- Did you know when you publish a book on KDP,
Amazon starts merchandising your book for you right away.
Places where Amazon markets your book to customers
on the Amazon website may include,
more items to consider,
customers with similar searches purchased
and customers who bought this item also bought.
Your book may also appear in shopping cart recommendations,
frequently bought together and many other places
on the Amazon website.
And that only scratches the surface.
Stay tuned.
You want a chance to win $5,000?
Find out more from our sponsors about the North Street
Book Competition later in this video.
Hey, I'm Dale L. Roberts, Best Selling Author
as well as a Self Publishing advocate who wants to show you
how to publish books that sell and I opened the video
with the Amazon's help page where they share
just a little bit more about marketing your book
and Amazon wants to equip you with as much tools
and resources as possible,
with some insights to really help you succeed
because when you succeed, well they succeed.
So in addition to the insights that I shared
at the very beginning of the video,
they actually give you ten ways to market your book.
Quality is the most important element
in generating reader excitement.
The better the book, the more likely it is to sell.
But you can maximize reader excitement by making sure
your book stands out.
So they make sure that they get you to understand
ten fundamental things when it comes to marketing
your book properly.
Number one, create a compelling cover.
Now they recommend using the cover creator tool.
I'm not sure that I'm going to agree with that
but if you're brand new to the business
and you don't have the discretionary funds
to reach out to a book cover designer,
or you just wanna publish a book
and say that you have it published then yeah,
the cover creator tool's gonna be just fine.
Number two, edit and proofread your book well.
Okay, so they wanna make sure that you have quality
work going out into the market.
Funny, they'll allow people to publish just about anything
on the market, but they also want to make sure
that you have it all polished and that it's readable
so that way there are continually customers
coming back to buy more and more and more
of your products so editing and proofreading
and folks, I'm just gonna kind of throw this one in here,
that doesn't mean to self edit and self proofread,
try to reach out to a professional to help you dial that in
if you can help it.
Number three, write a compelling book description.
This is something I've hammered home time and time and time
and time and again.
You gotta have a really good book cover
and the next thing is, if you don't have a book description
that compelling enough to get the customer to part ways
with their hard earned money, then chances are likely
they're gonna pass and they're gonna look for somebody else
that has a compelling book description that says,
wow, I need to get this right now.
This is gonna take some time and some effort
and some tweaking and maybe some peer feedback,
but put together a book description and take as much time
on writing and editing your book description
as you do your book.
In fact, it's probably even more important
because this is the greatest barrier of entry.
The book cover and the book description,
so make sure that it is on point.
Number four, introduce yourself to your readers.
Now they talk a little bit about author central
on this particular point here now,
if you've never heard of author central,
it's essentially a way to have a little hub for you
over on Amazon.
Your own little corner, to where you can have
all of your books related to you in one page.
Now I'm actually gonna put a link inside the description
down below to where you can actually access
a video series, where I walk you through on how to set up
author central and how to optimize it for discoverability.
Number five, promote your book online.
Between social media, forums, websites,
and more, they tell you, get out there,
promote it, so those of you that have been expecting
Amazon to do all the heavy lifting for you,
guess what, they're telling you specifically,
don't wait for us.
Go do it.
You have to see about letting the world know,
because even though you've published your book,
doesn't mean there's a big neon light
flashing down above you saying,
buy my book.
It just doesn't happen.
Number six, publish paperbacks through KDP.
Okay so it's great that you've put out an eBook,
but it's even better when you have an additional product
and an option for the customers to choose from.
So for instance, I enjoy reading print books,
but from time to time, I love to consume eBooks.
Whenever I'm on the go, I like to have something
readily available and not have to carry around
a gigantic stack of books.
And just as a reminder, the nice thing
about the Kindle Direct Publishing program
and the paperback books is there's something
that's called Expand to Distribution.
Now Ingram Content Group,
another company outside of Amazon,
distributes out to thousands of different online retailers
from Barnes & Noble to target.com,
walmart.com and even libraries and institutions.
So Expand to Distribution helps you get out
to even more avenues, imagine if you just skipped
the step of putting out a print book,
all of the customers and potential readers
that you're leaving out in the dark.
Number seven, upload videos and book trailers.
So this part right here kinda ties in to author central
to where you can actually show case your book
through say videos or even trailers.
You can upload it directly there.
Now, again, I have all that information
inside the author central video series,
you can take a look at that to know exactly how to do that.
Number eight, join Amazon Associates program.
Okay so you can earn up to 4% more on each one
of the sales of your books.
So rather than just sending people over to your book
product page on Amazon and just getting paid
your normal, say 35% or 70% royalty for an eBook,
or in some instances 60% for your print book,
you can get an additional amount more
and they're encouraging you to do it
so to get it set up with the Amazon Associates program,
just do a quick Google of Amazon Associates program
and the rest is pretty intuitive
on how you fill everything out.
Once you do get that, you can go over into Amazon,
go to your product page and then there's a drop down
that you can click on the product page
that will give you a special link you can share
to everybody or even specific links
that goes to Facebook or Twitter.
Number nine, add a Kindle countdown deal promotion.
Now this is a KDP Select benefit only,
so if your eBook is not enrolled in the KDP Select program,
then you will not have a Kindle countdown deal.
Now I've remarked highly upon Kindle countdown deals
a number of times here on this channel
and what it works is, that you have your book
normally priced, let's say at 2.99 but for a limited time,
for upwards of a week, you can actually cut it down
to say 99 cents, you still get your higher royalty
and it gets put into a very special category.
I've seen some really great results
with Kindle countdown deals but the important thing is,
if you do utilize it, you have to promote it.
Before we get to the final marketing tip,
I'm gonna share you a bonus marketing tip
brought to you by our sponsors, the Winning Writers,
would you like a chance at winning $5,000?
Well you can do that in the sixth annual North Street
Book Prize Competition.
Every year from mid February to end of June,
the Winning Writers host the North Street Book Prize
competition and they have it open
to six different categories available to hundreds of authors
and they award over $12,500 in prizes.
I know what you might be thinking though,
is it legit?
Well of course it is.
You come to this channel,
you've come to expect anything that's legitimate's
gonna be on this channel.
In fact, one of the sponsors for this competition
is BookBaby, pretty reputable
and even more reputable yet,
is the fact that the Alliance of Independent Authors
Watchdog Services has actually recommended
this specific book competition.
Enter for your chance to win
at winningwriters.com/dale.
Now for the final tip, encourage readers
to leave customer reviews.
In their words they specifically say this,
if you're providing a free advance reader copy of your book
to a potential reviewer, make sure you're both following
Amazon's customer review creation guidelines
for paid reviews.
You can't require a review in exchange or attempt
to influence the review.
All that to say this, that you can give out
free copies to people and gift copies to people,
but you can't forcably make them leave a review.
Hey I've gave you this copy so you've gotta give me
a five star review.
(upbeat music)
You could always say, hey it'd be nice
if you left a review,
but you can't say I'm gonna give you this copy
in exchange for a review.
Unfortunately Amazon kinda frowns upon that.
Now that you know ten ways to market your book
on Amazon, how exactly do we go through
the whole publishing process?
Well good news, I've actually got you queued up
for another video down below here,
where I'm gonna talk about how to self-publish a book
and I'll show ya how Fiverr helped me out in the process.
I'll see you in this very next video.
(upbeat music)