Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing is becoming more and more popular with a lot of writers in modern times. The idea of skipping the dubious process of finding and submitting your works to a publisher is truly very compelling, especially to new writers.
In June2020, the KDP Global Fund size had reached $32.3 million, from a low $2.5 million in July 2014 when Kindle Unlimited first started. This is good news for KDP ebook authors, as this growth in sales is projected to continue.
An average indie writer can make $1,000 a year, which is an excellent starting point, especially if you want to create more books and build a massive fanbase in the future. Other writers can push this for up to $2,000 a month, especially if they publish a lot of books that appeal to a lot of people.
How To Increase Book Sales
1. Write the ‘Perfect’ Book
Follow the Trends
You feel like you have a writer’s block, or you can’t write the perfect poem that can earn you money. The key thing you can do is follow the trends of the successful authors on Amazon KDP.
There are over 16,000+ Amazon categories. You have to find the balance of choosing the genre that a lot of people love, but alsonot too populated that you have a lot of competition.
Write With a Specific Audience In Mind
Do not try to appeal to the general audience, and instead, have specific people in mind who you want to write for. Having a niche may mean that you appeal to a particular group of people. Write to make sure that those people will love your book no matter what.
With this technique, you are making sure that you have a substantial audience to cater to. You do not need to cater to the general audience as the chances of making everyone like your book are slim, to begin with.
Use The Amazon ebook Format
Writing your book does not end after the last editing process. You still have to make sure that the format of your book is in the right format to avoid difficulties when your readers have bought the book. For example, page numbers do not always translate well to an ebook that may be sized.
If you are selling eBooks, multiple free tools can turn your manuscript into a well-formatted eBook. You can also do it by yourself if you think you can.
You can also sell a paperback version of your work. This can also appeal to readers who prefer reading a physical book than a digital version.
2. Have An Eyecatching Cover
Hire A Graphics Artist
Hire A Graphics ArtistIt is no secret that the cover of your book is one of the most critical factors in trying to get new readers. You can do your own cover, especially if you are great in graphic design, but you can also hire graphics artists to make sure that your cover looks professional.
Do Your Cover Yourself
Amazon’s Cover Creator is a free tool to help you create your cover. If you are low on funds, this is a perfectly good option. It offers templates, images and tips to aid you in your cover creation, for both ebooks and paperbacks. This is especially useful for beginners.
One thing you have to remember while creating a cover is that you should avoid copyright problems and use works that are either free for commercial use, or you have paid for yourself.
A Title That Grabs Attention
Not only does the cover have to be visually appealing, but you also should have a title that makes people think about the contents of your book. While your title should be related to your book, you could consider adding a subtitle, that will give just a little more information about your book, and set it apart from other books in your niche.
3. Use Amazon’s KDP Tools
Amazon KDP has a lot of tools that can help indie authors to become successful in their platform. This is one of the many reasons why a lot of authors are flocking to Amazon, aside from their vast customer base.
Build your Brand – Create Author Page In Amazon Author Central
The Amazon Author Central Page is a place where your readers can know more about you. You must write a well-written bio and add an eye-catching profile picture. Your main goal is to make yourself look professional so that people are more encouraged to buy from you.
You can also link your blog on your Amazon Author Central Page, which is extremely useful for building your brand.
KDP Select Program
The Kindle Select Program is free program that expands your audience to include paperback customers, kindle unlimited customers and any Amazon Prime member that owns a kindle. Kindle Unlimited customers can rent any number of books per month. Amazon Prime members are entitled to one free rental a month. Although the last two groups are rental customers, these are still groups that result in exposure of your work, which could in turn increase outright book sales. However, at the very least, it will result in increased income of either pure royalties or payment per pages read.
You should note that on signing up to Kindle Select, the digital copy of your book must be exclusive to Amazon for the duration of the term that you are signed up to the program.
Amazon Best Seller Rank (BSR)
There are Kindle Best Seller calculators found online that you can utilize to see how many books you need to sell to become the #1 best-selling on BSR.
For authors who have more than one book on Amazon KDP, you can utilize this calculator to check which of your books has the best potential to go higher. Then, you should focus on advertising that book until it reaches the top.
Once you achieve a high ranking, customers are more likely to buy your other books, especially if they loved the first one they read.
4. Get More Authentic Reviews
The first thing you should do after publishing your book is to get a lot of authentic reviews as fast as possible. You do not want your book to be ignored by a potential reader just because it does not have any reviews.
Send Your Books To Bloggers
There are a lot of book lovers who have become influencers in the community. A lot of people like hearing their reviews about certain books before buying them. As an author, you can send a free copy of your books to these bloggers and encourage them to write an honest review.
Aside from having more reviews on your book, you are also encouraging their followers to check out your book. Just make sure that you find a blogger who reads the same genre as your book. If you send your book to a blogger who has a large following but does not enjoy the genre of your book, you may have a scathing review that can discourage people from reading.
Ask Friends To Read Your Books
Your friends and family are the first people who will support your book. You can directly ask them to buy your book and give an honest review. While they do not have a lot of followers like the influencers, their thoughts and opinions about your book can provide more insight for potential buyers of your book.
5. Build Your Fanbase
As soon as you publish your works, you should start thinking of building your fanbase who can support your upcoming books. This is an important step in how to increase book sales quickly.
Hook In The Readers With The First 10% Of Your Book
For a new indie author, the struggle lies in trying to get people to read your book. A lot of buyers do not want to read a newly published book from someone they do not know. However, with the free sample chapters, you can easily hook people into reading the first roughly 10% of your book and hopefully buy the rest.
Kindle has instant previews that are embedded in the web or email, that can show some of the content. This lets your potential customers have access to a free sample of your book so they can decide if they will buy it to read more.
This is vital on how to increase book sales as people want to see for themselves firsthand if they’re going to buy your book. You should make sure that the first 10% is compelling enough to hook your potential fans easily.
Newsletter Swaps With Authors
Now that you have a substantial fanbase, you can start having a newsletter to update your readers. However, for most authors, you may feel like there isn’t enough content you can write in your newsletter. The key is to partner with other indie authors who have almost the same status as you so your works can be introduced to other people through each other author’s mailing list.
Multi-Author Anthology
One of the most popular techniques in increasing your fanbase is collaborating with other authors to create an anthology of works that is in the same universe or a collection of the same theme.
6. Advertise Your Book
Even if you write a very compelling story, it may not get the exposure you want , if nobody knows your book exists.
Have A Social Media Presence
One of the advantages of modern times is that it is way easier to advertise your products for such a lower price. It is evident that a lot of people like being able to talk to their favorite authors. One of the best ways of making sure that your readers become your fans is to interact with them more.
You can simply have a social media profile where you reply to your readers, or you can also have your own Facebook group where you can let your fans post their thoughts and extensive reviews of your works. Other authors also create groups with multiple authors to appeal to a broader range of audiences.
Make Use Of Blogs
If you do not have a blog yet, maybe it is time to create one. While a lot of people think that blogs are outdated, it is still actually incredibly useful, especially for authors who want to sell their books. Aside from social media profiles and email subscription lists, professional authors have their website optimized for how to increase book sales.
Cross-Promotion
Being in the community of readers and writers for Amazon KDP is one of the most critical steps in successfully advertising your book. Swapping newsletters and creating multi-anthology works are a few ways of cross-promotion, but there are also other ways, such as utilizing social media profiles of other writers. Cross-promotion helps other readers discover new authors whose works they can also enjoy.
7. Repeat The Methods That Worked For You
Study Your Data
Study Your DataIf you have one bestselling book, then analyze what you did right so that you can repeat the pattern. Some people are good at collaborating with other authors, while others succeed with their social media efforts. There are a lot of factors to consider, and what may work for you might not work for others.
You have to study your data and look at where you are excelling so you can recreate the factors for your other books. Continue to strengthen your techniques and try to improve where necessary.
Experiment A Little
You already know what works, but you can also check your data for the things that did not work. You can start trying to improve yourself and experiment a little bit to find the perfect formula on how to increase book sales.
Bottomline
The process of how to increase book sales in Amazon KDP can be a little overwhelming, especially for beginners. However, your effort will certainly pay off! (no pun intended 😊)
You must always remember that even though you want to have more book sales, you should still enjoy the writing process. More readers will be able to enjoy your work if you also had fun writing it.
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