There’s the famouse quote/maxim/saying: No plan survives first contact with the enemy.
This Issue was supposed to be Part 3 of a series for non-fiction writers on The Hero’s Journey.
But.
In the last 10 days I’ve been asked by three different authors variations of the same question: how can I sell ‘more books’ on Amazon KDP. You’ll see why I put (Amazon KDP) in brackets in a moment.
Synchronistically, my buddy Andre also sent me a link to this video on YouTube from Author Paul Millerd talking about how he’s sold more than 50,000 copies of his book in the last two and a half years:
It’s only 13 minutes long, so worth checking out.
So while selling more books isn’t something as simple as do this, do this, do this and then you’ll sell 50% more books….there are strategies and tactics you can think about that could help you sell more books.
Though note that for most authors, ‘selling more books’ shouldn’t be an end goal in and of itself. That’s not playing the long game.
Here are some quick thoughts on how you can increase your sales.
Let’s dive in.
#1. Amazon Ads
If you don’t already, doing some PPC advertising using Amazon’s platform is one way of getting more views of your book, more clicks and - if you’ve already got a proven combo of cover, title and description that converts - then more sales.
Amazon Ads isn’t rocket-science complex, but there are nuances to it. Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneury.com has got a free course on Amazon ads that will give you a decent intro. You can find that here:
One caveat: because books have such a low profit margin, it’s a strategy that will help keep sales ticking over, but unless you are an ad geek and are going to fully nerd out on Amazon ads, the chances of using ads to move the needle dramatically are slender.
Paul’s Note: there are authors out there who advertise their books on Facebook….I’ve never done this so I can’t tell you if it works or not. Again, the margin on most books doesn’t give you a lot of head room to play with. But this could be another option.
Amazon is not the only game in town though even though it is the 800lb gorilla….
#2 Publish In All Formats And Go Wide
If your book allows, make sure you’re published in all of these formats:
Paperback
Hardback
eBook
Audio Book
As well as publishing on Amazon in all these formats, there are places out there where you can publish physical books, ebooks and Audio books for sales on other stores. That’s why (Amazon KDP) is in brackets in the title of this issue…while Amazon sells the most books, there are other retailers out there.
Marketer Dan Kennedy says ‘one’ is the worst number in business…if you rely on one place to sell your books and you get your account terminated for some reason, you are in a whole heap of trouble.
So diversifying away from Amazon not only can make more sales but also works as an insurance policy. (Note: creating an email list of buyers that you can contact directly also helps!)
There are also printers now that will allow you to sell your books from your website (and/or email list) and then print the books when an order is made and ship them. This is relatively recent that it’s become accessible to ‘ordinary writers’ and I’m watching this play out with massive interest!
#3 The Simple Way To Get More Book Sales…Write Another Book!
If you’ve already got a book making sales AND you’ve got a mechanism built into the book to get buyers/readers to give you their email address…then the simplest way to get more book sales is to write another book and email that list of readers/buyers.
When you’ve publish a second….do a third.
Once you start building up a library you can take advantage of features like Amazon’s Series page (if your books are linked). And you can start doing your own promotions. (More on that in a moment.)
While some writers will groan at the thought of writing another book, here are two easy ways you can use get another book out there:
Do a Workbook version of your book. This will depend on what market segment you’re in, but if it’s appropriate it’s a quick way to get another book into the world. If your book sells well - and is suited to being adapted into workbook form - what you’ll probably find is someone else will write and publish one. As far as I can tell that’s perfectly legal…so you may as well create the official workbook version of your book.
Create a translation of your book. Depending on how many words are in your book - and how well it’s selling in English - a translation is a low time investment method of creating another book because YOU won’t be doing the translation. Spanish is probably the first language I’d choose…but it will come down to your market and demographics.
Don’t forget to get workbooks/translations into as many formats and stores as possible.
Edit Note: literally 10 seconds after I’d pressed SEND on this issue, I got an email from Alex Hormozi who has just released an official workbook version of his first book 100M Offers. Let’s say he only sells 100,000 of these (the original book has sold over half a million)…at roughly $20 margin he’s just minted a big fat cheque for a small amount of work.
#4 Create A Limited Edition Version Of Your Book That You Sell To Your Fans
I’m not going to go into massive detail on this, but creating limited editions of your book that you sell direct is not only a way to increase revenues and sales, but also a way where the buyers of special editions are putting up their hands and saying: hey, I’m one of your True Fans.
Which is reason enough to create a limited edition.
The extreme example are the $200 plus leather bound luxery editions that Brandon Sanderon creates of his fantasy books. He’s an interesting guy who is worth following to see what he does…and work out if you can model some of his strategies in your author business.
#5 Promote Your Books
Another way to make more sales is to promote your book(s) to raise awareness in the marketplace.
If there are multiple podcast hosts in your market area, then a great way to promote your book(s) is to send them a copy with some kind of letter with the strategic goal of appearing on their podcast to talk about your book.
I picked this idea up from Ben Settle and Terry Dean…one of them (I forget who, probably Ben) suggested that as well as being a guest on the podcast, talking to someone’s else’s audience for 45 minutes and then pitching YOUR book to their audience at the end of the pdocast, you could also use the podcast appearance to help you promote to your audience and your social medias. Links to the podcasts. Links to clips. Quotes from the transcript. All that kind of stuff, the only limit here is your imagination.
This is to me is a much classier and much more effective way of promoting than book that simply posting on social media: hey have you seen I wrote a book, here’s a link to buy it.
Bonus Tip: screen grabs of reviews are good social media content too.
Bonus Tip 2: if you get interviews with people who are ‘experts’ in your industry and they like your book….you can ask them if you can put their comments in your Amazon description to leverage name recognition from would-be buyers.
Combine the idea of sending books to podcast hosts with Chet Holmes’s ‘Dream 100,’ - send 10 books a month out. And keep sending books out. If you don’t hear from someone you’ve sent a book too…put them on the list for 6 months or 9 months down the line. Persistance will pay off. It’s a low cost/high reward form of promotion.
# 6 Create Your Own Sales Promotions
One of the things I like about Amazon is that you have a degree of control on your book’s listing and can edit it easily to create a promotion.
There are three ways of running a promotion:
Lower the price for a limited time.
Keep the price the same, but add a bonus for a limited time.
Lower the price and add a bonus for a limited time.
One caveat here: if you run regular promotions to your audience then you’ll train them to expect regular promotions. And that may hinder sales as people wait until you run a promo.
Here’s the two ways I use promotions:
Once a year I reduce the price of all of my books for a short window of time - 3 to 4 days - and email my lists to let everyone know. You can run this at the same time as another sale period is going on - e.g. Prime Day or Black Friday/Cyber Monday - or you can create your own ‘sale’ period. (If you’re playing a long game, creating your own sale period and giving it a name that makes sense to your email lists is the way I’d go.)
From time to time, I’ll create a promotion with both a lower price and a bonus for readers of a series who have only bought Book 1. This of course relies on you having a series to work….and the only people who get to know about it are those readers who you are trying to nudge into moving from Book 1 to Book 2.
#Sidebar:
As I was writing this, I just realised that I’ve made some basic assumptions. All of the above assumes that:
You’re written a good book and are getting some 5* reviews.
You have a decent, genre appropriate cover.
You have a decent description.
You have a decent title and sub-title.
You are publishing in a niche where there are good numbers of buyers. (Learn about Amazon BSR ranking and what the numbers mean…that’s a quick and easy gauge you can use for this.)
Promoting a book where two or more of the above are not true is like pushing a large boulder up a mountain. It can be done…but it’s hard.
The Rideout.
This Issue is a string of thoughts I dictated on different ways to sell more books, and then edited and ‘assembled’ them to create this Issue. There are other strategies you can use, see my article on ‘Free Plus Shipping (Issue # 14)’ for example. But make sure your goals are clear - are you trying to make more sales for revenue purposes or are you trying to make more sales to get buyers on your list? Different goals will suggest different strategies - so make sure you’re clear about what you’re trying to achieve before you implement an idea.
These aren’t the only ways to sell more books either…but all of the ideas I’ve shared are either things that I’ve done, or things that I’ve seen other authors do but haven’t yet implemented for myself.
Issue 39
In the next issue we’ll come back to the scheduled issue on using the Hero’s Journey in your non-fiction writing. And touch wood we’ll get back to the intended regular Sunday publishing schedule.