There’s a reason I’ve never written an article about how many books I’ve sold. I’ve tended to take the advice that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need to find a smarter room (though I’ve recently completely rethought that advice), so I surround myself with much smarter, more successful people. , that I. the people I follow online have sold over 7,000 books. We’re talking about people like Alinka Rutowska, author of How I Sold 80,000 Books, and John Locke, author of How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks in 5 Months.
However, I recently read that most self-published authors sell less than 100 copies of their books. so maybe there are independent authors who want to know how a nobody like me managed to sell more than 7000.
You are reading: How to sell kindle books
first of all i should point out that selling 7000 kindle books will not make you rich. most of the books I’ve sold were priced at 99 cents. the most expensive was $5.99. but every one of those 7,000 copies were paid downloads. I’ve also given away thousands of books, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
I’ve learned a few tips along the way that may be helpful to new freelance authors. If you’re just starting out, I hope some of these help you increase those sales numbers.
write to the market
Does this mean you have to stifle your creativity and just write mass market trade books? No. it simply means that whatever genre you write in, you need to be very familiar with what readers of that genre actually buy and create something that follows your criteria.
For me, as a nonfiction writer, this means solving the problems my audience has and answering the questions they ask. As a fiction author it means studying the best-selling books in your genre and deconstructing why readers of the genre love them.
You still need to write an original book. don’t you dare do anything else. but it needs to incorporate some of the elements that make books in that genre sell. this applies to plot, voice, and story elements, but also to the cover and description of the book. emulate successful authors of your genre. just don’t copy their stories.
release more than one book
preferably at the same time. I threw two at a time, then a third shortly after. I now have 10 books and am working on the next two. Mention all of your books in the final subject of each book you produce. in nonfiction, mention them in the text where appropriate.
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Consider including the first chapter of your next book at the end of the last one, especially if it’s a sequel or part of a series. which ties in nicely with my next point.
write linked books
a series of at least five books works well for both fiction and nonfiction. trilogies work well if you write fiction. If you write stand-alone books, consider writing several in the same genre, even if they’re not a series. genre jumpers find it very difficult to build an audience. I would go so far as to say, if you must write in different genres, consider different pseudonyms so as not to confuse your readers.
get some reviews
this is always hard, and amazon is making it even harder. You can’t just ask friends and family for reviews. It’s against amazon’s rules, and amazon is surprisingly strict. they will remove any reviews they deem suspicious and have the right to ban your account if you are a repeat infringer. hell, sometimes they’ll take down perfectly legitimate reviews. I lost some recently, as did some of my author friends.
so reviews are hard to come by. If you have a blog, subscriber list, or social media following (of unrelated people, not just friends and family), you can ask them to review your book. Of course, you can ask your Facebook friends to buy and rate your book, but don’t be surprised if Amazon removes them for having a personal connection with you. You can also reach out to your favorite book bloggers and ask them to review them.
You can use sites like story cartel and happy book reviews to try and get more reviews, but keep in mind that both are paid services and can’t really guarantee results. That’s because one thing you can never do on Amazon is pay for reviews. These services basically charge you a fee to advertise your book to people who have expressed an interest in reviewing books. they may or may not go ahead.
There is a very easy way to get (a few) more reviews. I write about it in more detail here, but it involves simply asking readers to check it out. I put a short note at the end of my books that says:
“if you found this book useful, please consider leaving a short review on amazon.”
It’s incredibly simple, but I’ve gotten more reviews since I added it.
create followers
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Your fans, followers, readers and subscribers are often the first to buy your book. so create followers. I don’t care where you do it. your personal blog, on social media or here on medium will work just fine.
It is advisable to try to include your followers in an email list, of course. With every book I’ve published, most of my first sales (as far as I know) come from my email subscribers. an email announcing your new book will get the sales started (and you can email them again later, politely reminding them that if they enjoyed the book, they might want to consider leaving a review). however, don’t discount your other followers. If you don’t have an email list but have a large following here on Medium, write a story here about your book launch. some of your followers will be interested.
give books away
You can easily do this through amazon’s kdp select program, if your book is enrolled in it. there is a slight advantage to doing this with any new book, as it will improve your ranking when you return to paid status. I have several of my books at number 1 in the category (briefly) first getting them to number 1 in free books for a category and then paying again.
Any book that is at the top of its category (or even in the top 20) will generate sales. This effect is usually short-lived, but with my book Free Tools for Writers, Bloggers, and Entrepreneurs, it lasted for months. that is, it remained on the first page of its category for approximately 6 months after launch and continued to generate sales. It still shows up on the front page sometimes now, if I do a lot of social media hype about it, or write a blog post to hype it.
This works even better if you have a series. Give away the first book in the series for a while, and if it’s a good book, written for the market, you’ll definitely sell the others. the first book in a series is worth keeping cheap anyway. My book, The Smart Entrepreneur’s Guide to Content Creation, is priced permanently at 99 cents, the others in the series are 2.99, or you can buy the box. but I keep the first one cheap, and often hear from readers who bought that and then bought others in the series.
produce a great book
This tip probably shouldn’t be the last, but it seemed trite and obvious to put it first. All of these tactics will be worthless if you haven’t produced a well-written, high-quality, and carefully edited book. you’ll need a great story for fiction, an interesting topic for nonfiction, and a book that generates high levels of customer satisfaction for both.
You’ll also need to edit and proofread until your ideas are crystal clear and your grammatical errors don’t exist (I strongly suggest you hire professional help for this part). and you’ll also need a great, genre-appropriate cover, because guess what? everyone judges a book by its cover, no matter what the common wisdom is about it.
Happy publishing, independent authors. feel free to tell me your publishing stories in the comments section, and I’ll be happy to congratulate you, commiserate, or offer any advice I can.
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