[Kindle Bestseller Publishing: Write A Bestseller In 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Boo
Iberio Ralda
I have tried my best to be as transparent and detailed as possible. My hope is that by doing so, you will be able to experience similar results be implementing these steps in your next book launch. That being said, I am sharing these steps with you under the following assumptions:
A successful book launch definitely does not happen by accident. There is a lot of preparation and a lot of very specific decisions that are made behind the scenes to ensure the launch is successful. Before I walk you through the exact steps I followed to launch my book, I want to give credit where credit is due. Here are some of the resources I utilized to piece together my launch strategy:
Kindle Bestseller Publishing: Write a Bestseller in 30 Days! (Beginner Internet Marketing Series Boo
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Choose your launch date and then upload your book to Amazon Kindle 1-2 weeks before that date. There are a few reasons why this is important. Firstly, you want give yourself enough time to download your book and make sure it is formatted correctly. If you notice any formatting errors, you have time to fix them and upload a revised version of your book. Secondly, you want to give yourself enough time to collect some positive reviews (Step 4) before your launch date.
The book description is one of the most under-utilized opportunities to encourage potential readers to buy your book. When you upload your book to Amazon, you are permitted to include a book description of up to 4,000 characters. My advice: use as many of those characters as you can.
When I wrote the description for my book, I strategically included several different keywords that I wanted my book to rank for on Amazon. Some of those keywords include: lifestyle entrepreneur, online business, and make money online. The screenshot below shows a portion of my book description. As you can see, there are several keywords throughout the description, placed strategically in the headers (the orange font) and in the paragraphs. As a result, my book ranks on the first page of the search results for many of these keywords.
For example, Business & Money is a very broad category. To rank #1 in that category is extremely difficult. If you niche down a few levels, to a category such Home-Based Business, you will have less competition for the #1 spot.
Since I wanted to launch my book with a 5 day free promotion, I chose to enroll it in the KDP Select program. Research shows that Amazon book sales spike on the weekend, so I decided to schedule my free promotion to start on a Saturday and end on a Wednesday. Remember to schedule your free promotion to start 1-2 weeks from the day you upload it to Amazon.
Reach out to your personal network (friends, colleagues, other authors, etc.) and ask them to download and review your book. Having a few reviews for your book helps it get more downloads during the free promotion period (the launch) because people are more likely to download a book that has already been enjoyed by other readers versus one that appears to have not.
Most self-published authors will agree that the majority of their book sales on Amazon are in Kindle format. However, having a paperback version of your book is beneficial for a few reasons. Having both prices displayed (Kindle price and paperback price) helps make the Kindle version of your book look like a good deal when compared to the price of your paperback version.
To make your book available in paperback format, set up an account on CreateSpace and upload your print-ready book files (cover and interior). Once approved, Amazon will connect your paperback listing to your Kindle listing so potential buyers can choose which format they want to purchase.
There are dozens of book promotion websites that can help spread the word about your book to their respective audiences. I honestly have no idea how effective this strategy is, but since it only takes a few minutes to submit your book details and promotion dates to these websites, it is worth a try. Not every website will promote your book, and some of them will charge you a fee to guarantee that they will.
I sent my VA (virtual assistant) a list of book promotion websites, and she spend about 3 hours submitting my book to approximately 30 websites that accept submissions for free book promotions. Make sure you submit your book at least 1 week in advance of your scheduled free promotion dates so that these websites have enough time to review your submission and schedule it into their promotions, should they choose to.
The night before your book launch, I recommend increasing the price of your Kindle version to an amount that is equal to or higher than what you plan to eventually sell it for long term. This tactic increases the perceived value of your book during its free promotion, which encourages more people to download it.
There are two types of book launches. There are free launches and paid launches. There are benefits and drawbacks to each strategy, but for this book, I chose to do a free launch. I chose this strategy because I wanted the book to reach as many people as possible, and I was willing to forego royalties from paid sales to make this happen. Also, since I featured several people as case studies in my book, I wanted those people to be able to invite their audience to download the book during the launch without asking their audience to buy it. I assumed their audiences would be more receptive to a free gift than a sales offer.
On the second day I started to promote my book on social media (posted on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, and Instagram). I also tagged the people who were featured as case studies in my posts. Here is a screenshot of my post from my personal profile on Facebook:
On Day 3 I kept posting on social media about the book. I remember sharing some screenshots of the book climbing the bestsellers list to help entice people to download a book that lots of other people were already downloading. That was about it. By this point I was relying mostly on organic downloads from Amazon customers who were looking at books in my categories.
The first thing I did when I woke up was change the price of my book to $0.99. Then, at around 11:00 am Pacific Time, I logged into my Amazon KDP account and manually cut off my free promotion. This resulted in a 1-2 hour window where my book was still being displayed on the bestsellers list for free books, but was actually listed for $0.99 (Amazon Bestsellers lists are updated hourly, hence the 1-2 hour window), as seen in the screenshot below:
The theory behind this tactic is that if you do not manually cut off your free promotion mid-day, then it will expire at midnight on the last day of your free promotion. As you can imagine, not many people are busy shopping for books on Amazon at midnight, so your exposure during your transition period from free to paid is minimal. Manually cutting off the free promotion in the middle of the day ensures more exposure and therefore gives you a better chance of climbing the paid bestsellers list immediately after your free promotion ends. Thanks to this tactic, I received over 100 paid sales @ $0.99 each, which was enough to help my book climb the paid bestsellers list in multiple categories and get featured in Hot New Releases.
The screenshot below shows the overall download numbers from the launch week. The green line represents the free promotion downloads. As you can see, the biggest spike occurred on the 4th day of the free promotion (I marketed this day as the last day of the free promotion to create urgency).
On the 5th day of the launch (February 25) can you see that there were both free downloads and paid sales. This was transition day, so technically speaking my free promotion was actually 4.5 days long. On Day 5 of the launch, I sold 155 copies of my book, and the day after that I sold an additional 97 copies before increasing the price to $2.99 on February 27.
On the last day of my book launch I changed the price to $0.99. This low price point gave my book the best chance of climbing the paid bestsellers list in its category. Once Amazon gave my book the official #1 Bestseller Status in its category, I took the screenshot for proof and then increased the price a few days later.
At $0.99, Amazon only pays a 35% royalty on unit sales. Once your book has climbed the bestsellers list in its respective categories, I recommend increasing the price to at least $2.99. At this price point, you will earn a 70% royalty on each sale. So even though your book sales will likely decline, you will make more money than if you leave it priced at $0.99.
Glad you found this helpful! This past week, one month after the free launch, I am averaging between 5-10 sales per day at $3.99. In the weeks after the launch, when it was priced at $2.99, it was averaging 10-15 sales per day. So yes, there is a bit of a decline. I may write another post in a month or two to share post-launch results and post-launch marketing strategies.
Yes during the free promo period I started off in a very specific category and once I reached #1 in that category I changed to a broader category. Repeated that process until I reached as high as I could in the overall Business & Investing category on Amazon. After the free promo I went back to the specific categories it was originally listed in.
The lowest I can price my book on Kindle is $1.99 at 35% royalty and $2.99 at 70% royalty. Is this new since you wrote this? If not, how did you get around it for the purpose of pricing at .99 for family and friends to download during the period where you asked for reviews?
Hi Marissa, as far as I know books can still be priced at $0.99 on Amazon. That being said, your book may have a higher distribution cost (does it have a lot of graphics or images in it?) so they are forcing you to charge a minimum of $1.99. You could also try emailing their support team to find out what is happening.
Hi, Tyler, great advice, tremendously useful, thanks for sharing,
Question: Did you request reviews (via newsletters, social media etc) during your free promotion period? I am trying to encourage my future readers with a discount/free offer (bait) before book launch (through my website and then asking them to sign up for early bird discounts). Any advice please help thanks.