12 TIPS FOR BEGINNERS WHO WANT TO MAKET THEIR E-BOOK ON KINDLE
I have been writing like an absolute nut job this weekend. I am still working on the book Infidelity. I have tentatively completed the cover as I said in the previous post, and then it occurred to me, heck, how are you gonna sell all these e-books Missy? How are you going to turn all these books into Amazon bestsellers? What the heck are you doing slaving away like this? For what? Who is going to read this stuff? Where are your readers Missy?
And so I stopped and I thought, "OMG." And so, I put the manuscript aside and did some research, and I just deflated like a balloon because selling e-books sounds like hard work! It is way harder than writing up all this stuff!! My god! And sheesh, I write a lot of stuff from divorce books, to books about food, society, law, language, you name it. I have a lot of topics, ideas and books. But it is not worth it if I am the only one reading. I must be out of my mind!
Well, if you are also writing up a storm, if you are a writer in the same boat, here is what I have learned so far about selling these e-books on Kindle or anywhere for that matter. Read with a grain of salt and see if there is anything on the list that you think will help you:
HERE ARE 12 TIPS THAT MIGHT HELP YOU
1. Participate in AMAZON KDP Select - always. Stand for Kindle Direct Publishing. Research it if you don't know what that is. Start here.
2. Blog about your book (yeah! I am doing that instinctively. At least I get one out of 12!)
3. It's all about SEO - on Amazon, Google & Facebook ads - and this needs the right keywords so you have to research keywords in your niche and when you do your marketing you have to incorporate them into your materials including your blog. As you know my niche is basically divorce books. But it is not all I write about. Still, I have to find the right keywords for that and god knows, I don't know where I am going to find time to do that along with everything else I am doing at the moment.
4. Apparently, you also have to join Ingram in addition to Amazon and Createspace (e-book distributor) and Bookhub. (I read that on Huffpost.)
5. Then, you have to get friends and family to review your book and give you lots of stars - if you can. My friends and family are just saturated with all my projects so I am not going to bother them but you should tap yours if you haven't reached saturation point.
6. Also, you have to constantly update your Author Central profile on Amazon. You are going to need a nice author photo which I don't seem to be able to upload because of the pixels, but...
7. Then, you need to price your book right some people say $0.99 and others say no less than $2.99 (who knows which is correct?).
8. You need to understand that e-books are not going to make you rich. If you sell 100 books, it is plenty. Do it for fun, not to make a lot of money.
9. Investigate alternatives to Amazon such as gumroads.com, woocommerce, shopify & paypal.
10. Help out other authors by offering to review their books in exchange for a review.
11. Look into this thing called e-junkie for self-publishers. (If you want to bypass amazon) and make friends with Paypal (I had a bad experience years back and I never looked back so I am not sure I could ever work with Paypal but you might be able to so go for it!)
12. Start an email marketing campaign so that you can connect directly with your readers who are in some cases your customers.
CONCLUSION
To tell you the god's honest truth, this is a lot for me to handle while I am trying to write 100 books. I don't see myself being able to do this without absolutely losing it once and for all. Am definitely gonna lose it, I think. But if you have the energy, focus and moxie and you are trying to market and sell your e-book online, these are some of the things I read you will have to do and it took what? 30 minutes of research? To get all these goodies. Bite in, darling!
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Read my new book about BULLYING which is available on kindle and in paperback
Hi Marion, I think that you underestimate the value of an Amazon giveaway or a Goodreads giveaway. I was very happy with the outcome of my Goodreads giveaway which garnered me a lot of interest. In addition, it is a good way to connect with other authors, to ask them questions, get feedback from people who love books. So please consider recommending Goodreads at the very least, because I don't think you will regret that! Thanks for the info on the SEO and getting beyond a single word. I have a book on SEO and it is sooooo confusing! I do get suspicious when companies want us to pay for services, etc. because the situation begins to move into the realm of exploiting authors, but on occasion a cheap promotion doesn't hurt. Anyway, good posting. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteCatharine, thanks for this comment and this is very useful. I will definitely consider doing a giveaway and I hope that readers will do the same. I am always looking for new ideas to try and to share.
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