Selling My First Book via Amazon

charlie.simm

charlie.simm

Gigantic Websites Dot Com
Jul 6, 2007
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Last year, I finally decided to start working on my first book and it will probably be finished within 2-3 months. It's not about making monies online btw.

The book is related to a topic I'm very passionate about and I think people will like it. Anyway, I've been a marketer long enough to know that you can have the best product in the world and still fail if your strategy sucks, so I decided to ask my fellow webmasters for help.

I have no experience with Amazon whatsoever, nada.

Therefore, I'll just put it this way: if you were to write a book about XYZ (where XYZ is a topic you're passionate about but that's still commercial enough to have decent revenue potential), how would you market it?

Here are some of my ideas:

1) Generate as much buzz as possible initially. I'm willing to invest a decent chunk of change to make it happen because if the book does well at the beginning, it will rank higher on Amazon. How?

1.1) By contacting some of the people who run popular newsletters and paying them to tell their subscribers about the book

1.2) By writing a bunch of kick-ass guest posts and sending them to the people behind some of most popular websites related to the niche in question

1.3) By doing something similar to what James Altucher (guerilla mentioned this guy a while ago, I highly recommend reading his blog) did, in other words giving people their money back if they email me their honest opinion about the book. That way, I'd receive additional Amazon sales which would help me increase the book's rank (I assume) as well as a few honest opinions about my book, sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Now I know I'd be losing money each time due to Amazon's commission but again, I'm willing to spend some cash initially

2) Launch a few websites about the niche in question (I'm already working on this) through which I'll build a list initially and after the book is published, they'll simply be promotion vehicles

3) Create a couple of twitter accounts (pay someone to constantly follow the followers of certain industry leaders, publish a few insightful tweets every now and then, etc.) and possibly do this for other social media sites as well (suggestions plzkthx)

4) Post on the most popular forums or pay someone to do it. Gradually build a reputation. Not too sure this is a good way to allocate time and/or money. If I do this myself, I'd have to invest a lot of time or if I were to pay someone to do it, I think it would cost quite a bit because I'd have to find someone knowledgeable (if the posts are shitty, this strategy would be pretty much useless)

5) Have my designers create some catchy infographics (possibly a video as well) and do my best to receive exposure via reddit (for example). Easier said than done, I know. Maybe you guys can recommend someone who knows his stuff when it comes to this kind of marketing.

6) Buy traffic. Hopefully a few of you guys have promoted Amazon books before and can give me some pointers.

That's it for now, looking forward to reading some more general or Amazon-specific suggestions.

Oh and feel free to PM me your Skype ID if you want to chat. I'm a complete beginner when it comes to Amazon but would be able to help you with advice about domaining, for example. I'm a reasonably good domainer and also pretty successful at selling services (content, hosting, design), so I'll do my best to help whenever you have questions about something I'm good at. That or sexual favors :anon.sml:
 


Charlie, I have no idea what your long-term Amazon goals are, so I'll shoot from the hip and hope something hits.

My assumption: you want to generate long-term revenue (LTR) via the Kindle platform.

First, very few debuts hit it big. Most remain obscure. Generating LTR means building a catalog. So be prolific and get to work on your 2nd, 3rd, and 10th books.

Second, sales are driven by your audience. That means your audience should already be in place before you release your book. Release, post on blog, email list, etc. to send your fans to buy. It sounds like you're doing it the other way around. If so, the battle for recognition, sales, and revenue is uphill.

Third, going free used to be a slam dunk sales generator. That's no longer the case. Part of the reason is because Amazon has changed its algo to lower the rankings of free books in its "also bought" list. It also makes you click to see the Top 100 Free; Amazon used to display them by default. Another part of the reason is that free is becoming the trailer park of indie authors. There's a lot of trash out there and readers' trust has waned.

Having said the third point, free can still work in the context of a debut if you approach it with the right expectations. Consider: readers who don't know you want to taste your stuff before they buy. Let them taste it for free by setting your first book on permafree (chuck the idea of making money with your first release). Get them to like your material. They'll end up buying your other books down the road (hence, the need for a catalog (see 1st point)).

The old way (circa 2011) to leverage free was to publish via KDP and work the 5 free days per quarter. That's fine if you already have an audience. The "new" way (it's not actually new, but authors are getting more traction with it) is to pub outside of KDP, set your price at $2.99 or more on Amazon, list it for free on other platforms, then get some folks to hit the "tell us about a lower price" link on Amazon. Give it a few weeks, and Amazon should lower the price of your book to free. Voila! Permafree.

Publish your 2nd, 3rd, and 10th books on KDP to take advantage of the countdown deals. Once you have a rep for producing good material, you can light a fire under fans and potential readers by running a countdown. These are great because Amazon lists the normal price, the special price, and a countdown time (including seconds!) to expiration. Very good for spurring purchases.

Fourth, create a kickass cover. Seriously. Spend a few hundred bucks to hire a designer.

Fifth, if you're doing fiction, get to know other authors in your niche and organize a collection for $.99. It's becoming a popular way for readers to get a taste of several authors for cheap. Good exposure.

One last note: the big lists that promote Kindle books (BookBub, etc.) are much harder to make work today than was the case in 2012 and 2013. They're too expensive and readers are more discriminating today (see 3rd point above). But new lists are coming out every month, and are worth testing.

Disclaimer: I have not yet published my material on Amazon, so take the above with a grain of salt. Hopefully, I have a reputation in your mind of keeping my mouth shut on topics about which I'm ignorant.
 
Two things for you:

1) Learn from others' experience: Writers' Cafe is a far better resource than WickedFire will be for this particular topic.

2) Do not do this:

Fourth, create a kickass cover. Seriously. Spend a few hundred bucks to hire a designer.
Click to expand...

That's poor advice when you're new to the game... ask Webvan how that mentality turned out. Go as lean as possible until you learn the ropes.

For example, this is what I would use: Go On Write. The Pre-made Kindle / eBook Book Cover Depository.

Good luck with this, be sure to document your experience with the launch and share it with us later.
 
In on thread, Wickedfire needs more Kindle threads.

I just started this journey about a month ago. I'm doing it a little differently than you where I'm making a lot of books at a little price vs. a couple high quality ones though.

The route I'm going is niche sites and social media ads because everything I'm doing is centered around a niche. This is just to get emails, that's all I care about.

The only thing I can think to suggest so far is don't just think Amazon, there's B&N, niche book sites, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords. This also means not doing Amazon's program where it limits the sales to their store though -- from what I understand this is much less popular now though for authors anyways.
 
Ask Steven?

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Music-Trivia-Vol-60s-ebook/dp/B00AWE6HTC/]Amazon.com: Ultimate Music Trivia Vol 1 - The 60s eBook: Steven Wagenheim: Kindle Store[/ame]


[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Wars-Steven-Wagenheim-ebook/dp/B00BOU7BJS/"]Amazon.com: Wizard Wars eBook: Steven Wagenheim: Kindle Store[/ame]



I remember about the music trivia, but he also has a 360 page fantasy book? Excellent.
 
Plan looks solid but, depending on the niche you're targeting, you may want to generate some controversy and get on the radar of some of the most influential blogs in your niche. A press release hyping up drama (with no follow links of course) might get you noticed. The key is to build up genuine buzz.
 
Shock-and-awe-picture.jpg


You need a shock and awe campaign. Just make sure you pick the right shock, and make sure you dont fuckup the awe.
 
One of friends did this recently with his first physical book- he emailed his list and offered some decent bonuses if they bought, made a facebook page with the same deal and got people to like it.

Worked out pretty well, he got to second place in his sub category sales ranking sandwiched between Arnold schwarzenegger and Louise Hay.
 
I have a small publishing biz line with a bunch of titles via print and kindle.

If your title is fiction, you probably won't make more than a couple dollars a month.

We publish non-fiction / reference guides at $25-50 per unit.

Use createspace for print copies
Pub to kindle and nook press
Generate author central profile, reviews, listmanias, so you'd like to's
Fiver to bump and hide reviews

That's the basics for making some money on a book product.

Non-fiction is a lot easier to profit from IMO. We do about 300-400 units per month total.
 
Hire a proofreader, typos are insidious and often invisible to the author. If you can afford it, get an editor.

GL u fuck! This is my road ur drivin on bitch! j/k (sorta)
 
The advice about working in a series is dead on, especially if you can can and clone it somehow so that achieving your tenth book is relatively easy. Books that are just variations on a theme do well (if they're good): "10 Ways To Find Strippers in Japan" is easily modified to "10 Ways To Find Strippers In New York." Obviously, this is a joke example, but it's an idea for producing a lot of content in good, high value books where you can recycle the template, build a list and sell a backend product.

You also need good copy and Amazon is driven by reviews. Once you get reviews on one book, you can use all those reviews on the next book in the series in the product description until that you get customer reviews.

You can also put sales copy in the first pages so that when people look inside, they're further convinced that you're the best option. Following that, you can have a "stick" letter that helps reduce buyer's remorse. Believe it or not but I've had refunds even on .99 books. My experiments demonstrate that having a stick letter seems to keep the refunds much, much lower.

I can go on and on about Amazon for hours ... maybe I should make an info product about it ...
 
Step 1 - steal underwear

Step 3 - profit

That is basically the formula every best selling author has used for multi million riches
 
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