Top secrets of self publishing your books on Amazon
Introduction
Pretty much everyone knows that self-publishing can be an extremely
even seven figures per year with their books, and some have even gone
on to get multi-million dollar book or movie deals.
Of course, writing the book is the easy part. Believe or not, getting the
book published is really just the beginning. Once the book has been
published, it requires promotion to be successful. The odds of your book
becoming a bestseller without significant effort in marketing are slim to
none.
In this post, you’re going to learn the best ways to promote your book.
Whether you’re publishing fiction or non-fiction, and no matter the genre,
you’ll uncover killer ways to get the most sales possible from your book.
You’ll learn the best free and paid sources of traffic, as well as how to
make the most out of each source. And you’ll learn how to time your
promotional efforts to maximize results.
So let’s get started.
KDP Select
The whole world of self-publishing has been abuzz about the KDP Select
program since it was first introduced, but never more so than since they
introduced Kindle Unlimited.
Originally, the KDP Select program only had a couple of benefits. It
allowed you to run up to 5 days of free promotions or discount prices per
90-day period, and it allowed you to get paid some money whenever an
Amazon Prime member borrowed your book with their one free book credit
each month. This didn’t translate to a lot of revenue, and you could run a
free promotion by simply pricing the book free at another store (such as
Barnes & Noble or Kobo) and asking Amazon to price match.
The only real drawback was the fact that you had to be exclusive to
Amazon for 90-day periods (you could withdraw your book at the end of
the 90-day term if you chose to do so). This meant you couldn’t put your
book onto any of the other online stores, but since Amazon was, by far, the
most popular eBook store, it was worth it to some.
In the summer of 2014, Amazon introduced Kindle Unlimited. For a price of
about $10 per month, readers could borrow up to 10 titles at once, and an
unlimited number total in a month. Authors were paid a percentage of the
base fund. As long as the borrower read at least 10% of the book, the
author would get paid for that borrow. The amount the borrow was worth
varied based on the total number of books borrowed that month, and each
borrow was worth a percentage of the total fund Amazon allocated for
borrows that month.
Readers jumped on board in droves, and authors quickly discovered they
could make a lot of money from those borrows. Authors were getting paid
as much as nearly $2 per borrow in the beginning, a percentage of the total
fund based on the number of times their book was borrowed versus other
books in the program. This number dropped over the course of a year, and
eventually borrowed were less than $1.40. Still, it was good money for
most.
Then, in the summer of 2015, just a year after the program was introduced,
major changes came. Many called this KU2, for “Kindle Unlimited 2”.
Instead of paying a set amount when a reader got to 10% of the book, they
started paying for the number of pages read. That number started out at
around $0.0057 per page read and began to drop steadily.
This might have been a blessing to those who had very long books that got
read all the way through, but it meant a huge drop in income for a large
number of authors.
So is KDP Select still worth it?
Long story short, yes.
KDP Select is still very important from a promotional standpoint. A borrow,
even if the borrower never even opens the book, counts as a sale with
regards to making bestseller lists. The moment someone borrows a book
via their Kindle Unlimited subscription, it gives that book a boost in the
bestseller rankings. This may change in the future, but at the moment of
this writing, this gives books in the KDP Select program a big boost that
other books just can’t get.
The free days are another bonus. You have the potential of getting your
book noticed by running a free promotion (or a timed discount) for a few
days without having to make the book permanently free. This is especially
good if you have a series of books, because you can use your free days to
get one book downloaded and then promote the other books in the one
you’ve made free.
Ultimately, the decision to enroll in KDP Select is a personal one. Are you
willing to sacrifice potential sales at other sites? Remember, you only have
to be exclusive for 90 days. Then you have the potential to remove your
book from the KDP Select program and upload it elsewhere.
For most people, enrolling in KDP Select is still worth it. Even though you
might not make as much money from borrows, the promotional aspect is
worth it for most people. But if you have a big fan base that makes you
good money at other stores, it might be a tougher decision.
Reviews
Before we discuss reviews, you should realize that Amazon strictly forbids
any form of bribery, and any form of requesting specifically positive
reviews. This can have devastating effects, potentially costing you your
entire KDP account. Don’t do it!
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can discuss reviews in earnest.
Amazon doesn’t count offering a free copy of your book in exchange for a
review as bribery, unless you ask the reader to leave a positive review.
You must make it clear that you’re offering a free copy of your book in
exchange for an honest review.
If you’re offering a copy of your book before it is published, it’s called an
ARC. This stands for Advance Review Copy. It’s standard procedure to
offer ARCs before publication in order to give people time to read the book
before it is published so you can have reviews the day the book is
released.
If you’re offering a copy of your book for review after it’s been published,
it’s known only as a Review Copy.
One good reason to offer ARCs before publication, other than the fact that
you get reviews on launch day, which helps boost sales, is that you won’t
risk upsetting Amazon by offering copies of your book somewhere other
than Amazon. Remember, if you’re in KDP Select, your book MUST be
exclusive to Amazon, and YES, they do count review copies in that.
(Sounds crazy, but it’s true.) So you need to offer free copies BEFORE
publication if you intend to be in KDP Select.
If you want to offer review copies AFTER publication, you can offer to
purchase a copy for the reviewer on Amazon. Just buy the book as a gift
and enter the reader’s email at purchase. This will send the book to the
reader.
Alternately, you can use your 5 free days, and then let people know they
can get your book free, and the only thing you ask is that they leave an
honest review. Be sure to thank them for their time!
So where can you find reviewers to distribute copies to? The best places
are Facebook and GoodReads. We will take an in-depth look at both of
these places in later sections.
Book bloggers, people who have entire blogs devoted to reviewing books,
are another good source of reviews. Not only can they send you great
traffic from their blogs, many of them will also copy their reviews onto
Amazon and other sites
