A. Samad Said's Blog, page 8
October 4, 2018
How to Announce Your Book With E-Mail
What’s the best way to announce your book via e-mail?
I’ve received quite a few book announcement e-mails lately, including some that were trying to achieve “Amazon best-seller” status. Sadly, most of the messages were not very compelling. More often than not, they were self-congratulatory (“I’ve achieved my dream!”) or self-serving (“If you buy my book on Amazon at 11 a.m. tomorrow morning, my book might become a best-seller!”). Some were brief: “My new book is out. Here’s a link where you can buy it.” Others were rambling. None of them told me why I’d want to buy the book – what was in it for me, the reader.
I don’t want you to repeat the mistakes I keep seeing in my inbox, so I’m sharing seven tips that will help authors with any level of marketing experience write a book announcement e-mail message that isn’t obnoxious, annoying, offensive, or downright sad:
Start with the text from your back book cover. It should tell us why we will want to buy your book, right? You might need to massage it to make it more personal, since e-mail is such an informal means of communicating.
It’s not about you. It’s about the person you’re writing to. Tell me what your book will do for me. Will it educate, inform, entertain, enlighten? What’s in it for me? How will your book improve my world, help me improve someone else’s world, or help me forget about my world?
Include a link where we can purchase the book. Seriously – you’d be surprised at how many messages omit this.
Forget the “help me make my book an Amazon best-seller” plea. Unless you are my total BFF, I don’t care if your book is a best-seller. All I want to know is whether I’ll like or need your book or whether I know someone else who would like it. If you feel compelled to be focused on that best-seller-for-five-minutes-on-Amazon plan, at least share information about your book, too.
Don’t come on too strong. You might suggest that it makes a nice gift, but don’t tell me that I “should” buy it for everybody on my holiday gift list.
Ask me to share your news with my networks. If I know people who will want to know about your book, I’ll help spread the word. But sometimes I need to be reminded.
Remember that the quality of your announcement reflects the quality of your book, so make it as high-quality as you can. I received one this week that looked like a ransom note, with multiple fonts and sizes. And I know this wasn’t what the author intended. You don’t need to have a professionally designed, all-HTML’d-up message, but you do want something that reflects the quality of your book.
Send your announcement to as large a list as you can assemble, remembering that some people will be more interested in this news than others. And some are just naturally better at sharing and forwarding. And whatever you do, make this just the starting point for your book launch. There’s lots more you could – and “should” – be doing.
Ambitious Bestseller by Anthony Doerr
He shows that the terror can be only a background for a whole another story written in short chapters and depicting human nature and its power to see the light in places where it looks to disappear.
The story is set some years before and then during the World War II in two locations: occupied France and Hitler's Germany. There's an orphan boy in Germany and one blind girl living in the heart of Paris. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is the only precious daughter of her father – a master locksmith working at the museum. She lost her sight at the age of six, yet her widower father never hints on her condition to be a defect. By creating wooden models of their street, taking her with to work, going with her to different locations and supervising to develop the sense of touch, he teaches her how to pull through in a whole new world without images. The man goes far than that: he buys expensive books in Braille to enhance Marie's perception of a fantastic world explored by Jules Verne. And through the entire story, we never notice a hint of girl's complaints. Things and objects, people and nature she can not see for obvious reasons, Marie imagines and knows by sounds and smells.
At the same time, the neighboring country is getting ready for war. An eight-year-old Werner Pfennig lives in the Children's Home in Zollverein together with his sister and a few other children without parents or bright future. Unlike other dwellers, he and his sister Jutta do not care for Nazism. What they are really engaged in is listening to the radio and learning incredible things from programs broadcast by an unknown Frenchman with a low and tender voice.
Their lives change when the Nazis come to France in 1940. Marie and her father leave their home place and a comfortable apartment to reach the land of Marie's uncle Etienne, who after a while becomes girl's best friend and supporter when her father disappears. There's something he left in one of Marie's models. There's something precious she has owned all the time, and what a Nazi gemologist von Rumpel will come for.
A talented German boy joins other extraordinary white-haired and blue-eyed teens at a nightmarish school for the military people of the country. It seems as though he gets what he wanted: the talent is noticed and even though he has no money, he is accepted, trained, and respected. But not by Jutta … She seemed to have more light and hers is bright enough to see how fast her beloved brother has become one of those, who made their father and thousands of other orphans' dads work for living coal-mining.
As years go by, Marie-Laure lives her own life with her extraordinary uncle, finds out about his secret hidden in the attic and joins the group of French guerrillas that works for the benefit of France. While the girl keeps growing the light she has inside, Werner loses more of his day after day. Deep inside, there's the voice that tells him things are not what they should be: prisoners should not be humiliated and left in the cold to die, classmates should not be hunted and beaten to death, killing others should not what their nation should do to prove its superiority. But the voice keeps down for years. Werner is sent to war and he does his job not only repairing radios around the occupied lands. He watches as others are killed and does nothing to save them. Deep inside him, there's still the light he can not see. And every reader knows one day Werner will make it get brighter.
While looking for guerrillas, he comes across the same voice he listened to in the Children's Home in Zollverein. Werner goes against his comrades and never reveals the secret until he hears the voice of a girl asking for help …
Although one can find dozens of books about World War II written by modern authors, there's hardly a novel like this. There are several setting and an extra writing writing manner: chapters are short and the action takes place both in the past and present. A reader starts with the final scenes and then goes back to the very beginning to know how it happened and what leads led to this outlet. Anthony Doerr uses gorgeous metaphors and has a great sense of physical details which help him to show passionate readers from all world corners that even in terrible settings and moments, there are still people, who keep the light inside brighter and try to be good to one another even if they are in different camps.
How to Write a Best Selling EBook
Writing a book is a difficult task. But the motivation for many of us is the dream of having a best seller. But how do you write a best selling eBook?
There are two sides to writing a best selling eBook. The first is to write a quality eBook. The second is how you market it to be a best seller.
In this article I’m going to concentrate on writing the best selling eBook.
But I can’t honestly write this article without acknowledging that writing a best seller is easy. Selling a book into best seller is much harder. You need to be a master marketer in order to produce a best seller.
Writing a best selling eBook requires several things. The first is that you absolutely must have a system for writing. Otherwise it will be almost impossible to write the quality of eBook that justifies the title — best seller.
What is quality in an eBook? Quality is found in three dimensions. The first is content, the second is organization and the third is delivery.
Content is a difficult issue for your reader to measure. After all they are reading your eBook precisely because they don’t have an answer to their problem. They simply don’t know your content as well as you do — so how are they to judge it? The answer is that they judge it by it’s applicability to themselves. If it solves their problems, helps avoid one of their pain points or helps achieve one of their pleasure points, then the eBook must have great content.
Ultimately, this is how you write a best selling eBook. Identify your reader before you begin to design your book. The technique is called targeting and it results in you knowing everything possible about your targeted reader. Their name. Their age. Their marital status. But most of all, you’ll know what motivates them. What are their problems? What causes them pain? What gives them pleasure?
By focusing your book on solving your target reader’s problems or helping them to avoid a pain point or even by helping them achieve an important pleasure, you’ll have aced the content portion of quality. And that is the most important characteristic for quality.
The second dimension is organization. To solve the reader’s problems you’ll need to convince them that you have a solution and that it’s worth doing. How you organize your argument. How you present your solution. How focused you are and how often you go skittering off topic all affect the quality. By focusing on the issues and avoiding extra information you convince the reader of your knowledge and your ability to organize that knowledge.
The third dimension for quality is delivery. Frankly there’s no excuse for poor spelling or poor grammar. At least with poor grammar most of your readership won’t know the difference. And if you write like you speak, your own voice will help to cover weaknesses in grammar. But every word processing program comes with a spell checker. Poor spelling comes because you either didn’t bother checking your spelling or you didn’t bother to hire an editor. Both of which implies you didn’t think enough of your product to check it. So how can it be high quality?
Create Your Best-Selling Plot in Just Hours
Get ready for a whirlwind of information for writing a novel. With the strategies in this single article, you could have a unique, best-selling plot in your hands in the next 72 hours. It’s one of the most painless ways of creating a surefire winning plot and this single strategy makes writing your book a complete pleasure.
Ready? Here’s what you should do first. Realize that creating a plot, any plot, is very difficult. Creating a plot that an agent or a publisher or the public will want is darn near impossible. Creating a best-selling plot? It’s really, really difficult. Just ask any author who tries it.
Think of the numbers. Millions of plot ideas are produced, but they’re not good enough to result in full-fledged novels. Tens of thousands of novels written, but only a handful will be accepted. And a still smaller percentage of novels that go on to become best sellers We’re talking odds of many millions to one, against.
But there is a much better way. I’ll give you the step by step procedure in just a few seconds, but I want to remind you that all this and so much more of the book-writing bonanza can be found in my writing system.
Unabashed self-promotion over. Let’s get back to the strategy.
Get hold of a novel that is between five and 10 years old. On the front cover, it must say it’s a national best seller. I don’t want it to be written by a best selling author, that’s not its claim to fame. I want the book itself to be a best seller. Now I know that the plot of this book is a best-selling plot. No questions asked.
You can find any number of these books in a relatively small building near you. It’s called a ‘library.’ Let’s say it together, L-I-B-R-A-R-Y.
Read the book as quickly as possible, but at a pleasurable speed. Remember, normal speed, but try to read it in a day. Next day, do the same thing. Read the book, for the second time.
Third day, go through the book and for every page, write down one or two sentences (no more than two sentences) of what is happening in the story on that page.
This is your primary plot. It’s the plot you’re going to use. No, for the millionth time you’re not infringing on copyright. Copyright deals with the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Plots are worth even less than a dime a dozen. In fact, they’re free. It’s the actual specific sequence of words that is copyrighted.
From this point, you can go in two different directions, but I’ll give you the easiest one.
Return the book to the library and never look at it again. If you bought the book from a used book store, throw it out. It has served its purpose. It has given you a best-selling plot and you don’t need it anymore.
Got your plot outline with a sentence or two telling you what’s on every page? Great. Now re-write the book. I’m serious. Do it as quickly as you can. You don’t have to worry about what’s coming next in your story. You already know that. Writer’s block will never be an issue. Your only challenge will be in getting the words down fast enough.
Next job? Once you have your manuscript written, change every variable you can possible change. Start with the genders of the characters. That’s easy. Now change their names. Anything that applies to gender, like clothing or grooming, will have to be changed as well.
Change the time. If it originally happened in the past, place the new version in the future. If it was in middle America, put it on the coast, or Mars. Put a modern-day thriller into the old west, or in a caveman setting.
Taken to the extreme, every noun in a story can be changed to another noun and the whole story becomes something quite different. Next, change the ‘event’ of the story.
You also noticed, as you were reading the original book, that the protagonist had to overcome several obstacles to achieve the sought-after result. Change each of the obstacles, change how each was overcome, change the result if you can.
Finally, in every novel your protagonist is seeking something. It’s the result of the quest, and the whole novel is the retelling of that very quest. Change that something. It might have started out as money, but turn it into precious stones, or a piece of art, or the release of a prisoner.
I hope you can see that with just a few minor changes, your old best-selling plot can easily be reworked into something very fresh, yet all of the elements that made it desirable to the publishing world.
The Benefits of Becoming an Amazon Bestseller
First of all, becoming an Amazon bestseller is not about selling a load of books and getting rich fast.
In fact, running an Amazon bestseller campaign can be quite expensive unless you are personally co-ordinating the campaign yourself and even then it will at least be very time-consuming. It’s how you leverage your bestseller status that will make the difference to your career.
Hence, if you decide to incorporate an Amazon bestseller campaign into your book marketing strategy you need to think strategically and have a long-term vision of what you want to achieve. This will help prepare you for some of the opportunities that can come your way as a result of becoming a best-selling author. You will also be better placed to evaluate the opportunities that may come your way because certainly you may not want to run with all of them.
So 10 potential benefits of running an Amazon bestseller campaign are that you can:
1. Turn an unknown book into an overnight success.
2. Gain massive exposure among your peers, their followers and other individuals. A well-run campaign will potentially expose you to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of individuals.
3. Gain expert status in your chosen and as such be recognised as the ‘go-to’ person in your field.
4. Receive offers of speaking engagements and be able to command higher fees for speaking.
5. Charge more for consulting or coaching services.
6. Fill your live events more easily.
7. Attract foreign publishers interested in publishing your book.
8. Substantially increase your own opt-in list.
9. Create other great joint venture partnerships and or strategic alliances with the people who helped you to co-ordinate the campaign.
10. Drive massive volumes of traffic to your website and or blog where you can sell other products and or services.
This really is the tip of the iceberg as to what you can achieve through a successful Amazon bestseller campaign. However, from this list of benefits I’m sure you can appreciate why so many people go to the trouble of running such a campaign. The work involved is well worth the potential rewards.
Book Review of the Best Seller, A Fighter's Heart
When one thinks of the background of athletes in the sports of boxing, mixed martial arts, and kickboxing it is very rare that anyone would think of a former Harvard student being an expert in that field. However, that is the case with author Sam Sheridan, who wrote a novel a few years ago called A Fighter's Heart. As previously mentioned, Sheridan is a graduate from Harvard and when he was in school at the Ivy League university he got involved in boxing, which prompted further interest in pugilistic sports. The novel profiles Sheridan and the sports he covers as he traverses the globe to get a feel for why people fight and the mentality of the competitors. One of the drawbacks of combat sports is that often times on the mats that people train on, they can pick up an infection such as toenail fungus since the mats are unclean. This can result in needing to use fungus toenail laser treatment or Long Island fungus toenail treatment. Along the way he also experiences the different sports for himself, completely immersing himself in the culture of whatever sport he is profiling at the moment. A fairly simple read and very intriguing, it is no wonder that A Fighter's Heart was at one time on many different best sellers' lists.
The novel begins with Sheridan briefly explaining his interest in fight sports and his background. After graduating from a prestigious prep school on the east coast he went into the Merchant Marines for a while to participate in the military. After that adventure, he went to Harvard and graduated with a degree in art. Fresh out of Harvard Sheridan went on a boat trip around the world on the yacht of a family friend and wound up in Australia. Australia is the setting for Sheridan's realization that what he really wants to do is explore the culture of fighting. Working out at a gym in Australia in the art of kickboxing, Sheridan is told that training at a gym in Thailand for Muay Thai, a form of kickboxing, for a few months is worth years at any other school in any other country.
Needless to say, Sheridan winds up going to Thailand. Working out at one of the more famous gyms, called the Fairtex gym, Sheridan finds out some incredible facts and gets top notch training. Sheridan learns that Muay Thai is a way out of poverty for many people, much like boxing in the United States, and that fighters typically starting having fights at age six or seven and are considered at their peak at seventeen. After participating in a Muay Thai fight of his own, which he wins, Sheridan moves back to the United States.
The novel continues as Sheridan travels to Oakland to train with and pick the brain of an Olympic medalist in boxing and then moves on to Rio de Janiero and subsequently Japan to work in Brazilian jiu jitsu with famed heavyweight mixed martial artist Antonia Rodrigo Noguiera. The lowlight of the book for many people; is when Sheridan discusses dog fighting and how it is popular in many different countries. Since his attempts to explain it away as a dog showing love for his owner, there is really nothing that can take away from the disgusting brutality and senselessness of dog fighting and it really taints the book that it is even bought up.
Despite the obvious low point, the novel is still an excellent read and very satisfying to those already interested in combat sports and people who may be looking to learn more.
The 4 Reasons Why Everyone Will Want To Read Your New Book
There are four reasons why people will want to read the new book you are writing, and if you include them all, you will have a best-seller.
The 1st Reason Why People Will Read Your New Book
First and foremost, people like to be entertained. And while it may seem like by deliberately setting out to entertain people with your writing that you are dumbing it down or selling out, you really aren’t. People read books or watch television because it is an escape, and an escape has to be entertaining on some level or people will avoid it. Even if it is good for them.
And if you want someone to actively seek out your book, you will have to make it entertaining so they will look forward to reading it as much as they like watching videos on YouTube.
The 2nd Reason Why People Will Read Your New Book
People need to be inspired. And the highest thing your book can achieve is to inspire someone to do better. An inspiring book is something that a person will never forget reading, even if it only helps them change one aspect of their life.
And besides writing about your own success story, the story of others’ triumphs is also something to explore as you write your best-selling book. Telling your reader how you (as well as many others) achieved certain goals can be so motivating, that once your reader finishes your book, they will be able to do it too. This kind of writing also lends itself to a best-selling and inspirational title.
The 3rd Reason Why People Will Read Your New Book
Readers have to walk away from a book feeling like they have learned something new. People love to tell others about what they are reading, and especially what they are learning from a new book. So you have to imagine someone telling other people how excited they are about what they are learning from your book, no matter how small a fact it is.
There isn’t one person alive who doesn’t like to brag about the knowledge and education they have and where it comes from, and their latest resource for new information should be your book. Even if you are writing a novel, the reader can learn something new about a rare disease, investigative procedures, a place they have never visited, or new vocabulary words.
The 4th Reason Why People Will Read Your New Book
Let’s face it. People read a book because someone else tells them they have to read it. In fact, many people are told that if they want to be included in a certain social group, be considered smart, or graduate from a school – they have to read certain books. This mandate can come from a teacher, a professor, an employer, a family member, a book club, a best friend, a best-seller list, a neighbor, a minister, a website, an organization, and the list goes on.
This is an often overlooked reason as to why people read books, but it will certainly help your book sales if you check out what kind of books are being recommended by these social leaders & institutions and also why. Because in spite of what the media tells us (that people would much rather watch a video instead of read a book), we live in a time where more people are required to read than ever. And there are more people on the planet now who have the ability to read than in the whole history of the world.
Not to mention, it is now easy to translate books into every foreign language you can possibly imagine. And the fact that enough people from so many countries are interested in new ideas, and make so many books written in English international best-sellers so quickly, indicates that the entire world is much savvier than it used to be.
So take advantage of the new, literate world we live in and make your book entertaining, inspirational, educational, and also recommendable, and you will have a best-seller on your hands.
How to Write an Amazon Bestseller
At the time of writing, my first book is sitting at #8 in its category, with 7 x 5* reviews (I took a screenshot to prove it). I’m thrilled! I never imagined it would get ranked at all!
Amazon sales rank is a mysterious thing. I oversimplify, but it seems to be based on the number of sales per hour, with a weighting to adjust for long-term bestsellers such as Harry Potter.
OK, so I don’t know how many other books are in the ‘sales and marketing’ category, or how long it will stay in the top 10 (it’s dipped in and out at least three times so far, to my knowledge – not that I’m tracking it incessantly!). And, to be fair, I don’t yet know if that represents sales of 2,000 books, 20 books or 2 books! My printer, Lulu, prints books on demand (minimum quantity 1), and is due to send ‘creator revenues’ into my PayPal account after 6 to 8 weeks.
That said, I think it’s still an impressive achievement. In fact, it is an underestimate, as I also sell copies direct, so they are not counted in the Amazon ranking.
‘The Little Fish Guide to DIY Marketing’ is my first venture into publishing – it’s a compilation of the tips and stories that have been issued in my newsletter over recent years. The book was available from June 2010, but people only started buying it when it ‘went live’ on Amazon in October. It’s as if it suddenly became real as soon as it was available on Amazon.
So here’s how I did it.
Let’s assume you already have a good idea, a title, a target market, some writing skill and someone to design your book for you. Although the content took me about two years to complete – fitting it around everything else that I do – I found that was the easy bit!
Getting testimonials
When selling anything, what other people say is more convincing than anything you say yourself, so I knew my book needed testimonials to be printed inside and on the back cover. I sent PDF copies to volunteers, but found less than half of them actually contributed their comments (hopefully due to lack of time not because they didn’t have anything nice to say!). Of course, it’s hard to ‘chase’ people when they’re not being paid, so it caused another delay in the process. Eventually, I collected some lovely reviews and was ready to go to print at last.
The next stage was a huge learning process, with a number of key decision points along the way.
Traditional publishing or self-publishing
First, you need to decide whether to find a publisher/agent or to self-publish.
If you want to find a traditional publisher/agent who will look after everything for you (and take a percentage), your best bet is the latest copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (available in all good bookshops) and there are lots of other resources online.
If you need help with your content, there are a number of book coaches/midwives, independent book publishers and short-run printers/publishers for you to choose, for a fee (email me for a list of recommendations).
Despite warnings all over the Internet about their deteriorating customer service, I chose to self-publish through Lulu.com. I also found an email address for someone there who was tremendously helpful (although there was always a delay exchanging messages between the UK and US time-zones).
If you do the same as me, you then need to decide whether to self-publish or let Lulu be your publisher. Being a bit of a control freak, I decided to become a publisher as well as an author.
Buying ISBN numbers (or not)
To do that, you have to buy a block of ISBN prefixes from Nielsen BookData (minimum quantity is 10 which currently cost 111.86GBP inc. VAT). You have to download, print and fill in a 4-page form, but it’s not difficult (except you have to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words like ‘title verso page’ – it’s the inside page that backs on to the title page and includes the publisher name, copyright and ISBN details).
Search “nielsen isbn” for everything you need to know.
Be warned, it takes a while for your ISBNs to be issued, so you can’t rush this part of the process. Also note that, as a publisher, you are also obliged to send a copy of the printed book to Nielsen and the British Library Legal Deposit Office within one month (they send you the instructions along with the ISBN information). If/when you make changes, you have to publish another edition of your book with a new ISBN, so make sure everything is perfect before you approve the final proof.
Top tip: If you are also producing an eBook version, it needs its own ISBN. When setting your pricing, be aware that printed books don’t attract VAT, but ebooks do.
If you don’t want to go through all this, just let Lulu be your publisher, and get your ISBN free.
Designing the cover
Next decision: Are you doing your own cover design or using Lulu’s cover design wizard? Happily, I have access to a talented graphic designer who worked with me on my own lovely book cover. Lulu automatically produces the barcode for your ISBN, which you then download to include on the back – it has to go in the bottom right hand corner with a ‘quiet zone’ around it. Between us, we designed the cover of my book (using copyright-free images of course), and uploaded the print-quality artwork to Lulu.
To do a one-piece (wraparound) cover yourself, you need to download Lulu’s front and back ‘cover image templates’ for your book size, and overlay them on the left and right sides of your design. Adjust your page size and margins to match. Use Lulu’s ‘Spine Width Calculator’ tool and add that measurement in the middle.
More information is in Lulu’s “Book Covers FAQ”.
Designing the inside pages
Compared with that, dealing with the inside pages was relatively easy – they were already designed and saved in PDF format (single pages, not spreads). I just had to make sure the title page and title verso page were included at the front (which changed all my page numbers) and upload the file. If you don’t have access to design skills, you can upload Word files instead, for Lulu to convert into PDF. Then you have to order a ‘proof’ of the book and ‘approve’ it when it is finally perfect (I did this several times, and sold the proof copies at a discount).
Top tip: Authors pay a bit less when ordering their own books, and Lulu has monthly special offers that may be worth waiting for.
Getting onto Amazon
My next decision was easy – I wanted the book on Amazon, so I paid Lulu about 50GBP for Global Reach Distribution. (If you choose Lulu as your publisher, you get free Extended Reach Distribution instead.)
Here, I hit a snag. I’d originally designed my book at A5 size, with lovely white paper, but it turns out you can only have a few sizes for distribution, and A5 is not one of them. I had to change the artwork to fit US trade size – I just added bigger margins and re-uploaded it. Trouble is, I couldn’t have that size on white paper, only cream.
I found that Lulu’s explanation of sizes is not very consistent. In some places they refer to the name of the size, in others they quote inches, and in others, centimetres.
For further information, search Lulu Help for ‘Which books are eligible for distribution’ and ‘What paper will my book have for the cover and interior?’ The information you need is scattered throughout their online Help, so please email me for my handy summary of sizes and paper colours that are eligible for Lulu’s Global Reach distribution.
Once all the size, paper and distribution is sorted out, it takes 6-8 weeks for your book to appear on Amazon. I found that almost unbelievable in this Internet age! And then, I found it also takes a while for ‘Look inside’ to be activated, even after you’ve uploaded another PDF of your whole book to Amazon. But eventually, my book was online and the sales suddenly started rolling in.
Top tip: Other sellers may offer your book as ‘used’ or ‘as new’ at a discount. If it doesn’t cut your margin too much, you could set yourself up as a discount seller too, to compete with those sales.
Marketing your book
As a self-publisher, you have to do your own marketing. I invited everyone who bought the book to review it online (happily, they have all loved it so far). I did online marketing at no cost, using social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. For example, I ran a Twitter ‘retweet’ competition that promoted it to new followers. I also did local PR and announced it in my newsletter. And finally, I keep a small stock of books to sell at events I attend (such as training courses and local networking meetings). People love the shiny cover, and sometimes even ask me to sign my book, just like a real bestselling author!
Disclaimer: Please note these instructions apply to the UK. Even if you do exactly as I did, I can’t promise that your book will actually become an Amazon bestseller.
Top tip: You can track sales at Novelrank.com (it’s fascinating, but don’t become too obsessed!)
Do You Know Your Amazon’s Best Sellers Rank?
Or how you got there? What kind of algorithm are they using? According to Rob Nightingale, in his April 2014 article, “8 Things Most People Don’t Know About Amazon’s Bestsellers Rank (Sales Rank),” few people know how to promote their works through Amazon for sales rank and even Amazon won’t specifically state how the Bestsellers Rank is calculated. Do you think your Sales Rank is achieved through reviews?
The good news: It’s not. (The bad news: It’s not.)
If you’ve self-published your novels and are beating your head against the wall trying to market and promote your book by badgering friends and relatives to post a review, you can relax as it really won’t make a difference.
So then what Is the Amazon Bestsellers Rank? (Remember I’m specifically referring to the sale of books.)
In all Amazon book categories (including Kindle paid and free books–notice I included “FREE”), your title will include a “Product Details” section where all the stats are located. Included in those stats is the “Amazon Bestsellers Rank”. Nightingale, as well as Amazon’s own explanation for rank, is that the “calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales… ” Well, updated hourly for those who actively achieve sales per hour (in other words, the top 10,000 books are calculated hourly).
The rank is based on sales, not reviews or ratings. But sales made when or through which outlet? (Because that can change the computation too.)
The common idea about rank is that it takes into account more than sales (and both you and I were hoping it was reviews). But nay, it’s sales. “Sales” though, can mean more than dollar and cents out the door.
Rates and reviews can be good for the soul, of course, and still may help indirectly with your sales through positive, descriptive reviews or recommendations, however achieved. (Word of mouth is a positive sales tool.)
Ready for some additional insight? Books are weighted the same (well, almost) whether they are free or paid (keep reading).
In other words, these are sales relative to other products within the same category. Amazon then splits “paid” and “free” into separate categories. Included in the algorithm is a predictive feature based on historical data. (Huh? It’s becoming as confusing as the algorithm Google uses in their search engine ranking.) What it means then is that their rank is really not a measure of overall sales, but actually sales compared to others in the same category.
If you are experiencing some awesome sales then, how would these compute in sales ranking?
Sales of approx one book a day equals Amazon Best Seller Rank 50k to 100k
Sales of approx 5 to 15 books a day equals Amazon Best Seller Rank 10k to 50k.
According to Teresa Ragan in her calculations, it would take sales of 3,000 to 4,000 books a day to achieve an Amazon Seller Rank of 5 to 20 and sales of 4,000+ per day to achieve a Best Seller Rank of 1 to 5. Something you can really appreciate the next time to see a #1 ranked Amazon book. That’s a LOT of sales per day!
When I investigated the ranking for one of my grandfather’s books, I found on Thursday, December 3rd, the following: #6,281 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections. On Monday, December 7th, the same book ranked #317 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Reference & Collections.
Apparently, the sub-category ranking change can be attributable to the sale of a single book that week and shows even a small ripple in the pond can create a sizable wave. Watching those stats can begin to give you an idea of when and how the ranking changes. Knowing that–you can be armed with the ability to do something about it. So don’t give up!
How To Sell Books On Amazon – Why Selling Used Books Online Is Now The Perfect Home-Based Business
More and more people buy used books online, making this niche market the perfect home-based business to start with little money and low risk. People want information. They don’t really care that a second hand book has a few handling marks, the owner’s name is printed on the inside front cover, that some of the pages are dog-eared. They expect this. Ultimately, what they really want is to save money. And this is where you can help… and make a profit at the same time!
When you sell books online you will enjoy a lot of advantages over traditional used book stores by starting out selling at the most popular website offering used books for sale, Amazon Marketplace. These advantages include:
You don’t need to write a business plan. You don’t need to pay expensive overhead like rent and insurance. You’ll work from home in your spare time. You can just jump in and start the same day!
You can start small just offering the books you already own, the ones taking up space on your bookshelf that you haven’t read since college.
Speaking of college, there are lots of people searching online for good quality, current textbooks. Maybe your school textbooks still have some value.
You can set up your Amazon Marketplace seller’s account for free and list books at no charge. Amazon only takes its cut when a book sells, so you’re not out anything to list books.
With practice you can list a book for sale in less than 2 minutes.
You can start with what you have. You probably already have what you need to get started right there in your own home. If not, you can buy most of the items at your nearest discount store cheap.
You get paid cash within 2 weeks of starting to sell books on Amazon.
Used books are plentiful. You can find good quality used books and CDs at yard sales during the Spring and Summer months.
Supply is constant. Thrift store and library book sales offer quality non-fiction titles at low prices. Wait for final day and look for bag sales to stock up on product to earn even more profits.
You don’t need a lot of room to get started, as you can store over 1,000 books in a hallway, alcove or spare walk-in closet in your home.
Selling books on Amazon also saves you time. Since Amazon has branded itself as the top destination on the Internet where you can save money on books, they can deliver the most traffic of ready and willing book buyers to your front door. But you’ll also save time because the Amazon Marketplace does most of the work for you.
It posts the picture of the book, provides a description of the book, shows the sales ranks of books, and even reveals what others are selling that used book in like condition for, so you know if you have a winner to list online or a dog to put out at your next garage sale. They have a variety of simple listing and social media sharing tools to help you make money, learn the business, and offer ways to scale your business into a full-time national or global used book online store.
But while this is indeed the perfect home-based business, there are some things to know to keep from losing money and buying the wrong books to sell.
You will need to do your research early on, focusing on the most profitable, fastest selling books, while avoiding the slow movers. These probably won’t be books that you would buy for yourself, but that doesn’t matter. You’re buying second hand books that customers are wanting to buy online.
And even though the Amazon Marketplace is the perfect place to start your used book business from home, you’ll want to keep learning and expanding your knowledge of where to sell used books at other websites to grow your home-based business.
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