Yesterday I got off a Power Hour coaching call and the person I was coaching asked me how to sell more books.
Feeling inspired from that, I decided to write a blog post today.
Here are 10 ways to get more sales to your Kindle books:
1. Market your book on Goodreads, which is a social network of over 12 million book readers.
Goodreads is responsible for more people finding out about books than Amazon:
You have to take time to make relationships with people, get into groups, etc… so it’s a bit like gardening.
After you put enough time into it, Goodreads readers will treat you like GOLD – giving you great reviews, giving you fantastic feedback, and sharing your book around the community.
I personally have a 10 minute plan of attack I use for my pen names, where I spend 10 minutes each day to cultivate major sales.
2. Optimize your keywords on Amazon.
You know how sometimes when you start typing whatever you’re looking for on Amazon, it’ll start to fill out suggested keywords, like this?
Those suggested keywords are based on what people are actually looking for.
Figure out whatever keywords make sense for your book, and then optimize for those keywords so that people can find you on Amazon.
I have an entire product based on this, so there’s a LOT of ways to do it – way beyond the scope of this blog post – but some ways to optimize are to include your keyword in your book description, in reviews, and in your subtitle.
3. Offer to do guest blog posts.
Reach out to people who are in the niche that your book is in, and offer to write a guest blog post that’s complimentary to their blog.
They get more content for their blog, which is a huge WIN for them.
For YOUR win, you can mention your book at the end of the blog post. Now you’ve given great content to an audience of people who are potential readers of your book.
If you want to learn how to sell more books, this can work really well. My friend Michael Ellsberg said he got more book sales from a mention on the Four Hour Workweek blog than he did off of a piece in the New York Times AND a 3 minute spot on CNN.
4. Contact people with major Facebook pages in your niche.
Ask them if you can pay them to create a sponsored post advertising your book.
I don’t know anybody else doing this, but it gets you right in front of a LOT of people who have already raised their hands and said they were interested in whatever your niche is.
5. Use Shelfari.
Shelfari is a site similar to Goodreads.
Find popular Shelfari users who are reading books similar to the ones you’ve written, and then build relationships with them.
If they end up befriending you and buying your book, they’ll put your book on their Shelfari “bookshelves,” gaining you even more exposure.
6. Offer your book for free.
If your book is enrolled in KDP Select, then you can offer up to 5 free days of your book per quarter.
If you have a free period and put a lot of push into those free days, then you can ride your momentum into paid book sales.
Your book will appear on the “Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed” on Amazon:
7. Get your book translated.
You can often double your sales just by getting your book translated.
There are many people in other countries who would love to hear about whatever you’re teaching – and it’s easier than you think to get this done.
8. Run Facebook ads.
If you earn a solid profit off of your book (either with book sales, or with leads that you generate from your book), then running Facebook ads to it can be great.
I’ve started following the advice from Don’s course and have been seeing really great returns off of my advertisements.
9. Make an audiobook.
You can easily create audiobooks of your book, which can double the amount of people who “read” your book.
There are lots of readers who don’t read the physical versions of books, but they listen to audiobooks on their way to work, or working out, or while running errands.
You can either read the book yourself, hire it out, or if you’re based in the United States, work with people to get the audiobooks created for free. You pay nothing upfront and simply share a percentage of the royalties earned.
10. Do things from within your book to make more sales.
People often check out the “Look Inside” feature of Amazon before they buy a book, deciding if the book is right for them or not. That’s why it’s important to optimize the first few pages of your book.
One thing you can do is include a “Why You Should Read This Book,” which gives you a chance to do more pre-selling, and also structure it out to show how much value your book has.
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That’s it! Those are 10 ideas that’ll help you tremendously with learning how to sell more books.
If you want more detail, all of these things (minus the Facebook items) are covered in The Ultimate Kindle Course.
0 thoughts on “How to sell more books – 10 Easy ways to boost book sales”
I really LIKED that post. Hélas! When to do all those things…
I really LIKED that post. Hélas! When to do all those things…
Hi Rachel, I have purchased the goodreads video course but didn’t get a link to access it. How can I get it?
Thanks for such an information-packed blog post! :D
cool stuff! :)
What fantastic ideas, Rachel. I’ve been reviewing books on GoodReads for awhile, and I’ve noticed that authors are beginning to contact me and request that I review their book. When I post reviews there, I post them on Shelfari and Amazon too, so I know you’re right about these sites and how robust their communities are.
Hi Rachel, I have purchased the goodreads video course but didn't get a link to access it. How can I get it?
Hi Rachel, I have purchased the goodreads video course but didn't get a link to access it. How can I get it?
cool stuff! :)
cool stuff! :)
Thanks for such an information-packed blog post! :D
Thanks for such an information-packed blog post! :D
More great tips from the lovely Rachel Rofe! Thanks for sharing! I look forward to seeing you and Don at E1KaD!
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Thanks for the great suggestions, Rachel. I have known about Shelfari but hadn’t signed up. I appreciated reading your description of what it is all about and what to do on the site. I’ve also been trying to decide which language to translate my book into first. Which language did you choose first? And why? Perhaps your response could become another blog post?
#10 – Do things from within your book to make more sales – has definitely worked for me. I have two book series and I find after a KDP promotion, I’ll see an uptick in sales in both series since I cross promote both inside each book. I usually mention one other title at the front of each book (in case they don’t read the entire book) but after the 20 page ‘preview’. And then I put the covers and brief descriptions of the other books at the back of each book.
You just gave me an idea for another way to promote my books from within the book: I’m going to add Other Books by (my name) as the last link in my Table of Contents with links to the back of the book where I describe them.
Thanks for your inspiring post!
Rachel,
What a generous yet concise list of ideas. Very do-able. And #7 in particular is brilliant, thank you!
Great tips, Rachel! It’s funny, I’ve been reviewing books on GoodReads for a while but I never realized it could be used for marketing your own books.