10 Things I Learned From Launching an Amazon “Best-Seller”
Turns out, although you will feel accomplished, it’s not a big deal.
If you’ve ever thought about launching a book on the Kindle platform, let me tell you a little bit about my experience with it.
In February, 2017, I released my second Kindle ebook on Amazon. In about 24 hours it hit three best-seller lists in its category, which made me happy because I had set myself a goal to hit #1 and there’s nothing quite like the feeling of reaching the goals you’ve made for yourself.
Throughout the process, I learned a lot of things I believe you can benefit from so this article is dedicated to anybody wanting to put themselves out there and release a book on the Amazon Kindle platform.
1. Best-Seller Doesn’t Mean Thousands of Copies and Fame
Becoming a best-seller in your category isn’t as hard as you might think. The way Amazon narrows things down by category means that you’re not competing with every single book on Amazon, but rather the books that are about the same subject matter as yours.
So competing in a smaller pool helps your ranking. Becoming a best-seller just means that you’ve sold more copies of your book over a set period of time than any other book in that category.
But that’s also the beauty of having a niche audience.
You shouldn’t be catering to everybody anyway and having a very specific, narrow audience that loves your work is more important than pandering to the crowd.
I sold over 300 copies during the initial launch week and I thought that was awesome. It blew past the projected sales I had given myself (based on the size of my audience and my email list) so I considered it a success.
2. Create Pre-Buzz Before You Launch
If you have an audience, make sure they know you’re coming out with a new book. Creating buzz and anticipation will get your audience excited and ready to support you when the book finally comes out.
I did this in a few ways:
- Mentioned the project in passing in blog posts.
- Shared excerpts from chapters in emails to my audience.
- Posted teaser images on social media.
If you have an audience that follows you, make sure you’re transparent about what you’re doing and how you’re trying to help them.
Which brings me to my third point.
3. Involve Your Audience
My audience not only picked the title for the book through a poll, but they also chose the cover to the book.
Involving my audience in the decision making of these two things not only helped me understand them better, but it also let them claim some mental ownership over the success of the book.
Your audience can also help you by reviewing your book on Amazon, boosting its credibility, and giving it social proof. Luckily, my audience really liked my book so they gave me great reviews; I would not recommend forcing them to give you anything other than an unbiased review (or at most hoping they just don’t review your book if they hate it).
4. Get a GOOD Design
The last book I released, Get More Gigs, had an OK cover. It wasn’t amazing, but it was far from being terrible. I used my buddy Nisha, who does all my lead magnet covers, to design the cover to Get More Gigs.
However, when he did the initial cover to Step By Step Mixing I had a change of heart and decided to spend the extra money to get a great cover designed by 99 Designs.
I wholeheartedly believe that decision paid off in the end because there’s no way I could’ve gotten such an original design from a designer on Fiverr.
5. The Title Is Incredibly Important
From a marketing standpoint, the title and the cover are incredibly important. They are the two things the potential customer sees. If the cover sparks curiosity and the title shows them the benefit they’ll get out of reading your book, you’re much more likely to get a customer.
Spending the time to brainstorm good titles and involve your audience in the decision-making process definitely helped my book sales.
6. Use Amazon Links for Extra Commissions
If you publish your eBook exclusively on Amazon and it’s between $2.99 and $9.99 you qualify for a 70% royalty rate as an author on their platform.
However, you can increase that royalty rate to 75% if you use your own Amazon Associates links to get a commission off your own books. Whenever I refer somebody to Amazon I can create a tracking link that monitors what they buy. I then get 4–6% of that sale, at no extra cost to the customer.
Using that tactic on my own books means that every time I refer my audience to my book I’ll get an extra commission from any sale I make, in addition to the royalty payment.
To become an Amazon associate, just go to their site (affiliate link), scroll to the bottom and click on Become an Affiliate.
7. Use Genius Links
Another thing people don’t think of when they’re referring people to Amazon is that there are multiple Amazon sites depending on what country you’re in.
Technically, Amazon.ca in Canada is separate from the US Amazon. The same goes for Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon Italia.
So, if you refer people through an affiliate link to Amazon and they purchase anything on a different Amazon platform, you won’t get a commission.
That is unless you have Genius links installed on your website. Genius links refer the customer to the correct Amazon store based on their geographic area. If they purchase your eBook you’ll still get a commission.
8. Get Beta Readers
I asked a core group of my previous customers if they were willing to read through the final manuscript of the book to give me feedback.
In exchange, they would get the final version of the book once it was out. This was very helpful as they all had some great comments that improved the book, and they even caught some small errors both my editor and I had missed.
9. Create a Dedicated Sales Page
Although you can customize your Amazon listing pretty extensively with HTML, your Amazon sales page will still look like an Amazon page. That means it’s filled with distractions, links to other categories and competing books.
By having a dedicated sales page that links to the Amazon page you can completely customize the way the reader perceives your offer. It’s the only offer on the screen and you can add whatever design elements, testimonials, and pictures you’d like.
That way, once they finally click through to Amazon it’s my hope that they’re committed to purchasing my book, not just browse Amazon.
10. Keep the Sales Going After the Launch
I focus on building my email list as much as I can. I give away a bunch of free stuff and my automated email campaign really helps me deliver value to my audience without me needing to spend unnecessary time. It’s a great set-it-and-forget-it scenario.
So, in order to keep the sales going after my initial launch period was over I added a small call to action to check out the book on Amazon to every new subscriber. It’s an easy, low-cost purchase for those who want to know more about the subject, and it helps that the Amazon listing is filled with great reviews, credibility and social proof.
It’s helped keep the sales trickling in on autopilot as I focus on my other businesses and writing my next book.
Conclusion
Those are the ten most important lessons I’ve learned through my latest book launch and I hope to build upon my experiences with my next launch.
I hope this article helped in case you’re thinking about diving into the world of self-publishing. If you need help with that, don’t hesitate to let me know right here.
This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 344,974+ people.
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