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Marketing Your Book and Increasing Your Ranking and Sales

In the process of getting to this point, we’ve already covered a lot of topics that should help your book to rank. You’re in Kindle Select, you chose your niche well, you have a great cover and description with some keyphrases in it… so far so good. At the same time, using strict adherence to the formatting guide above will also help.

Now, what else can you do to get some exposure?

While no one knows the exact ‘algorithm’ that Amazon uses to define the position of its books, there are a few things that we know factor in. These are:

  • Reviews
  • Ratings
  • Downloads

So if you have a great description and a good price, the next strategy needs to be getting as many downloads and positive reviews as you possibly can. Selling your books for a while using a low pricing is a very good way to do this, as is making sure that your books are very well written and that they’ll get good reviews. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers to review your book if they enjoyed it! Just as on an app, there’s nothing to prevent you from including a little reminder for your readers and telling them how much it would help you out if they’d consider leaving some feedback.

Marketing Your Book and Increasing Your Ranking and Sales

If you already have a platform such as a blog or a mailing list, then this is an excellent place to promote your book and to ask people to leave positive reviews. You can also use social media etc. to promote special offers and to drive as many downloads as possible. Don’t be afraid to eat into your own profits in the short term – it will help a great deal in the long term. Note as well that people are moved to write nicer reviews when they paid less for the book!

Another tip is to create an ‘author page’ on Amazon Central (https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0) which will help to give your books more credibility.

You can also use other traditional forms of marketing: that means using Google AdWords for instance or Facebook ads. These might be loss leaders to begin with – meaning that you’ll spend more money on advertising than you will earn – but in the long run it can help your book get more attention and more downloads which will give it the momentum you need to get into the top 20.

Likewise, you can also get your book written about in magazines and on blogs (as mentioned earlier) and especially if you’re willing to offer a hefty discount for a short time. Or how about creating a video advert for YouTube? This worked very well for Tim Ferriss and his Four Hour Chef book.

Summary

There you have it – that’s pretty much everything you need to know to start succeeding on Kindle.

To summarize what we’ve discussed in the series of posts:

  • Create a book in the right niche – choose a small niche but one with broad enough appeal
  • Pick a niche that allows you to easily use your existing contacts to promote it
  • Make sure your book is well written and edited and that it offers something genuinely new for your audience
  • Outsource the creation of your book if necessary
  • Think of ways to reuse content and to get maximum profit for your investment
  • Format your book using the strict guidelines provided by Amazon
  • Create a great cover, description etc. Subtly use key phrases.
  • Consider the correct pricing and whether you should enrol into Kindle Select
  • Run promotions to maximize downloads, ratings and momentum
  • Promote your book externally through social media, YouTube, your blog, other sites etc.
  • Rinse and repeat!

This is an incredibly exciting and rewarding way to make money online and with the right approach and a well written book it can also be incredibly profitable and facilitate true passive income.

Everyone’s got a book in them… it’s time to get yours out!

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