Suffering Zero Book Sales On Amazon?
Suffering Zero Book Sales on Amazon?
Just published
You have just published your first book on Amazon and you are so excited that at last, you have achieved the goal of actually getting your book published. It’s a cause for celebration.
As time goes on you begin to discover that you are not making any sales. Yes, some family members and a friend or two have bought the book but nothing else has happened.
Zero sales
You are getting zero or very low sales. You’ve invested so much time and effort into creating your book but the sales are almost non-existent.
You start to feel disillusioned and disheartened. Your initial excitement at self-publishing turns into doubt – publishing on Amazon doesn’t work.
What so many writers don’t realise is that the adventure of self-publishing really starts when they get that first book published. To self-publish is simple, it’s fast and it’s easy.
But the creation of the book and self-publishing it on Amazon are just a small part of the publishing process.
Profitable niche
The first question I would ask is if you did your market research before you even started to write a book. To be successful as a self-published author on Amazon you need to ensure that you are operating in a profitable niche.
Early in the piece, you should start building an audience for your book. Put a system in place to build an email list.
Once you know that your book is potentially profitable then you must prepare it for publication paying attention to its professionalism – the editing, proofreading, cover design and formatting.
After the book has been formatted the book’s listing on KDP needs optimisation. Have you spent time choosing an appropriate title, figuring out the best keywords, come up with multiple categories, and written a description that’s going to help sell your book, and decided on a pricing strategy?
Book launch strategy
Before you launch your book devise a book launch campaign.
In preparation for the launch choose a date for launching the book. Set up an Author Page on Amazon Author Central, put a launch team in place to help with getting reviews, research promotional sites where you can promote your book, decide on an opening low price for the book, and plan your promotional days on Kindle Direct Publishing Select(KDP Select).
Research more categories for your book and choose the ones that are not so competitive so that you can have a shot at becoming a bestseller in that category.
Once the book is LIVE spend a week or two just checking for errors and putting a concerted effort into getting reviews. If you detect errors you can quickly make a revision.
Be mindful of the Amazon Book Review guidelines for getting reviews and understand how not to have your reviews deleted.
Run your promotional days on KDP Select when you offer your book for free.
Promote
Once those promotional days are over plan an ongoing marketing strategy.
Don’t keep your book a secret. Tell people about it.
Get the word out there that you have produced a book, and that you have something to say that people need to read.
Start with an email broadcast to those on your email list, promote the book on a special page on your author’s website, blog about it, post about it on a Facebook page, post on other social media sites, make short promotional videos, start a YouTube channel, set up a Podcast, do an Instagram story, promote it on Goodreads and get creative with engaging your audiences.
Not only should you have a short term marketing strategy for when your book is launched but plan a promotional strategy for the long term. At the end of the day slow, steady traffic is king because this will result in sales and is ultimately better than that sudden burst you might have when you first launch your book.
Take away the mystery of self-publishing your book and join my free online class.
Sources
Allan, Scott “Book Launch: How to Launch a Book for More Sales [Printable Checklist]” https://self-publishingschool.com/run-book-launch/, 2019.
Basu, Tyler The Book Launch Strategy Of A #1 Amazon Bestseller https://tylerbasu.com/book-launch-amazon-bestseller/
Author and founder of Fast Self-Publishing Online
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