10 Best Tips to Reach the KDP All Star Bonus
How I got the $2000 children’s book bonus 2x in a row
Accidental Author is really what people should call me. I had no intention in writing children’s books. What we do, we do out of love is truly applicable here.
My journey began with helping my teenage son, Kobe, reach new heights. Kobe was in his second year of homeschooling. As an eighth grader, he took a 9th grade high school English course through the University of Indiana Online.
That semester, his English teacher assigned him a research paper. He ended up choosing a topic he was already working on with his coaches - finding the zone and developing mental toughness. In fact, the whole course revolved around writing a children’s book.
Through his efforts, he produced a fine book. So fine, that many suggested I consider publishing it. And so it began. In April of 2019, I entered into the wilderness of self-publishing.
If you had told us only 5 months later we would have 10 books and sell over 1800+ books a month, I would have called you crazy. But here we are with two book series and two, top KENP chidlren’s book bonuses for the months of July and August 2019.
Here are my top 10 tips to reach the KENP ALL STAR BONUS:
1.) Catchy Cover — I used PickFu.comto create a poll for my targeted audience to chose between covers. The cover can make or break you. It’s what makes your book stand out amongst 8 million books.
2.) Grow Grit — It wasn’t until my 4th book that I received a All Star Bonus. Stay patient and persevere. Develop grit by not giving up. If one method doesn’t work, try another. If you find a method that works, keep tweaking it to see if there’s a more efficient way. If one book, doesn’t work — write another. Keep at it. The only ones who lose are the ones who give up.
3.) Use Your Free Days — KDP Select free days are an amazing way to boost book sales and reads. I always see an uptick in sales and KENP reads for all my books for at least 2–3 days after I run a free promo for any of the books.
4.) Engaging Story and Gripping Illustrations are Crucial — Young children have short attention spans these days. So it’s important that you draw readers in with your content and illustrations. Or you may succumb to KENP death and readers will just stop turning pages after page 5.
5.) Take all of the free Kindlepreneur classes. Read both of Brian Meeks’ books, “Mastering Amazon Ads and Mastering Amazon Descriptions. It will be the BEST $25 you ever spent.
6.) Find mentors and be willing to pay them for their time.
7.) Support other authors as much as you can with collaborations. You might also find you have so much in common with them and make new friends like I was fortunate enough to do. A support system is crucial for this grueling journey. I have a group called ‘Gritty’ on facebook where I dole out advice when asked.
8.) Make sure your pages on your ebook kindle version are correct. I suspect KDP assigns it a default, 17 pages. Again, I don’t know that for sure but it happened to me. Go check, did it happen to you? If it is more, simply email KDP and ask that they match the page numbers of ebook kindle version to the paperback.
9.) Create a series page by emailing KDP to start a Kindle Series Bundle Page. You get an extra amazon page and customers may buy them all at once, why not?
10.) Work with designers and illustrators who have a passion for their work and format correctly and illustrate with zest.
If you see anything missing here, please do add in the comments! Join my facebook group or visit my website to learn more.
