My Top Tips for Selling eBooks Successfully

How to Sell eBooks on Gumroad

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Ebooks are becoming really popular nowadays. The first time I heard about it was through a Reddit post. A romance writer wrote about her story of writing contemporary romance and making $3k per month as a side hustle. This got me hooked.

We are living in a digital age. we want cheap and better products. And above that, we want faster delivery.

There were times when I used to go out with my dad on Sundays and wait in queue for a cartoon CD. He would buy most of them but sometimes we used to rent them out as well.

I have 7 boxes of CDs currently. If I had gone with the digital version, chances were that I would have saved a lot of my father’s hard-earned money.

Now we have —

1. KDP to sell ebooks
2. Spotify for selling music. Even now you can sell audio versions of your ebooks through Spotify!
3. Netflix for online entertainment.

The world is changing so much. 10 years ago, I received my first payment in a white envelope at the end of the month. And now it’s all digital. I know many of you really love the sale Notification.

screenshot from my account

Why ebooks are so profitable?

I love the idea of writing an ebook because —

1. No inventory — I really hate this. Because I never loved the idea of keeping inventories. Managing requires effort and money.
2. easy to make — I simply use Google Docs and Google Sheets. Not fancy tools to write my ebooks.
3. Help in link-building — You can link other products in your ebooks. This has helped a lot to increase sales.
4. Best lead magnets — If you have expensive products or services, the best way to sell is through smaller cheaper works. Offer your potential customers cheap ebooks and then upsell them with higher ones.
5. Instant Access — we need our pizzas in under 30 minutes. We need instantly 1-day delivery of our online orders. Instant access is the only way to make more sales.

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The Benefits of Self-Publishing

1. No need for any deals — There was a time when I needed to wait for publishers’ and agents’ approval emails. Now, the game has changed.
2. Create content according to my audience — I love writing ebooks on the topics I really like. But now I have focused more on writing on the topics according to my audience. If I were traditionally published this wouldn’t have been possible.
3. No obligations at all. we all like this right?
4. I have freedom of packaging and pricing. I can price my ebooks for as cheap as $0.99 (just an example. Don’t do this!). Or I can sell them as high as I want.
5. Direct relationship with my audience. Very helpful in understanding what customers actually want.

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My Top Tips for Selling eBooks Successfully

1. Choose the right niche

I started with romance. I wrote romance for many years before finally shifting to non-fiction. Right niche doesn’t mean picking a topic that is trendy. For me, the right niche is —

1. Aligns with your interest
2. evergreen

List down your interests and see which one is evergreen. then with time, analyze your —

1. audience interest
2. competition
3. demands

2. Create high-quality content

we are not here to sell only one ebook. I love the idea of creating a backlist because the money is actually in the backlist when it comes to selling ebooks.

But it not possible when the quality is low.

Writing high-quality ebooks helps to sell backlists with less effort. Marketing requires a lot of time, energy, and of course money.

My no.1 way to create high-quality books is through planning and editing. I planned my whole ebook before I started writing my first chapter. I’ll write chapter lists and a small summary for each. editing also plays a very important role in creating high-quality readers.

for this, I use beta readers.

Remember, the more value you give, the more people will buy your products.

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3. Design a professional cover

People DO JUST THE EBOOK by its cover.

This I have realized after pushing too hard to sell my romance ebooks with poor-quality covers.

If you have an ebook that is not selling, try to change its cover. I am sure you won’t regret it.

Now I use Canva and my images are from Depositphotos. If possible you can also hire a cover designer from Fiverr.

4. Leverage ebook publishing platforms

More platforms mean more sales.

I started with Amazon KDP. Then being in KDP Select for a few years I went wide. making money from multiple sources is my end goal.

I self-publish on more than 11 platforms. You can find them here.

Make sure you read their submitting guidelines before you hit publish.

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5. Optimize pricing

My best strategy is to see what my competitors are selling and at what price. If the ebook is under $15 then I cannot charge more than that. But if the ebook is in the range of $20 to $50. Then it’s useless to go below this range.

Research and then see what’s best for you.

6. My best marketing strategies

My best marketing strategy is social media.

I have a friend who makes 100% of her ebook sales from Instagram. While I know someone who writes romance and makes most of her sales from Reddit.

For me, it’s Twitter and Medium.

Not everything will work for you. You have to see where your potential customer is. Are they on Facebook? Or maybe you can use TikTok?

If you are able to find your customers, I promise that this will reduce the amount of effort you put into marketing. Promote where your customer is.

Also if possible collect reviews before the official launch.

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7. Engage with readers

How do you react when someone you admire replies back to your message immediately?

Establishing a connection with your readers will accelerate your growth 10X. This has never failed any writer out there. Or I should say any content creator. You can do this by simply replying to their comment, emails and so on. Nothing special.

A small tip — Try your best to reply as fast as possible.

8. Diversify revenue streams

Ebooks do make a lot of revenue for me throughout the year. But.. I would never suggest limiting your capabilities.

One ebook can be turned into —

1. Physical copy
2. Audiobook
3. Video (not for direct sales but as content for social media platforms)

and so on.

So that’s one original idea of yours that turned into 3 more income streams. Who doesn’t like that?

Diversification helps a lot not only to increase revenue but when something happens to my one income stream, I’ll have others to support me.

Conclusion

Ebook writing is easy but marketing can be a little tough. Only consistency helps you overcome that.

If you promote more, you’ll earn more.

No one will do that for you, right

See you soon.

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