KINDLE BOOKS
KINDLE BOOK PUBLISHING MENTOR
Amazon Kindle Publishing
Amazon Kindle Books are Promotional Powerhouses. Kindle Authors publish on Amazon dot com for marketing reasons as much as for the obvious money making opportunity of selling their writing works. Publishing Kindle Books on Amazon is part of the new frontier of cyberspace marketing and promoting. Kindle book publishing is as much of a publishing book platform for business professionals looking to build prestige and authority in their field of expertise as it is for struggling creative authors looking to break into print or build reading fans.
Kindle Books are entirely free for anyone to publish! Amazon does not charge to post your books on their website. Amazon also does not turn anyone down or sensor your work as long as you stay within their basic rule and guides. This means you do not have to sell your idea or get approval from editors to publish and sell your book on the Amazon Kindle Website. Each day the number of people accessing the Amazon Kindle site via the Internet grows causing the exposure of your Kindle Book to increase incrementally too. Did I mention you set the price your book sells for! Amazon also pays you between 30-70 percent of the sales of your Kindle Book. It's obvious why electronic self-publishing of e-books through Amazon Kindle Book Publishing has become so popular so quickly with creative writers, business professionals and of course readers!
Kindle Books are entirely free for anyone to publish! Amazon does not charge to post your books on their website. Amazon also does not turn anyone down or sensor your work as long as you stay within their basic rule and guides. This means you do not have to sell your idea or get approval from editors to publish and sell your book on the Amazon Kindle Website. Each day the number of people accessing the Amazon Kindle site via the Internet grows causing the exposure of your Kindle Book to increase incrementally too. Did I mention you set the price your book sells for! Amazon also pays you between 30-70 percent of the sales of your Kindle Book. It's obvious why electronic self-publishing of e-books through Amazon Kindle Book Publishing has become so popular so quickly with creative writers, business professionals and of course readers!
Promoting your Kindle Book
By Stu Leventhal
Kindle publishing, like with every industry, has its tips, tricks and short cuts to success. Kindle Insiders know the easiest and most successful ways to sell more books. Most of the best authors learned the ropes by trial and era. Over years of publishing book after book and watching their results, they slowly implemented different strategies of promotion, building on what helped and discarding their unproductive methods. Writing, having always been a very social sharing activity; many of the first kindlers naturally began to form small clicks gathering online and networking with other struggling Kindling authors. At first the successful authors naturally guarded their trade secrets. But with time, eventually they began to realize, by sharing what they knew with each other, everyone would benefit immensely, which after all is the true power and gift of the internet. Plus, there really was plenty of money to go around.
Slowly these authors, Kindle pioneers, together developed systems of self-promoting that increased their sales exponentially. The Kindle platform flourished. Kindle itself grew and improved and soon everyone was making money without the hassle of literary agents, editors and the whole stifling annoying submission process. It was a new author’s dream! No one telling you what to write! No waiting to hear if your work was accepted! All the hassles of becoming an author erased! Yet through the years, one thing remained the same, there was still one high hurdle to leap and it nagged at the top earners especially. Credibility! The literary world was still slighting online authors, no matter how much money fame or books they sold!
There was a stigma attached to online publishing that stated your work and you were inferior to land or traditional offline authors. This is because the public felt online authors couldn’t hack it in the offline writer’s competitive world. They thought online authors didn’t have what it took to make it traditionally, so they ended up online. After all, the standards are lower. Since, no one is sending you a rejection notice, what is going to make you try harder? What is pushing you to improve? You didn’t have to work your way through the nasty offline publishing system! Many People just would not recognize online, digital authors as having the same skills and being as good as land, in-print authors. Amazon itself has been fighting this battle since day one of opening their online doors.
Again, the authors fought back using their tried and true weapon of networking that proved to serve them faithfully so well, so far. They took the fight to the streets or should I say the highways; the internet highway, the digital highway, the social networking highways! Online authors formed book clubs, chat rooms, forums, blogged then blogged more! One phenomenon that came about was the online authors began to communicate with their readers more and more like no readers and writers had connected ever before in history, on levels that sometimes had nothing even to do with their books! The bonds that readers and their favorite authors were forming was revolutionary! Unique to the internet, is the opportunity to grow a readership and connect with your fans at a level that is in another dimension, from what offline author have. This is the true power of the internet, the strength behind internet marketing and the magic that opens doors and doors of opportunity not only for writers and Kindle authors but for anyone wishing to take advantage of the advance communication technology now available and within easy access of us all.
Today it is the offline authors that are struggling. Traditional print media sales are dwindling, newspapers and magazines are closing at an alarming rate, while online digital sales continue to grow. There no longer is a stigma hovering over online authors. Their readers continue to be loyal and business is performed on a less formal level. Yes, readers are interested in knowing what you did this weekend. They want to know what makes their favorite authors tick! The more you share the more real you are to them. That doesn’t mean they can’t still put you up on a pedestal! Internet fans are great fans! For this reason, As you learn these internet, promotional strategies, always remember; nothing sells more books better and faster than good quality, writing, hard work and constant, timely publishing and more publishing. As your readership grows and you earn the respect of a following, don’t let your fan base down. Give them solid, well written prose and thy will tweet, text and spread your fame virally all over the digital world!
Kindle publishing, like with every industry, has its tips, tricks and short cuts to success. Kindle Insiders know the easiest and most successful ways to sell more books. Most of the best authors learned the ropes by trial and era. Over years of publishing book after book and watching their results, they slowly implemented different strategies of promotion, building on what helped and discarding their unproductive methods. Writing, having always been a very social sharing activity; many of the first kindlers naturally began to form small clicks gathering online and networking with other struggling Kindling authors. At first the successful authors naturally guarded their trade secrets. But with time, eventually they began to realize, by sharing what they knew with each other, everyone would benefit immensely, which after all is the true power and gift of the internet. Plus, there really was plenty of money to go around.
Slowly these authors, Kindle pioneers, together developed systems of self-promoting that increased their sales exponentially. The Kindle platform flourished. Kindle itself grew and improved and soon everyone was making money without the hassle of literary agents, editors and the whole stifling annoying submission process. It was a new author’s dream! No one telling you what to write! No waiting to hear if your work was accepted! All the hassles of becoming an author erased! Yet through the years, one thing remained the same, there was still one high hurdle to leap and it nagged at the top earners especially. Credibility! The literary world was still slighting online authors, no matter how much money fame or books they sold!
There was a stigma attached to online publishing that stated your work and you were inferior to land or traditional offline authors. This is because the public felt online authors couldn’t hack it in the offline writer’s competitive world. They thought online authors didn’t have what it took to make it traditionally, so they ended up online. After all, the standards are lower. Since, no one is sending you a rejection notice, what is going to make you try harder? What is pushing you to improve? You didn’t have to work your way through the nasty offline publishing system! Many People just would not recognize online, digital authors as having the same skills and being as good as land, in-print authors. Amazon itself has been fighting this battle since day one of opening their online doors.
Again, the authors fought back using their tried and true weapon of networking that proved to serve them faithfully so well, so far. They took the fight to the streets or should I say the highways; the internet highway, the digital highway, the social networking highways! Online authors formed book clubs, chat rooms, forums, blogged then blogged more! One phenomenon that came about was the online authors began to communicate with their readers more and more like no readers and writers had connected ever before in history, on levels that sometimes had nothing even to do with their books! The bonds that readers and their favorite authors were forming was revolutionary! Unique to the internet, is the opportunity to grow a readership and connect with your fans at a level that is in another dimension, from what offline author have. This is the true power of the internet, the strength behind internet marketing and the magic that opens doors and doors of opportunity not only for writers and Kindle authors but for anyone wishing to take advantage of the advance communication technology now available and within easy access of us all.
Today it is the offline authors that are struggling. Traditional print media sales are dwindling, newspapers and magazines are closing at an alarming rate, while online digital sales continue to grow. There no longer is a stigma hovering over online authors. Their readers continue to be loyal and business is performed on a less formal level. Yes, readers are interested in knowing what you did this weekend. They want to know what makes their favorite authors tick! The more you share the more real you are to them. That doesn’t mean they can’t still put you up on a pedestal! Internet fans are great fans! For this reason, As you learn these internet, promotional strategies, always remember; nothing sells more books better and faster than good quality, writing, hard work and constant, timely publishing and more publishing. As your readership grows and you earn the respect of a following, don’t let your fan base down. Give them solid, well written prose and thy will tweet, text and spread your fame virally all over the digital world!
Kindle publishing Tip #1
Networking with other Kindle Authors
Bonding with others struggling writers facing similar situations to your own and communicating your failures, dreams, successes, questions on a common subject is the best way to leverage the strength of the latest online communication technology. Supporting each other while you search for answers together to overcome common difficulties is not only beneficial to your psych and healthy for you but it works! If you are a new Kindle book publisher, doesn’t it make sense and couldn’t you save yourself a lot of grief, frustration, time and effort by listening and learning from an experienced Kindle Book Publisher? Of course! They have been there, tried that, done that, suffered and learned lessons they’d be happy to pass on. And, you are no dummy either. If you are smart and enterprising enough to write and publish a Kindle Book you certainly have stuff you can bring to the table too. A fresh perspective is always welcome in online communities and new members are a delight for everyone to get to know.
Kindle publishing Tip #2
Join Author Central and Set Up Shop for Doing Business
Once your first Kindle book goes live your first priority is to create a place for fans and followers to be able to go to learn more about you. Do this right away, before you get too busy on other projects and forget. Readers need a place to connect with you. As mentioned above, doing business on the net revolves around social activity. In order to build fans you are going to need a home base. This is what you are establishing when you join Author Central and there are plenty of other benefit for you to explore taking full advantage of once you have the time to explore them all.
Kindle Publishing tip #3
Stay Focused, Be Professional, It Is A Business!
With Kindle you are not held back by the submission process or the waiting to be accepted by editors, agents or anyone else. You can quite literally publish however many books as you can produce! But, try not to become a cookie cutter author. You will have more success by taking your time to polish off your writing and publishing a few less books but at a higher quality. Stay focused and try to improve your writing with each new finished writing project you complete. Believe me your fans will notice and appreciate your extra efforts!
KINDLE BOOK MARKETING
By Edward (dictionary) Itor
To the offline traditional publishing industry powerhouses, Kindle Book Publishing is considered a stepping stone into the print world. Amazon Kindle is known as the giant of E-book Publishers if an author can prove they can sell on Amazon Dot Com that carries real weight with the big publishing homes. Get positive reviews on a few of your e-books and build a following of real fans and the offline publishers are interested.
The internet e-book publishers do not intend to forever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. E-Books in digital print have their own special qualities and merits but make no bones about it the big money and prestige is still in landing a book deal with an offline traditional book publisher! This is where Kindle and Amazon can help a struggling new creative writer get their first big break in the industry. This is Amazon Kindle’s real value in the world of literature; allowing an alternative means for writers new and established to publish their works which the traditional publishers are not ready or willing to take a chance on.
People buy Kindle books mainly because they are quite cheaper than buying the same book if it was in print form. Kindle has no paper, ink, warehousing, packaging or shipping costs so they can make a profit at a very low sale price. The e-book is a download! The debate as to the value of Kindle Books versus traditional published books revolves around the fact that there is no professional screening of what gets published on Amazon. The Kindle books do not get scrutinized by professionals in the writing fields and thus plenty of substandard writing makes its way to the Amazon store.
The tough love process of a writer having to please an agent then the agent having to promote the author and his work to attract interest from an established publisher filters out a lot of under par writing. Becoming a published author has always been considered quite difficult. The competition is stiff to land a reparable literary agent of real clout. This competition tends to assure writers will only send their very best work. Literary agents often send writing work back to the authors they are representing for re-writes and more editing to spruce them up before they will consider promoting them to publishers. It is all part of a very daunting process that is in place to make sure only the very best writing makes it onto the book shelves of magazine stands, book stores and libraries the world over.
The question is whether books will still be good quality without all the scrutinizing, editing, rejection, re-writing and jumping through hoops that authors are forced to go through in order to publish their works in the traditional offline print manner. Amazon Kindle says yes! Their books are rated by their readers and independent book reviewers!
Readers, who buy Amazon Books frequently, are members of online book clubs which reveal the best Kindle books in specific genres based on readers input. The bulk of Amazon Books are purchased based on recommendations! Authority online critics critique Amazon Kindle Books in their specialty genre and readers buy accordingly. Thus poorly written books are identified and weeded out of the recommendation lists. So, regardless of the fact that no one is scrutinizing a new author’s work an author cannot hope to sell a lot of books via Amazon Kindle unless the writing is of superb quality! Yes, you can get your work published on Amazon but now you have to promote it!
The key to Kindle publishing success still lies in writing a great book if you wish to get the good reviews which will catapult your Kindle book to online publishing fame. Poor writing will result in bad reviews which will bring book sales to a screeching halt! But just having a great book is not enough. Sure Amazon lets you place your book in their store pretty easily and they share the proceeds quite generously too but every genre category has thousands and thousands of competing books in it. Now that you have published your Kindle the real works begins…MARKETING YOUR KINDLE BOOK!
To the offline traditional publishing industry powerhouses, Kindle Book Publishing is considered a stepping stone into the print world. Amazon Kindle is known as the giant of E-book Publishers if an author can prove they can sell on Amazon Dot Com that carries real weight with the big publishing homes. Get positive reviews on a few of your e-books and build a following of real fans and the offline publishers are interested.
The internet e-book publishers do not intend to forever banish the printed word to the dustbin of history. E-Books in digital print have their own special qualities and merits but make no bones about it the big money and prestige is still in landing a book deal with an offline traditional book publisher! This is where Kindle and Amazon can help a struggling new creative writer get their first big break in the industry. This is Amazon Kindle’s real value in the world of literature; allowing an alternative means for writers new and established to publish their works which the traditional publishers are not ready or willing to take a chance on.
People buy Kindle books mainly because they are quite cheaper than buying the same book if it was in print form. Kindle has no paper, ink, warehousing, packaging or shipping costs so they can make a profit at a very low sale price. The e-book is a download! The debate as to the value of Kindle Books versus traditional published books revolves around the fact that there is no professional screening of what gets published on Amazon. The Kindle books do not get scrutinized by professionals in the writing fields and thus plenty of substandard writing makes its way to the Amazon store.
The tough love process of a writer having to please an agent then the agent having to promote the author and his work to attract interest from an established publisher filters out a lot of under par writing. Becoming a published author has always been considered quite difficult. The competition is stiff to land a reparable literary agent of real clout. This competition tends to assure writers will only send their very best work. Literary agents often send writing work back to the authors they are representing for re-writes and more editing to spruce them up before they will consider promoting them to publishers. It is all part of a very daunting process that is in place to make sure only the very best writing makes it onto the book shelves of magazine stands, book stores and libraries the world over.
The question is whether books will still be good quality without all the scrutinizing, editing, rejection, re-writing and jumping through hoops that authors are forced to go through in order to publish their works in the traditional offline print manner. Amazon Kindle says yes! Their books are rated by their readers and independent book reviewers!
Readers, who buy Amazon Books frequently, are members of online book clubs which reveal the best Kindle books in specific genres based on readers input. The bulk of Amazon Books are purchased based on recommendations! Authority online critics critique Amazon Kindle Books in their specialty genre and readers buy accordingly. Thus poorly written books are identified and weeded out of the recommendation lists. So, regardless of the fact that no one is scrutinizing a new author’s work an author cannot hope to sell a lot of books via Amazon Kindle unless the writing is of superb quality! Yes, you can get your work published on Amazon but now you have to promote it!
The key to Kindle publishing success still lies in writing a great book if you wish to get the good reviews which will catapult your Kindle book to online publishing fame. Poor writing will result in bad reviews which will bring book sales to a screeching halt! But just having a great book is not enough. Sure Amazon lets you place your book in their store pretty easily and they share the proceeds quite generously too but every genre category has thousands and thousands of competing books in it. Now that you have published your Kindle the real works begins…MARKETING YOUR KINDLE BOOK!
Social Media and Kindle Book Promotion
by Jyll Chablis
E-books are easily and rapidly distributed online and Amazon kindle is the numero uno online E-book store! Once an author has loaded his work onto the Kindle platform it immediately gets tons of exposure in the Amazon store. But let’s face it, there are a lot of similar books to yours out there and tons and tons of titles for Amazon readers to choose from. You are going to have to find a way to make your e-book the number one book of choice and you the premier author in your field or literary genre if you wish to cash in with humungous book sales.
Amazon does their part. They give you an author page for you to post a bio and list stuff from your portfolio. You can post links to your personal website and blog. You can talk about your other books in order to convince a visitor to your author page to try one of your books. You can list portions of great reviews your work has received. The idea is for you to show off your talents and give the visitor to your profile page an idea of how great a writer you are on your special subjects. But hey! No one like to hear someone rant on and on about themselves. We need to hear independent reviews rant how wonderful you are! This is where social media comes in.
There are numerous courses on social media promotion one of the best can be found here: http://www.gurumarketingtips.com/social-media.html
Now, obviously all social media marketing tactics will be beneficial for promoting a new book. Creating Facebook pages about your book will gain exposure as will Tweeting and posting your book cover photos on Pinterest. There are many, many more social sites that an author can utilize to advertise and promote and I truly recommend you engage on as many as possible. Posting a Youtube video book trailer is one popular method of Kindle book promoting. The list goes on and on but what we need to address here is the special social media sites that are specifically created for readers to share information about e-books. This is where Amazon Kindles are promoted big time! This is the Amazon kindle online community of readers and book reviewers who will make or break you as a Kindle Author!
Goodreads.com
Goodreads dot com is an internet social media website for sharing good book titles and authors names with other readers. Joining as a Kindle author can open doors to book promotion opportunities via their large membership audience of readers who like to discuss new books. After you sign up, go through the motions of spending a little time filling in your reading likes, then check off the required 20 books you’ve read. The object is to do whatever they ask of you to get approved and moved to the level where you are allowed to add books to their systems list. Your first goal is to at least make sure your books get listed on their site. Goodreads has a few hoops they make new members jump through before they allow you to start adding book titles so be a little patient. But Amazon doesn’t automatically add new Kindle book titles here so you have to take the time to play this game. It may take a little time to establish yourself as a credible member who didn’t just join to promote their own books but it will pay dividends once you are finally accepted into the fold.
There are also numerous book review forums on the internet. Just do a Google search and you’ll find a list of plenty. Pick a few and sign up. You need to start interacting with the book review conversations so you can slip a few words in later about your own books. Never jump right in bragging about your own book it is rude and considered unethical practice by the forum as well as other social network communities. Naturally it is a good idea to use all the traditional social media platforms to promote your kindles; Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest and YouTube to name the most powerful ones. The key is linking all these social cites to each other as well as to your website blog and most importantly to your Amazon Author Profile.
Eventually you will have to start looking for smaller social networks that you can get involved with also and test the waters to find the best ones for book talk on your specific genre, subject or field. For example, if you just published a Kindle Mystery, Mystery Manor Dot Net or Cozy-Mystery would be places to try to promote through.
Kindle World dot Blog spot is a long standing Amazon forum thread. Kindle Post is another platform. I suggest you surf these blogs and forums to get ideas on how to promote from the other authors who are engaging there. See what they are doing and pick the methods you are comfortable with using to promote your type of work. Different tactics are suitable for different types of literature.
Naturally like with any other online marketing you are going to want to scan through the book review blogs and leave some comments with links back to your website and Facebook fan pages where you can really set up the pages to promote your newest Kindle publication. Yes, as a kindle publisher, if you are serious about turning Kindling into a career or at least making some decent money with Kindling, you are going to want to have a website and establish some FaceBook real estate. Now don’t get scared. Readers and book reviewers need a place they can go to learn more about you as an author. Your author website can be simply, a free website where you list your writing bio with credentials and previous published works. Or you can get as fancy as you wish to go. Your website and your facebook fan pages will be your home base where you announce what you are working on next. Link to any reviews you receive on the web. Tell people about yourself and engage with your fans and readership as it builds.
Remember now that your book is live on Kindle you are a celebrity! Maybe you are not as well-known as Tom Cruise yet but officially, yes you have celebrity status. That means you need to start thinking like a celeb, acting like a celeb, and conduction business like a celeb would if you are going to capitalize on all the opportunities that are available to you for promoting your books. Fan building can be a tediously slow process. But every star starts somewhere. And you never know what will trigger your big break! So, Kindle author, keep your options open and start promoting now! Use common sense and any method of marketing you’ve ever known about to start. The most important thing is not to procrastinate! And don’t take the attitude that out there somewhere is a magic wand and once you find that magic wand and wave it over your new manuscript it will sell millions of copies. Every successful author makes it to the big time in a different way! No one can predict what your path to the ‘BIG TIME’ will be. But, if you don’t start promoting and seriously give it your all, we can predict you won’t make it. Being a great writer is only the first half of the battle! Welcome to kindle Marketing.
Hold Your Head Up High You Are A Kindle Author Now!
By Stuart Leventhal
Not everyone who publishes a Kindle Book does it to make money. Lot’s of people use Kindle as a platform for gaining prestige in their field. Having a few books that you authored is one of the best ways to signify you are an authority figure on your topics. You make your money working at your field of endeavor but you showoff your Kindle Books as a badge of honor! Think of it this way, who are you going to trust to do your Heart Bypass Surgery the young guy just out of Med school or the Doctor who has authored fifteen books on the Procedure? That being said, everyone who published a Kindle Book, no matter what the subject or genre, even Science fiction authors and yes, poets, should leverage this badge of achievement element, as well as the bragging rights that come along with being a published author. Immediately add this accomplishment to your bio and resume! Start telling everyone; family friends, co-workers, business associates. Word of mouth has to get started somewhere. Why not your mouth!
If you want to sell more books, every piece of correspondence you now engage in will end with *check out my new Kindle Book on Amazon.com titled…”Add your Kindle Book title here!”
THE TRICKS TO SELLING MORE KINDLE BOOKS
The basic principal of selling Kindle Books is well known but implementing it is not always as easy as it seems. The blue print is to first give away a bunch of copies as an enticement to get people to review your book favorably. This is because the more good reviews you get the more people are going to be interested in your book. Have no good reviews and most people browsing Amazon won’t give your read the time of day! The other fact to take into consideration is the more books you sell the higher Amazon ranks, rates or lists your book. Get listed high and you sell a ton of books. Get listed low and no one knows you have a Kindle book out there. The name of the game is, get positive reviews and plenty of them!
Now, for the bad news; if you are new to Kindling and this is your first Kindle Book then it is doubtful that you have built up the network of peers, friends and fans who you can rely on to give you a bunch of positive reviews. You see the veteran Kindlers have been running in packs and circling the wagons. This means that they have spent years forming tight groups who look out for each other. How that works is when one of the group publishes a new Kindle everyone else in the tight knit group gives the publisher’s new book glowing reviews. This fools the system into believing that there is a potentially best seller on the horizon, which attracts everyone’s attention and thus a lot of hype is created over another sub-par book. Now, if this is your first book, you are not going to be welcomed with open arms into one of these groups. But my advice is if you are planning on getting serious about your Kindle publishing career then there is no time like the present to start forming your own group of Kindle supporters. This is the key to the kingdom. Eventually your tight knit group will grow to be quite large and powerful and you will all look out for each other and this will spare you all a lot of extra work and marketing costs.
This all works because Amazon in their infinite wisdom does not distinguish between free give-away reads and actual book sales where money exchanges hands. They throw the free reads into the sales counts when they report sales. They also count the reviews made by people who didn’t pay to read the book as equal to a paying customer’s book review. Thus, Amazon is backing this form of promoting because they know by giving away free reads for a limited time a buzz can be created that will carry on well after the free days end. It has worked well for them so far so there is no reason to assume they will change this platform. You need to leverage this strategy and culture to benefit you and your books sales too. The FREE Reads are a big part of what makes Kindle so popular and keeps this whole system growing and prospering. Don’t fight it! run with it!
So, if you are learning how to promote your first Kindle Book, which is 90% of you, since a veteran Kindler should already know what has to be done. (Although, we have a few unique tips so veterans stick around!) The bad news is that you probably already finished writing your Kindle Book and most of you have already loaded it onto Amazon too. I can say this because, most new Kindlers are engrossed in the writing process and then they rush into the publishing process and our process, the marketing process is what they turn to when after the first few weeks of the book launch there are no sales recorded in their account. Now they are playing catch up with their marketing!
The very best advice I can give you about Kindle Book promotion, is start early, way before your book is even near finished. Now don’t panic! We will salvage your failed book launch but I want you to know how much harder it is going to be at this late stage in the game to play catch up with your marketing. Also, I want you to begin marketing your next Kindle book right now! I don’t care if you haven’t written a word. Start setting up for your big launch of book two as you read and learn and implement these strategies for your current Kindle Publication. This will give you something to look forward to that is super positive. Emotionally this will do wonders for your soul. You will know for a fact that when you are ready to publish again you will be ultra-prepared and because of all the preliminary promoting, you will be assured of a huge successful book launch. That is not to say we should chalk this first book up as a total learning experience but let’s use this time productively and not dwell hard on ourselves. We can set up an explosive round two while we dig our way out of what could have been a disastrous disappointment in round one.
Now, wipe your eyes and let’s get back to Kindle Book promoting!
A. There’s no time like the present to set up an Amazon List Mania Account. Next create a list of the best books in the same category of your book, choose high selling authors and authors you now are authority figures in your niche or genre. Add your book title to the list! This obviously also works best when you’ve set this list up a few months ahead of your book launch and updated it daily creating a decent reference list on your topic full of other people’s books. Then when your book goes live you already have a platform of visitors coming to check out your quality list and you’ve proven your credibility over the past few months. Now adding when you add your book it won’t stand out like a sore thumb that you’ve gone to all this trouble just to advertise your own book. It will appear like all along you’ve been interested in your topic or niche or genre and finally you decided to add your own book to the fine mix.
B. We’ve talked about the importance of engaging with popular social media platforms already. Every time you utilize a new marketing strategy you should be connecting it with as many of the things you have already invested time in developing. This means that you should tweet and let your Facebook followers know about your Amazon list and you should share the info on you Pinterest and linkedin Platforms too and any other social media sites you belong to. Leveraging all the hard work you’ve already put in is how you eventually become a powerful entity on the web in whatever niche you desire. The idea is to continually build your communication network, until you are huge enough to promote anything with just a few clicks. So stay focused and don’t neglect what you’ve already started now comes the easy part.
C. Do some search engine searches in Google, yahoo and/or Bing for “your niche” novel blogs, “your niche” novel reviewers, “Your niche” review websites and similar terminology. Choose about ten sites from the top of the list and 15-20 lower down on the search results. The lower ones should be less competition for you to get involved with and their administrators should be anxious to work with you. But you want to try to engage with the sites that have huge audiences too! Create a quick email offering to provide a free copy of your book for their website writers and bloggers to be able to write a review on your new book. Also offer to do an interview with them. Send them your bio and any promotional material that will help them write an interesting expose on you and your work. If you contact 25-30 such websites and blogs, you should get at least 5 acceptances to either review your book, excerpt your book, or interview you. Make sure you are prepared to slant your interview question answers towards explaining clearly why your book and writings in general would appeal to their particular website visitors or blog readers.
D. Remember, keep your chin up. We are building the base to make all your promoting in the future super easy. Once you have all your marketing eggs lined up in your basket it will come down to just a few clicks to promote your new books. Network with other novelists and authors in your niche as well as other niches. By interacting with as many other writers as you can, you will no doubt discover new and unique way of advertising and marketing your books. Share your strategies and they will open up and share theirs back. Exchange tales of your failures as well as what is working now! with each other. Join as many writer’s groups as you can participate in. Join The Book Marketing Network, LinkedIn groups devoted to your types of novels. Remember to join the groups for readers as well as groups for writers and especially groups for bloggers. Join any Facebook groups devoted to your type of book as well as your topic. Join Google+ communities devoted to discussing the subject of your novels. Search out Pinterest users who pin photos about your topic and make it easy to get your covers pinned to their pin boards.
Interact with as many of these groups as you can. Ask questions. Share answers. Comment! Comment! Comment! About everything; other fellow writers and especially about fellow authors’ books! Believe me some will remember and will be happy to repay the favor when your book launches! *Again in your comments link and constantly mention all the different platforms of marketing you’ve already established. Our efforts must always be cumulative and always linked to harness the power of all our previous efforts!
E. Set up an account on ‘Library Thing’ to be maximized for promotion in the not so distant future.
*Again, I can’t stress this enough; if you just published your first Kindle book then most likely you are behind in the promoting. The best advice I can give is start promoting way before you have finished your book. You don’t have to have a book finished to set up your network that you will use to market that book. Create some web real estate. Besides your own author website and a few blogs on your topic, set up Instagram, learn how to make use of Stumble Upon and Digg. As soon as you master one social media medium add the next to one your arsenal! Then, when it comes time to publish all you’ll have to do is add the info about your book to your ongoing platform and let all your online friends toot your horn for you! They should be happy to help, since you’ve been helping toot their horns for months!
As with anything else; Marketing on the internet, especially something as competitive as Kindle Books, takes time to learn. For instance, there is having a Facebook book fan page about your books and then there are authors who have built up over a million Facebook followers! The same goes for each of the social media platforms. Plus each medium has its little tricks that help you get the most out of your efforts with them. And, there are all the usual internet marketing strategies like SEO and SEM, link building, long tail keywords, free and paid multi classified ad submissions, free and paid press releases to name a few, all available for you to take advantage of too if you have the time to learn them all. But, all of the advance tactics always work best when the basics are already in place. Because good internet marketing is about getting everything you implement to work with everything else you’ve already got working. Once you have more experience with internet marketing you are going to realize the basics actually still work the very best of all, if you avoid the pit falls and know the ins and outs of exploiting their best benefits to the maximum and beyond. Just a few of the basic marketing techniques is all you really have to master! The problem is most people quit or move on to the newest online fad before getting to that master level.
The trick to building fast with any internet, promotion method, is engaging with the big players related to your subject, topic or specialty. For example, in every social media platform there are people who are killing it in your niche. As a new comer you need to figure out how you can hitch your star to their wagon. Don’t fall into the trap of wasting enormous amount of time conversing with people who have almost no followers, friends or fans themselves. The good news is it is very easy to find out who the best and biggest are because they are not hiding from anyone. Just, Google search for whomever you are trying to find and see who Google ranks page one and two. Don’t expect them to just hand you the key to the kingdom! Now comes the hard part, getting the big boys and girls to play nice and hopefully invite you into their circles!
The problem it will take you years by yourself to build a large following the regular way most people engage with social media, blogging and email list building. You want to build quick and that means leveraging all the hard work other people already did for you. You need to invest time to find out how you can communicate with someone important. Design ways of being seen as valuable to them. Just like getting one authority and relevant backlink is worth hundreds of un-relevant backlinks, so is engaging with an authority social media figure in your niche who already has tons of fans.
Think about it; with just one good article, placed at the right time on the right website or blog and you could win over thousands of fans that took that web master or blogger a few years to build up! And there is no reason to stop with just one success. Repeat the same process over and over and over with other power bloggers and big website administrators. Now is the time to start sending requests to be interviewed and press releases. Include in your offers something of valuable they can give away to their fans for free and be you will be a hero. Sometime just asking the right question in a blog comment can start the ball rolling for you but then you need to up the ante! Perhaps give them an excerpt from your next book or better yet a chapter from your current book that was cut at the last minute prior to publication which no one else will gain access to but right now it is free only for them. Now, that is worth clicking on your link for!
LEVERAGING YOUR NEW KINDLE BADGE OF AUTHORSHIP
So you wrote a book, FINALLY! But, I bet you never dreamed it was so hard to sell one? Now you are just frustrated! Well get over yourself. You should be proud! You did it! You are an author! You should go celebrate! Okay, so there are a few more steps you have to make before you can enjoy the big pay day. But all is not lost! You can do this. Stick with it and you will figure out the recipe for Kindle success.
There is more than one path to the top of Kindle publishing. Everyone markets differently. Everyone’s campaign will be unique in the end. My advice is to find out about every e-book promotion tactic you hear about. Try them all and tweak them to fit your life situation, life style, personality quirks, strengths and weaknesses etc. Figure out what is the best fit for you taking into account your writing genre, type of fans and audience. All these techniques work, some take longer than others and some are more time consuming to implement. A combination of the techniques seems to convert the best. You get the cumulative power going and that seems to seed the viral growth everyone seeks. But you have to start your marketing campaign now. Sitting around and waiting for Amazon to make you rich is not an option. It does not work that way! All righty, enough of the pep talk! Let’s get back to Kindle Book Promoting!
I know you want to learn how to sell your first book but you need to focus on book two also otherwise the second time round won’t be the charm either. What I’m talking about is you have to start thinking about how you can use this first book to market the next. We don’t want to start all over again from scratch each time we publish. The route to success should get easier and easier each time, with each new book and you should make more and more money in less time. For that to happen you must use this first book to pre-sell your next one. This can be done by putting links to all your social marketing sites inside this book. You can have an advertisement page as your last page that promotes all your off and online writing efforts as well as the next book specifically. This will build credibility with your readers.
You can have a link to a free giveaway such as a short episode that ends in a cliffhanger, making everyone want to get the next book to find out what happens. You may post a link to a Facebook page that describes the creative process behind the scene that went into the writing of the book. All kinds of creative possibilities are available, just be sure to include promotions for the coming book somewhere in the pages of the present publication. As well as, always mentioning your works in progress, whenever you promote your present titles. You’ll be thankful you started early when it comes time for your next book launch. And it coaches your fans to always be on the lookout for your next work.
*Posting a request at the end of your book requesting your satisfied readers to submit a book review of your work is also the very best way to assure you will get continual, ongoing book reviews and not just a few reviews during the first few weeks of your launch. And we all know how important getting reviews are for helping us rank well on Amazon.
I get it, you though writing a book was the ticket! And, it is not turning out to be all it was crack out to be. Listen, all successful authors have walked in your footsteps. We all start somewhere. But there are tons of perk for writing a book and getting it published besides making money. You still have bragging rights! That’s correct, not everyone is a published author. Remember, you own the rights to this book for the rest of your life! The only thing you are really disappointed with is that your book didn’t take off and make you a millionaire instantly. When the Kindle hype for your book runs its course you still have multiple platforms available to you for re-launching the same book both online and off!
There’s offering it in PDF format, submitting to Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks store, Sony’s Nook e-Book store and the Mobile App Market places, the list goes on and on. Amazon Kindle is just one form of publishing but with proper planning, you can leverage your minor Kindle successes to help you launch bigger on other reading platforms. So let’s start thinking of our first Kindle as just the first step in the process of maximizing the earnings from our first book. And let’s keep our chin up and start enjoying the perks that come along with being an author!
*Giving someone a signed copy of a book with your name on it works a hell of a lot better than giving them a lame business card. You are an author now, hold your head up high and act the part and claim the spoils! Being a published author opens doors for you not only socially but in your line of business as well. Yes, even if the book has nothing to do with your line of work. People are still impressed! They look at you differently and treat you differently. Your status is truly elevated. You’ve got a title now that no one can take away from you! You are an Amazon Published Author! Think how your clients, co-workers, bosses, friends and family members’ mouths are going to drop when they first spot the link to your book live on Amazon at the end of your email signature!
Now, let’s get back to our main goal of getting your book into the hands of as many people as possible, setting up our future sales platform and maximizing potential earnings from your first book!
More Amazon Kindle Book Promotion Tips
by Stu Leventhal
Now if you are writing a nonfiction book such as a how to instructional, the key to more sales is doing your keyword research before you commit to the name of your title. Having keywords that people search for a lot as part of your title will up your sales a big percentage. Of course, with Fiction it is tougher to slip the keywords in.
Okay now here’s another decent e-readers’ site for you to request a book review from. Just go there and fill in the form with as much info as you can produce about yourself and your writing career and of course inform their fine members all about your first Kindle Book: http://bookgoodies.com
You will find up to date info on book publishing and e-book promoting resources all over bookgoodies website so browse around and pay attention, there are always some good marketing tips to be had.
Since we should always exhaust all the free marketing tactics before we ever invest money, I’m going to advise that you write up a news release about your book and include your bio then send it out to a few of the free news release services. Later, when we start to make some money may we may decide to pay for having some more news releases distributed.
PAID ADVERTISING:
Pay for play! Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t at least tell you where to get a decent paid ad campaign going. Hey now, I don’t believe in paying money either for online marketing that I can get free. My advice is do everything yourself, until you’ve made some money from all your free marketing efforts, cause then the profits are yours to do with as you like. Just because I am a firm believer on putting some funds back into a business doesn’t mean you have to agree with me. And yes that is what this is now, a book manufacturing and sales business! So, since most of you wish to learn how to promote Kindles freely, because we are mostly all broke, due to this is probably our first book. I will keep this paid Kindle marketing section brief and to the point so we can move on and get back learning how to leverage everything online to explode our book sales without going broke to do it.
Bookbub is the place to buy your way into Amazon’s good graces. Their prices are steep! But the results should cover the cost. I urge you not to go in debt trying to market your first Kindle Book! Although plenty of people, smarter than I actually feel paying is the only way to go. Be aware you will have to spend at least a couple grand to really take advantage of Bookbub’s promotional power but I’ve seen some of the books that have been promoted through Bookbub sell hundreds of thousands of sales. So if that is the case for you, $2000 US dollars is a small percentage of the spoils.
Bookbub can work magic. And remember, the goal is to get on Amazon’s good side so they move you to the top of the rankings in your category and you sell even more! That means if you spend a few thousand in advertising and you get the big sales fast you are almost guaranteeing that Amazon will rank you and your book sales will continue to soar even after the advertising period has run its course. But like everything else, with paid for marketing there is the gamble that you won’t get the large sales. No advertiser can guarantee book sales since a lot has to do with what your book is about, are people looking for a book on that subject right now, is your market already saturated for your type of book and of course the quality of the writing comes into play.
Now once you’ve made ten thousand dollars or so, I don’t see any problem with spending a few thousand to promote your next book. After all, most of us authors enjoy writing and hate marketing! So if you can work out a way to buy all your promotion needs and still make a nice profit then I say go for it. Because, that will give you more time to do what you love, which is creating great books! Just be careful and cautious when shelling out money for promotions and marketing, there are a lot of shady dealers out there.
*Amazon doesn’t sell your Book for you! Not at first! But once you prove your book is worthy then they jump onboard and take it from there. The question is how do we assure Amazon that our book is the book in our reading category that they should back and recommend over and above all the other author’s publishing also in our genre?
Your job is to convince Amazon as quickly as possible that your book idea, title and or cover sells without them and the people who buy it then read it like it and recommend it to others. That is your goal! You don’t want to have to sell your own book forever and ever. You want to make a big splash in the first few weeks to catch Amazon’s attention then they will take over and promote it for you. This is similar to convincing Google to rank your website on the first page and just as difficult to achieve. Just like if you get your website on the first page of Google, tons of people will click on your link then visit your site. On amazon kindle you want to be feature as tops in your books niche. Then tons of people will buy based on Amazon’s recommendation. You see Amazon is saying your book is one of the best book in the category these people search for. To take advantage of this process you must have the same words In your description of your book that amazon customers are going to type in the search box when they search! It is basically the same SEO strategies SEO experts use to rank websites on search engines! Tweaked for Amazon!
So, to get sales you first have to understand SEO and SEM basics. Let’s all go to http://www.gurumarketingtips.com for a quick tip from the master SEO experts then we’ll come back to make sure we understand how to adapt the basic SEO strategies to work best on the Amazon platform. The tutorials on SEO at http://www.gurumarketingtips.com are free. The best part is the info can also be used for driving traffic to your author website and facebook pages and so on and so on!... Meaning it is a great investment for your time. You’ll benefit for years from this SEO as well as their other fine marketing training.
Okay, so by now everyone knows how to write their book descriptions so they are full of the proper keywords to make sure Amazon’s readers find your book. I’m assuming your book is a quality read too. We’ve already talked about asking for a positive review on the last page of your book. I can only hope you’re book is a satisfying read because those reviews are a big factor in how Amazon continues to rank your book! Therefore we must readdress how important it is to make sure your book really is great! If that means paying for editors, proofreaders, writing advice, author mentoring as well as giving it to people for feedback that you can fix or enhance before you publish it live on Kindle! Make sure your product is perfect!
So I’ve already stated I hate to pay for marketing when there are tons of free traffic sources online. But I’m quite okay with paying for real assistance with sprucing up your writing! Ultimately, your writing will be the biggest factor long term for generating continual sales!
There are so, so many things you can do only dedicating a few hours per week that will cost you nothing and gain you views and hopefully click-throughs to purchases. But, you have to have a piece of web real estate to take advantage of most of them. Let’s review our basic strategy so far:
Create a landing page and at least a blog about your book. Provide all the known links to where it can be purchased. Share your best compelling excerpts, maybe a good dialog scene. Add some descriptions of your writing style and the books tempo or tone to generate some additional buzz for your book. Create a facebook fan page and twitter account! Take those then link and post them all everywhere you can. Leave blog comments with your links in them, create classified ads advertising your new book and in general, make sure that the landing page, blog links and Facebook page are out there as much as possible. These are the bare minimum basics or getting started. Post ads on as many classified sites as you can find that are free. Just do a google search for free classified ads and a list of hundreds will pop up. Below are some resources and helpful links about marketing a book that can help. One allows you to one-click social share which helps TONS and saves huge amounts of time. If you are serious about your book publishing career, you need to just start dedicating a few hours to the cause per week now, even if your book is not completed yet!
Now if you are writing a nonfiction book such as a how to instructional, the key to more sales is doing your keyword research before you commit to the name of your title. Having keywords that people search for a lot as part of your title will up your sales a big percentage. Of course, with Fiction it is tougher to slip the keywords in.
Okay now here’s another decent e-readers’ site for you to request a book review from. Just go there and fill in the form with as much info as you can produce about yourself and your writing career and of course inform their fine members all about your first Kindle Book: http://bookgoodies.com
You will find up to date info on book publishing and e-book promoting resources all over bookgoodies website so browse around and pay attention, there are always some good marketing tips to be had.
Since we should always exhaust all the free marketing tactics before we ever invest money, I’m going to advise that you write up a news release about your book and include your bio then send it out to a few of the free news release services. Later, when we start to make some money may we may decide to pay for having some more news releases distributed.
PAID ADVERTISING:
Pay for play! Now, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t at least tell you where to get a decent paid ad campaign going. Hey now, I don’t believe in paying money either for online marketing that I can get free. My advice is do everything yourself, until you’ve made some money from all your free marketing efforts, cause then the profits are yours to do with as you like. Just because I am a firm believer on putting some funds back into a business doesn’t mean you have to agree with me. And yes that is what this is now, a book manufacturing and sales business! So, since most of you wish to learn how to promote Kindles freely, because we are mostly all broke, due to this is probably our first book. I will keep this paid Kindle marketing section brief and to the point so we can move on and get back learning how to leverage everything online to explode our book sales without going broke to do it.
Bookbub is the place to buy your way into Amazon’s good graces. Their prices are steep! But the results should cover the cost. I urge you not to go in debt trying to market your first Kindle Book! Although plenty of people, smarter than I actually feel paying is the only way to go. Be aware you will have to spend at least a couple grand to really take advantage of Bookbub’s promotional power but I’ve seen some of the books that have been promoted through Bookbub sell hundreds of thousands of sales. So if that is the case for you, $2000 US dollars is a small percentage of the spoils.
Bookbub can work magic. And remember, the goal is to get on Amazon’s good side so they move you to the top of the rankings in your category and you sell even more! That means if you spend a few thousand in advertising and you get the big sales fast you are almost guaranteeing that Amazon will rank you and your book sales will continue to soar even after the advertising period has run its course. But like everything else, with paid for marketing there is the gamble that you won’t get the large sales. No advertiser can guarantee book sales since a lot has to do with what your book is about, are people looking for a book on that subject right now, is your market already saturated for your type of book and of course the quality of the writing comes into play.
Now once you’ve made ten thousand dollars or so, I don’t see any problem with spending a few thousand to promote your next book. After all, most of us authors enjoy writing and hate marketing! So if you can work out a way to buy all your promotion needs and still make a nice profit then I say go for it. Because, that will give you more time to do what you love, which is creating great books! Just be careful and cautious when shelling out money for promotions and marketing, there are a lot of shady dealers out there.
*Amazon doesn’t sell your Book for you! Not at first! But once you prove your book is worthy then they jump onboard and take it from there. The question is how do we assure Amazon that our book is the book in our reading category that they should back and recommend over and above all the other author’s publishing also in our genre?
Your job is to convince Amazon as quickly as possible that your book idea, title and or cover sells without them and the people who buy it then read it like it and recommend it to others. That is your goal! You don’t want to have to sell your own book forever and ever. You want to make a big splash in the first few weeks to catch Amazon’s attention then they will take over and promote it for you. This is similar to convincing Google to rank your website on the first page and just as difficult to achieve. Just like if you get your website on the first page of Google, tons of people will click on your link then visit your site. On amazon kindle you want to be feature as tops in your books niche. Then tons of people will buy based on Amazon’s recommendation. You see Amazon is saying your book is one of the best book in the category these people search for. To take advantage of this process you must have the same words In your description of your book that amazon customers are going to type in the search box when they search! It is basically the same SEO strategies SEO experts use to rank websites on search engines! Tweaked for Amazon!
So, to get sales you first have to understand SEO and SEM basics. Let’s all go to http://www.gurumarketingtips.com for a quick tip from the master SEO experts then we’ll come back to make sure we understand how to adapt the basic SEO strategies to work best on the Amazon platform. The tutorials on SEO at http://www.gurumarketingtips.com are free. The best part is the info can also be used for driving traffic to your author website and facebook pages and so on and so on!... Meaning it is a great investment for your time. You’ll benefit for years from this SEO as well as their other fine marketing training.
Okay, so by now everyone knows how to write their book descriptions so they are full of the proper keywords to make sure Amazon’s readers find your book. I’m assuming your book is a quality read too. We’ve already talked about asking for a positive review on the last page of your book. I can only hope you’re book is a satisfying read because those reviews are a big factor in how Amazon continues to rank your book! Therefore we must readdress how important it is to make sure your book really is great! If that means paying for editors, proofreaders, writing advice, author mentoring as well as giving it to people for feedback that you can fix or enhance before you publish it live on Kindle! Make sure your product is perfect!
So I’ve already stated I hate to pay for marketing when there are tons of free traffic sources online. But I’m quite okay with paying for real assistance with sprucing up your writing! Ultimately, your writing will be the biggest factor long term for generating continual sales!
There are so, so many things you can do only dedicating a few hours per week that will cost you nothing and gain you views and hopefully click-throughs to purchases. But, you have to have a piece of web real estate to take advantage of most of them. Let’s review our basic strategy so far:
Create a landing page and at least a blog about your book. Provide all the known links to where it can be purchased. Share your best compelling excerpts, maybe a good dialog scene. Add some descriptions of your writing style and the books tempo or tone to generate some additional buzz for your book. Create a facebook fan page and twitter account! Take those then link and post them all everywhere you can. Leave blog comments with your links in them, create classified ads advertising your new book and in general, make sure that the landing page, blog links and Facebook page are out there as much as possible. These are the bare minimum basics or getting started. Post ads on as many classified sites as you can find that are free. Just do a google search for free classified ads and a list of hundreds will pop up. Below are some resources and helpful links about marketing a book that can help. One allows you to one-click social share which helps TONS and saves huge amounts of time. If you are serious about your book publishing career, you need to just start dedicating a few hours to the cause per week now, even if your book is not completed yet!