Help: How do I get book sales on Amazon?

“Help: How do I get book sales on Amazon?” was a message that I received in my inbox a few weeks ago.

Whether you love Amazon or not, being listed with one of the largest internet-based retailers is a great way to promote your book. Of course, once your book is on Amazon, it is natural to expect sales, but unless you do some fundamental things first, it won’t be that easy.

You don’t have to fake it like the Bonsai Tree book that was recently reported in The Sunday Times’ undercover investigation, there are simple strategies you can take to get your book up the bestseller list and found by your ideal readers on Amazon.

Although Amazon is only part of the story, so I’ve also shared my thoughts on what you can do alongside your online promotion to reach the people who need to read your book the most!

1. Have the right book title

Having the right book title and subtitle that includes the words or phrases that your ideal reader is looking for will help your rankings. If the title does not convey the message in your book, then the subtitle will need to be specific. If you’re too clever with your words, this might hinder your progress if you’re not yet well known.

2. Choose the right categories

It’s really important to choose the right categories for your book, which will help your ideal reader to find you. If in doubt, look at competing books (with high sales) and see which categories they are listed under to help your decision.

3. Pick relevant SEO friendly keywords

In Amazon you have the opportunity to list your book under keywords relevant to your book’s content. Get clear about what your ideal reader may search for in Google or Amazon. Just like in Google (and other good search engines!), when you start typing your search term, ideas will pop up in the box.

4. Hone your book description

What you put in the book’s description box will also help or hinder your book’s success. I was telling one of my clients about this recently as (at the time) she only had three lines of text in this area.

In this section, not only do you want to give people a clear idea of what your book is about, you want to grab their attention with your hook, and include phrases that will help your book to be found. Don’t just dump your back cover text on the page either without thinking it through!

5. Have a well-designed front cover

The thumbnail of your book’s front cover will appear on your Amazon listing, so make sure that it looks professional and translates well into a thumbnail. Too much information or a complicated image won’t help it to get noticed for the right reasons.

6. Get lots of excellent Amazon reviews

If you’ve seen me beg for reviews for my latest or previous books, it’s because I know how important this is for your Amazon rankings! It gives you great social proof, especially if (real) people are leaving (ideally) excellent feedback with five star rankings.

Your reviews will also impact on Amazon’s algorithms to get it found. The more reviews you have, the more likely your book will show in the ‘Customers who also bought this item bought’ when people are searching for something similar to your book.

7. Develop your Amazon author page

Did you know that you can have an Amazon author profile? If you’ve got a book listed and you don’t have a profile, go here now!

Here’s an example of mine. It’s a great place to share all of your books, detail your biography so that people can get to know you, with photos, videos, events and what’s coming up soon.

8. Have a Kindle book and a physical book

If you read my recent blog post, you’ll know that I believe that there is a market for both Kindle and physical books, so I suggest you have both available to give your readers a choice. It also helps if your book is in stock and available for delivery via Amazon Prime. With regards to your Kindle book, you may also wish to sign up to KDP Select so readers can ‘borrow’ your book too.

9. Use the ‘Look Inside’ function

Enabling the ‘Look Inside’ functionality is essential. It gives people the chance to browse your book and see whether it’s the right book for them before buying it.

10. Ensure your book is professionally edited

It’s all well and good having a great looking listing for your book, but your book is peppered with typos, this isn’t going help you. When someone downloads or receives a physical copy of your book, the professionalism will reflect your brand, so it’s important to get it right and employ a professional editor/proofreader. Although I’m not going to go into this now, having a great opening will help grab people’s attention too, especially if you’ve enabled the ‘Look Inside’ function.

11. Price your book realistically

When you think about pricing your book, be realistic. Most physical books in the non-fiction arena sell for somewhere in the region of £9.99-£14.99 and Kindle books tend to be lower as there’s less cost involved with the production.

Please bear in mind Amazon’s costs and also consider the services that you may sell off the back of your book. It may be worth having offers or discounts if you know that selling your book cheaply will result in other income for your business.

12. Be a reseller for your books

If you’re using a good publisher, they should automatically include your book for distribution on Amazon. You can also be a reseller for your book, enabling you to sell your book if Amazon runs out of copies and potentially offer it at a discount.

13. Publish more than one book!

Publishing multiple books on Amazon will help you to get found. Whether you have a combination of Kindle and physical books or (like me) love to write, this will help you to get known in your area of expertise. Once people have bought one of your books, they are more likely to find you and buy the others.

14. Tell people your book is for sale!

This might be obvious, but it’s surprising how many people put their book on Amazon and don’t tell anyone about it! Then no wonder it’s not found and sales don’t result, and business success never happens.

15. Hold an Amazon launch

Although I’m not going to go into the details here, as this is an e-Book all by itself, let alone a blog post tip, having a planned Amazon launch will project you up the bestseller list. When you combine this with everything in this blog post, then this will put you in a good position to get you and your book noticed. BUT…

Amazon is not the only thing you need to master!

Although these are great tips to help you to make the most of Amazon, it’s also important to note that even if you do follow these tips, don’t rely on Amazon to get you sales.

Doing everything in these tips won’t help you to connect with people you know already, if you don’t tell people that your book is available to buy.

That’s why you need to have a marketing plan alongside it with a launch and post-launch plan. You need multiple strategies in place, including a community of people who want your book, a book launch party and/or an Amazon launch, a social media campaign, email marketing, joint venture partners who will help you to promote your book, Facebook advertising, speaking opportunities, and great PR to get you noticed.

• For my first book The Secrets of Successful Coaches, I followed the Amazon launch process to get it to the #1 spot in June 2011. I also had a book launch party with 70+ people in attendance.
• I helped one of my clients, Gina Visram, with her Kindle launch this year over the Valentine’s weekend shooting it up the Amazon listings. That’s after her actual launch party for her physical book a couple of years earlier.
• Another client, Helen Monaghan, recently launched her first e-Book on Amazon and it’s already achieving great reviews and success, #3 in her category upon its launch. Her first ‘proper’ book will be out later this year.

One last note about Amazon book sales

It’s also important to add that having your book on Amazon isn’t just about sales. When it comes to a business book, the success will ultimately come when you use it as an business tool. When your book is aligned to your business, it will naturally help you to attract more clients and reach the people who want more of your help than just reading your book.

Want to find out more?

I know that there’s a lot of information in this blog post, so I’d love to talk further to find out how I can help you with your book.

Amazon is just a small part of the story and I’d like to help more people to get their own great stuff out into the world!

By the way, as always, I’d appreciate your comments on this blog post and shares on social media.