By Jordan Ring
Writing your book was hard enough, now you have to market it? Oh man…
Never fear, here are 10 easy strategies to sell more copies of your book.
1. Create an author website
Make sure you have an author website. It’s an absolute necessity if you want to establish an author platform that you can ride as you continue to publish books.
Having your own website gives people a place to interact with you, as well as a place for you to blog about your subject matter. This works even if you write fiction, as people still need a place to find you.
This website is a great tutorial on getting an author website set up.
2. Choose your book’s categories
It’s important to take the time to choose appropriate categories for your book. This should not be an afterthought when you upload to Amazon.
When you are browsing Amazon to decide on your categories, consider which ones fit your book the best, but also have low competition. You can figure out the competition of a category by selecting the #1 book in a given category and checking its kindle book ranking. If it’s over 10,000 the category is beatable with a good launch push.
Focus on categories early for your book as a way to help it take off come launch day.
3. Create a killer title
Your title is what makes people click on your book’s page on Amazon. If your title is interesting and captivating it can help you to sell books.
Try to format the main part of the title with 3-4 words, and the subtitle with 12-15 words. This way the title can be the hook and the draw that captures potential readers’ interest, and the subtitle can be packed with good keywords that will help the book rise Amazon’s rankings.
Spend a significant amount of time figuring out a solid title for your book. This is one of the best things you can do for your book marketing-wise.
4. Write a book description that sells
The book description is equally as important as the book’s title and cover. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a book’s page with a description that’s only a short block of text that doesn’t sell the book.
This is the type of book description you want to shoot for. It’s in depth about the book, and it also shows you why you should buy.
Learn to write good sales copy and your author career will benefit immensely from it.
5. Utilize book promotion services
While you shouldn’t rely solely on book promotion services for your marketing efforts, they can be incredibly useful for getting a boost on launch week. Use them sparingly, and be sure to track stats when you do.
Here are the promotion services that I recommend.
- Buck Books: Buck books is one of the top book promotion services to utilize. Make sure that you always book them for launch day.
- Robin Reads: No guarantee on submission, but worth it if you can book them.
- BK Knights: Cheap and worth it to add to your launch day promos.
- Book Gorilla: Good service that actually provides a bang for their buck.
- Honorable mentions to consider Books Butterfly and a new site called Book Runes.
6. Go for KDP Select
As a new author you should make sure to go with KDP select. This is something you have to specifically select when you upload your book.
When you choose KDP Select your book is exclusive to Amazon and it cannot be put anywhere else.
But the benefits of going with Select outweigh any downsides. Your book is put into the Kindle Unlimited program which pays you for pages read AND you get to utilize either 5 KDP Free days or 7 Kindle Countdown days.
These promotional tools alone would be worth it, but the Kindle Unlimited program has a hidden benefit: Kindle ranking.
Sure, when your book is in KDP select it might mean that people will borrow your book who would have otherwise bought it, but this is OK. When readers download your book from the Kindle Unlimited program it counts toward your Kindle ranking, which is of paramount importance when launching a book.
Since ranking is everything for your book during launch week and beyond, make sure to go with KDP select to maximize the reach of your book, getting it into the hands of as many potential readers as possible.
7. Focus on getting book reviews
If your book launches with 0 book reviews do you think it’s going to sell? The answer is that it won’t. Only a very few people are going to buy a book that has 0 social proof.
Early on, be sure to focus on getting your book into the hands of potential reviewers in order to garner some initial momentum and help the book sell.
This step needn’t be taken too far, as you can shoot for about 10 reviews. Getting any more than that takes a lot time and effort to get, time better spent doing other marketing items.
8. Join these two groups on Facebook
The following groups are two in a million. Join each of them and stay up to date with changes in the Kindle marketplace.
You can also post questions, share book cover options, ask for feedback on titles, etc. I have found these groups invaluable in my author journey, and I strongly suggest joining as soon as you can.
Here are those groups:
9. Post book to Reddit groups when it’s on sale or free
Reddit is a highly underutilized place to share your book promo. I got over 150 people to sign up for an instafreebie book giveaway I did recently (in just one day), just by sharing to a few subreddits. And take note, that’s 150 new email subscribers, in addition to 150 new people reading my book.
Search reddit for the appropriate places to post, but make sure to read the posting rules for each group. Reddit is notoriously harsh on spammers, so do be careful when posting.
10. Put a link to your book in your email signature and/or away message
This is a nice bonus tip, but it’s an easy thing you can do right now to put your book in a new place. You aren’t going to get a ton of new sales, but who knows? Maybe someone you email will take notice and ask about the book.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, try to be as creative as possible when designing a marketing plan for your book. Not everything you do will work, as things are constantly changing. Do what you can to be adaptable and keep on working at it.
You will do great as long as you never quit.
Thanks for reading.
Jordan Ring is the marketing and launch guru with Archangel Ink Publishing Services. You can follow him on his blog, and for help with your own book launch you can get his free book here: Book Launch Gladiator: The Four Phase Approach to Kindle Book Marketing in 2018.
