How to Market and Sell an E-book on Kindle - 12 Steps For Beginners

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

10 Good Books About Divorce on Amazon.com's Bestseller's List

Hi Everyone!

I see I have some pageviews already! Yeah! Thank you for reading. It is encouraging to know that I don't always just talk to myself - which, by the way, is what I do best. And guess what? Not only do I talk to myself, now I have started to answer myself! Do you think it's my age?? Like, am I friggin' old? Is that why? I answer myself! As if I am a child talking to my wise, old mother!!

Maybe I should not have shared that....

So anyways. I just finished a compilation of DIVORCE BOOKS for Divorce Saloon. A list of 10.  I found them on Amazon, on the bestsellers list. If you are looking for good divorce books, maybe you can check them out. Or check out one of mine! Click on one in the right column and go straight to kindle!

Or just link to the list on Divorce Saloon is here.

Editing "How to Divorce Part 3"

It is a new day. I am in the middle of making breakfast. Today I am having a porridge made with peanut powder. So I guess it is a peanut porridge. I never made it before. It is an experiment. We shall see how it turns out. You should know that I am a godawful cook and quite dangerous in the kitchen. If you have time, check out my YouTube channel about cooking. I stopped updating it for a while but one day I will go back to it.

So today, on my agenda after breakfast, I am editing How to Divorce Part 3. I think this is my favorite one in the series. It is a trilogy of 3 books on "how to divorce" and it was supposed to be the "light" one but I think I like it the best. I talk about things like how to have a zen divorce, how to "consciously uncouple" and how to throw a divorce party. There is one chapter which will probably get me into trouble. It is called How To Hide Money From Your Spouse Before A Divorce.

I am not 100 percent sure that that chapter is appropriate but...

After that, I have to do some work on the memoir about my first 3 months in Paris. It's called PARIS: My first 3 Months. And you thought I only write divorce books. Nah. I write about just about everything possible to write about, my friend. Well, almost everything.

After that, I have another trilogy of books in my head - divorce books -  plus there is the book about some of my recipes when I was trying to cook that I think could be fun.

It is a lot of writing, isn't it? What is up with all this writing? I don't know. I just suddenly decided that I want to write a whole bunch of books. Maybe 100. Yes, I said 100. It is a personal experiment. And a lot of them are already written since I have all these blogs going back to the 1990s. I mean, books like The Law School Rules, I am going to do a revised version of that. So I am already well on the way to 100. Don't worry. Something just crystalized in my mind that it is time to pull these projects out and set them into books for folks who would like to read them.

But it is so much work! Don't let anybody tell you that writing is easy. It is painfully difficult. But in th end, when I see the books, it gives me a sense of joy and satisfaction.

So later, dolls. Am heading to my desk to edit How to Divorce Part 3. It will be on Amazon Kindle Store for 99 cents tomorrow in e-book format. And also paperback. Do you think it will be an amazon bestseller?

Divorce, Booklyn, Paris

I have half a day left and I haven't started writing as yet. I have two books in the pipeline to be completed within the next week at the latest. They are 1) How to Divorce Part 3 and Paris: My First 3 Months.

It is funny how I found the latter. I write a lot of things and blogs and books and then I forget all about them as I said in the previous post. Just this morning I found a book I wrote and published on lulu.com called A summer in Brooklyn a Summer in Paris. I wrote this in 2004 and published it in 2008. On lulu.com. I don't think anybody ever ordered a copy cause I never received any royalties from lulu but as I said in the previous post you can read an excerpt of it on Google books here. 

It is incrediblde how this type of stuff happens because very typically, when I arrived in Paris nearly 5 years ago - for the fourth time in my life (so I have been to Paris 4 times) - I started a blog called When Jeannie Went to Paris. I proceeded to make the blog private. And a year into it, I stopped blogging and forgot all about the blog. Couldn't even remember which email and password I used. Then I suddenly remember and boom! I got into the blog this week and I was like, "wow!" This is a book! So I have been working on it a little, editing it, and I hope to have it by next week on Amazon Kindle and in the bookstore too.

A Summer In Brooklyn, a Summer in Paris

Look what I found! See, I told you that I don't only write divorce books. I can't believe how quickly I forgot that I had written this book! I had forgotten all about this little book I wrote in 2004 and I stumbled upon it today when I googled myself. Amazing. And it is so timely now with the 2016 elections where all the candidates, every other word out of the mouths is "Paris" because of the terrorism, etc.

I am a huge Hillary fan and her headquarters are in Brooklyn, in my old backyard. So this is really fun to find. I have no idea about lulu.com at this point as I have never received any royalties from them in all these years. So I don't think this book is selling like hot cakes exactly. But it is out there. And when I read this excerpt on google books, it gave me a tickle.

By the way, the photo is mine. I took it on my old camera. It is my old church. The little courtyard leading from the rectory to the auditorium. Once upon a time, I was the receptionist here. It was my part time job when I was in college.

How to Divorce Part 1,2 & 3

I am putting the finishing touches on part 3 of the Three part series How to Divorce. This one has 12 Chapters and one of them is how to win your divorce in a court of "public opinion." This book is really timely because of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's divorce, which has been playing out in social media and traditional media alike. They were on the cusp of a domestic violence case but on the 11th hour, the parties issued a joint statement today, indicating that they have settled their divorce action.

As I point out in book 3, it is always better to reach a compromise with these things and not have your divorce case play out in the public glare. If you are interested in reading the books, the first two are available on Amazon. Book 3 will be available after August 23, 2016.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Divorce-Part-Marion-Lewis-ebook/dp/B01KFF4W80/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1471384422&sr=8-5&keywords=%22how+to+divorce%22

https://www.amazon.com/How-Divorce-Part-Marion-Lewis-ebook/dp/B01K5SD6IY/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1471384422&sr=8-9&keywords=%22how+to+divorce%22

See below for a quote from the guardian about the statement:

Johnny Depp and Amber Heard have settled their divorce and her domestic abuse case against the Pirates of the Caribbean star, resolving one of Hollywood’s ugliest break-ups on the eve of a court hearing which threatened to expose details of their tumultuous relationship to public glare.
Heard filed legal documents on Tuesday to the superior court of Los Angeles withdrawing her request for a domestic violence restraining order in a deal which included a reported $7m divorce settlement.

                   

Johnny Depp v Amber Heard: abuse accusations split Hollywood and public

The former couple’s ongoing divorce and restraining order proceedings have scandalized Hollywood, splitting celebrities and fans into warring factions

Read more

Both actors issued a joint statement drawing a line under a saga which has appalled, titillated and divided the film industry and fans.
“Our relationship was intensely passionate and at times volatile, but always bound by love,” said the statement. “There was never an intent of physical or emotional harm. Neither party has made false accusations for financial gains.”
The statement said Heard would donate proceeds from the divorce to charity, without specifying how much, and struck a tone of reconciliation. “Amber wishes the best for Johnny in the future.”