- If you're going to be self publishing on Amazon KDP
then you're gonna need these five tips.
I know I've done some other tips,
but these ones are a little bit different, stay tuned.
Hey, just a heads up.
This video is sponsored by Fiverr
and I might also gonna give you some more details
about how Fiverr and Self Publishing with Dale
are working together for the 2020 finish strong challenge.
You can get details at DALELINKS.COM/CHALLENGE.
The biggest issue when it comes
to self publishing on Amazon KDP
is some authors really, really, really struggle
and make no real impact
when it comes to being an author.
So a lot of that is because of a number of factors.
You know what?
We're gonna talk about five,
five tips to really get the needle moving
and you're gonna wanna make sure you stick around
to the very end because I've saved a doozy,
the best for last.
Number one, be patient.
I know this is easier for me to say
and harder for you to do
especially if you're a new author.
Now, a new author meaning
that you've only published one book
and you've been in this business less than two years.
It's going to require just some confidence
that you're going in the right direction
and consistency and applying some
of the future things I may be talking about
here in this video.
But you're going to have to be patient.
You can't expect to watch a video
of some author who pulled in $10,000
their first month of being in the business
and that to be you.
Because those folks are the unicorns of the business.
And in some instances
you're gonna need to take it with a salt
because it's probably not all
that they're making it out to be.
Number two, become prolific.
The Amazon platform is a hungry beast.
And the only thing that satiates its appetite
is new products and also new products that sell quite a bit.
And one of the greatest ways
to actually appease that deep appetite
that the Amazon algorithm has
is by publishing more content.
In fact, actually Craig Martell once put it this way,
"Nothing promotes your last book like your next book."
Think about that.
If you can continue to put one foot in front of the other
and provide more content for people to consume
then Amazon is going to serve you out to more customers.
Become prolific, I know that's gonna be pretty tough
if you're an epic novelist.
So maybe you gotta kind of walk it back just a little bit
and think about possibly doing shorter publications.
Some short reads that lead over
to the flagship books like your epic novels.
Number three, never stop promoting ever.
I mean, never ever do you stop promoting.
If you like to lose book sales,
if you like it to where your book falls into obscurity,
then don't promote it.
If you want to really get it
to where it gets long-term sustainable growth,
then you're going to need to continue to promote it
in any capacity whatsoever.
Whether it's Amazon ads, Facebook ads, Google ads,
getting interviews, doing guest blog posts,
doing newsletter swaps, doing group promotions
through story origin.
There's so many ways that you can promote your book
that honestly you could do one promotional strategy
every day for the next year
and still have options available to you.
So if for some reason you say to me,
but Dale I I've tried everything.
No you haven't.
I am hard pressed to believe
you've tried every promotional strategy there is.
And once you're done going through it,
go through it again and find the things that work.
Double down on those specific methodologies.
And then do it again and again and again
because if it works once, it should work twice,
three times and so forth.
Number four, Amazon Author Central.
You gotta capitalize on this free feature
that Amazon makes available to you.
It is an author profile
that's a hundred percent free.
And you're able to catalog all of your books
onto one bookshelf and have one space
to send all your readers to.
And here's the big bonus.
Not too many people realize
that this is another way to index your publications.
Meaning that your book becomes
not just searchable through the product page,
and now it becomes searchable
through your Amazon author profile.
And the beauty of it is most recently,
they finally rolled out a new feature
for Amazon Author Central.
You can access that at AUTHOR.AMAZON.COM.
It is really, really nice.
You can see that it is flexible
according to the different regions.
You can change out your profile
into different languages if you wanted to,
you can track all of your reviews,
you can see what your book ranking is,
all that's done in one spot.
And so that way you can kind of better manage everything
and also get it to where...
Again, it's a one-stop shop for your readership.
Keeps sending people over there to purchase your books.
Because the more books they purchase
more Amazon serves it out to people.
And speaking of serving out to people,
the sponsorship of this channel Fiverr,
actually has a killer service
through the ebook and book publishing store.
You can take a look at that at DALELINKS.COM/FIVERR,
but here's the really cool thing.
We've partnered together,
Fiverr and Self Publishing with Dale here
and we actually put together
the 2020 finish strong challenge
where we're going to challenge you
to finishing out the year of 2020
by using some of Fiverr services.
You can find out details about this competition
and about that, there's over a thousand dollars
in cash prizes available to you
and for those that participate.
Details again are over at DALELINKS.COM/CHALLENGE.
And number five, a book overhaul.
Nothing really does a book better
than an entire overhaul.
If for some reason you see that sales are slowing down
or aren't happening whatsoever,
one of the best things to do is just to go through.
Wipe the slate clean
and try to refresh and renew your book.
Now, I'm gonna say, you're gonna start it out.
First of all, refresh your keywords.
Sometimes the keywords are the culprit
to why your book has dropped in relevancy and sales.
So go into the seven keywords you've utilized
inside the Amazon KDP dashboard.
Try to refresh and renew those at least once per year
as a minimum, once per year.
Now the soonest, you don't wanna do it
anywhere sooner than 30 days.
You've gotta give the Amazon algorithm enough time
to build relevancy for the given keywords you select.
Because if you're switching out, say every week
the algorithm is gonna go,
I don't know where this belongs.
And it's just gonna go ahead
and just toss you into the dumpster
with all the other bargain basement,
you know, things like the Steven Seagal films.
Next up it would be the book description.
Rehash that, renew it, go back at it
'cause chances are very likely
if people aren't buying your book,
then that book description
might not be enticing your audience in the right way.
Dip back into the keywords you've utilized
and said your seven keywords slots
and try to add in a few within that book description
to better entice the readership
and those searching for your type of content.
And also getting it to where
we grease the algorithmic wheels
and drive just a little bit more traffic
towards your book's direction.
Last but not least,
of course it's going to be the book cover.
Oh man, this is the biggest barrier of entry.
If you've got to hit-looking book cover
then forget about it.
No one's ever gonna buy it.
And if you find like I'm not selling any,
then this might be your culprit.
And just so you don't feel like,
oh man, I'm so ashamed,
I got a horrible cover or whatever.
It's, okay, even the best books.
I mean, we're talking everything
from Stephen King's different books
like how many book covers they have of it?
I mean, JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.
How many covers have they had?
They go through and they refresh those on a regular basis.
You have to treat your self publishing business
like a traditional publishing business would.
And really get it to where you think like a business
and go, okay, this isn't selling,
I better switch out this book cover.
I might wanna change out the book description.
Maybe my keywords aren't working out so well.
So a book overhaul is sometimes the best thing
that your book's going to need to get.
Hey, I got three tips for making money
self publishing on Amazon KDP
and I actually talk about it right over here in this video.
If you already saw that video
or you're not interested in it, YouTube just challenged you.
They said, hey, I don't think they're gonna click this one.
Hey, you be a rebel, go over here,
but they're challenging you.
They said they dare you to do it.
So I'll see you in either one of them either way.