson, and Margarette Atwood, who no matter what novel they publish, they sell immediately. The reason for this is apparent – each author is branded as an author with an established fanbase through e-mail subscriptions. That means any author must follow suit.
For you to develop your branding platform, it is necessary to have an author website. Your website will be your all in one go-to for your fans, and your future sells. It is best to have it completed at least six months before launching your book.
Your website should include:
- A Landing Page – identifies you as an author.
- About the Author Page – a bio that you should always have ready.
- Contact Form or Contact – so people can ask you questions.
- A Page Dedicated to Each Book – provides an effortless way to purchase your book.
- Upcoming Releases – Provides your readers with news of your upcoming releases.
- Opt-in Mailing List – Keep in contact with your readers and start an email list. As you write and publish more books, you will have an automatic email list to use to promote it.
6. Multiple Languages for Your Book
To increase your e-Book sales, consider having it translated into multiple languages. Although English is a universal language, not everyone likes to read books unless they are in their native language. Fortunately, Ebookifi also provides an excellent translation for your e-Book in other languages, including Arabic, French, Chinese, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
7. Marketing Strategies
When it comes to increasing your e-Book sales on Amazon, you must market your book. It isn’t enough to only publish it because that is only half of what an author must do to increase sells. You must be proactive and take advantage of marketing strategies beyond social media. What? That is correct, if an author only markets on social media, increased sells will not result. An excellent marketing strategy includes:
- Price your e-Book appropriately. Most e-Books retail for less than $9.99. However, most authors make the mistake and price their e-Book as if it were a paperback or hardcover. Face it, readers like bargains and overpriced e-Books will not sell. To increase your e-Book sales on Amazon, price your book lower than $4.99 to make it competitive. And, also consider putting it on sale for .99 because readers love a bargain.
- Marketing tools such as sell sheets, EPK packages, book trailers, and more that are tailored to your customer’s interests. It is essential that you understand your target audience and what type of advertisements that attract them.
- Book giveaways. Readers love free books. Although this strategy baffles authors, book giveaways increase your chances of obtaining reviews and readers, if they love your book, tell other readers about it. Free downloads also increase your rankings on Amazon.
- Issue a Press Release. Press releases bring attention to your e-Book and are a great way to develop backlinks to your book. If your e-Book sales dropped, issue the press release and announce a book giveaway or a drop in the price.
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