Typically when you publish on Amazon Kindle, you just write a book, publish it and you're done. And of course the books don't need to be long – in fact, they can be just 10 or 20 pages, because the real key is valuable content.
So how do you get people to buy your book? Most authors hope that their book somehow gets found and ranked so that buyers can then find it. The problem is that “hope” does not make for a good marketing plan. “Write it and they will come” might work if authors were scarce, but have you been on Amazon lately?
Authors are coming out of the woodwork in droves, and every day it's getting harder and harder to be the one who comes to the top of the Amazon search for your particular niche.
With that in mind, here are 5 tips to help you get found by your potential customers:
1. Write subsequent books in the same niche as your first book. There are several reasons why you want to stay in the same niche as much as possible:
A: When a customer finds one of your books, they find several of your books. Look at a particular book on Amazon and you'll see a section below the description with similar titles. If the author of the book you're viewing has more than one title in the niche, odds are excellent the author's other books will also appear there.
B. More credibility. When customers can see you've written several books on the topic, they recognize you as being an authority, which makes it more likely they will purchase at least one of your books.
C: You get good. I mean really good at what you're writing about. You really do become an expert, which means you're writing better content and making it easier to get noticed and talked about.
D. You get to know your target customers better. You learn what they like, what they want, and how they want it. In short, you get better at closing those sales.
E. You build a following. People who loved your book on growing radishes will be back to see if you have any other books on gardening. If your other books are on automotive repair and dumpster diving, you've just lost out on sales.
F. Because you're an expert in the eyes of your readers and because you're created a loyal following, you can upsell to your customers off of Amazon.
2. Be aggressive in collecting your leads. Place an incentive in each book to get your customers to your website, exchanging their email for your bonus. You need to make your offer very clear and plain in your book – tell them exactly what to do and why they are doing it. Write a bullet list for your freebie that has them running to your website, salivating for your free gift.
Do NOT try to sell them your services from your Kindle book – this just turns buyers off and can result in negative reviews. But offering an excellent bonus for visiting your website is perfectly fine and widely accepted.
Place your offer in the beginning and end of your book with a link to your webpage. Make it big and clear. Ask them to sign up and tell them of the most excellent bonus they will get, as well as future updates and notices of book releases.
Here's a tip: If your bonus is exclusive to you, place it on a sales page of its own with a healthy price tag. Now when you're telling them about the bonus they get just for joining your list, you can tell them what it's selling for and even provide a link to that page as proof.
3. Once you have them on your list, market your other books to them, as well as related products. Since you're writing all of your books in the same niche, your other books will be a good fit for them as well. Plus you can also market other products for added profit.
And if at all possible, you should create an upsell. For example, if your Kindle book is on how to market to offline businesses, your upsell product might be an entire system on offline marketing, or a system on one component, such as doing mobile marketing. Remember, you get to keep 100% of the profit on your own products, so this is something you really should consider doing.
4. Plan your publishing. Rather than writing books in your topic willy-nilly, you might want to create a list of the first several books you'll publish. This way each book can build upon the last one.
This can be especially effective if you do a series. Make the covers look like a series so that they are undoubtedly a set. The psychology here is that people don't like to have just one of something when they can own the entire set. Plus it makes it even easier for them to identify that each book is indeed part of the series. For example, your series might be, “Selling Offline Marketing Services” and then each one carries a subtitle such as “Selling Facebook Services to Offline Businesses,” “Creating Hot Mobile Websites for Offline Customers,” etc.
Cross reference inside each of your books. In book 2, refer back to book 1 in the natural course of the book where appropriate. This can send your readers back to Amazon to get your first book. You can also do this in earlier books by making additions to them and then posting the updated version on your Kindle listing.
5. Create a snowball effect. The more sales you make on Amazon, the better Amazon is going to do at marketing your books. It's a snowball effect, and one that can potentially sell thousands of copies. This is another reason why it pays to have a plan for your Kindle books and aggressively work that plan, to maximize the returns you get for your writing.