How to sell a million books in 2015

Howard Marks reads The Shark in the Park

How to sell a million books in 2015

How would you like to sell a million copies of your e-book this year? Thought so, me too!

In this post I’ll share my secrets of how to make sure your achievement, and writing a book is an achievement, is seen by as many people as it deserves.

I’ve kept this simple and short so even if this is your first self-publishing endeavor, you’ll be able to follow the steps without much confusion…

1: Write a book, finish it (not so easy!), create the kindle version, proofread/edit etc, upload it to Amazon. Nobody will tell you this but here it is, regardless of genre your book will join an enormous pile of self-published works vying for the spotlight, the only way you stand a chance of rising from this pile is to be better. Even the smallest mistake will be pointed out by grammar-enthusiast reviewers and your ratings will suffer. Using the techniques detailed here WILL get you sales initially but if your product is weak then word will spread and you will drop off. Recent Sci-Fi blockbuster ‘I, Martian’ started as a self-published book and shifted 30,000+ copies in the first six months, I’ll never know why such a fantastic book was rejected by publishers but there you go, cream rises to the top.

2: Make your book available for pre-order, do not rush to release it, make sure you give yourself a minimum of two weeks, this ensures that not only can you create a pre-release buzz with your marketing, you also have ample time to prepare friends and family to buy the book as soon as it goes on sale and to write reviews. Here is our pre-order image, I shared this EVERYWHERE

3: Use KDP Select to make your book free for the first day or two. We didn’t with our books but we will with the next one, I have seen this work now countless times and the difference in downloads in the initial days is enormous, this will get your book noticed and you will start to collect reviews.

On the subject of reviews, many authors devote a tremendous amount of times to review exchanges in an attempt to trigger amazon’s algorithm, this does work but I find it time consuming and frustrating, if you do wish to follow this path there are many facebook groups dedicated to review sharing, I have found a less time-consuming approach is to ask politely at the end of your book, readers will be more inclined to give in-depth, valuable feedback if you are nice to them.

4: Create a pre-order campaign for facebook groups and a Thunderclap (I’ll give you some tips on how to make your Thunderclap go BOOM in a later post).

5: Advertise in the top facebook kindle groups below, these are the main power groups with the highest population but you will also find groups relevant to your genre by doing a simple search on facebook.

This is where dedication comes into play, your promotional post will only have visibility for a short time so you need to post on these groups continuously, work through and then start again, peak hours are US Evening so if you are European get ready for some all-nighters.

6: Include these hashtags in your posts #kindle #kindleunlimited #amazon and some genre hashtags too.

*** IMPORTANT *** Make a unique hashtag, possibly the title of your book or your surname (if it is uncommon), it is essential you use a hashtag that will only take you to your own posts.

7: As well as posting, bump your posts by clicking your unique hashtag, this will take you to a list populated only by your own posts, here you can firstly ‘like’ your own post to put it back to the top of the group, secondly, a few hours later, leave a comment, again, this will bump you to the the top of the group wall. I made a video detailing this technique and showing how, with the help of a few friends, you can get 100’s if not 1000’s of likes on your promotional book ads in seconds, remember, in the same way as getting good reviews, feedback on your facebook posts, especially if it is positive is a great way of validating your work and making it an attractive purchase.

Please excuse my breathing in the vid, I needed an operation on my nose so I sound like a walrus but I’m fine now

8: Ask your friends and family if they know a celebrity personally who will do a reading of your book that you can make into a video, you’ll be surprised who will be willing to help if you explore your connections and ask politely…

9: Now comes the second phase of your marketing plan, one book just won’t cut it, you’ll possibly be sick of the sight of it after a few months so you need to add direct related content. In an ideal world you’d release the second book of the series but you probably haven’t even started that and want to see you magnum opus hit the heights before you pick up the pen and start writing your next great novel. This is fine, you do not need ‘The Two Towers’ at this point but something small that can be sold for 99c is very easy to create, a short story, a pamphlet, a colouring book with unused images etc, the list is endless. Polish your drc and release it to the same fanfare and social marketing campaign as your first book, set the price accordingly and after the first few weeks or months, as sales drop off, convert your book to an epub file using Calibre and put your book on Wattpad. Wattpad is an app that allows people to read books directly on their phone through an app. Give your short book away with a link at the back (or front) to your main book.

Wattpad gives a TREMENDOUS amount of visibility and can grow your readership exponentially, as you can see…

These are the twenty largest groups to advertise your WATTPAD giveaway…

10: Now you are able to offer one of your books free of charge roughly once a week through KDP Select, in addition to Wattpad and also with kindleunlimited, make sure you let people know about this in your adverts…

..and make sure you create some adverts for your free day…

11: Now keep going, as the year progresses make sure you expand your social media reach by joining twitter, google+, linkedin etc and using the same techniques. You are now realising that to be successful probably involves sharing posts all day, every day for the rest of the year and you’d be right! However, there are programs out there that can automate your advertising by posting in groups, contacting group members and adding twitter followers etc, these should be used with care as they can get you banned or restricted, these are the ones I have found to be the most effective…

Hootsuite

Tweetadder

More Followers (google search it)

There are many others out there but again, use them with care.

Well, that’s about it, with hard work and dedication you can make it to the top of the bestseller list, please don’t forget…

12: Many blogs and websites claim to offer this information. They don’t, this strategy WORKS and its FREE, I have had messages from people saying they didn’t know where to start, one lady spent a year not selling a single book, once she read my post here, she sold seventy copies of her book the first evening and broke into the bestsellers of her category, if you use this information to sell your books, please return the favour and pick up one of mine.

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Milo & Ze, only $1.99 worldwide or FREE with Kindle Unlimited. Currently nominated for several illustrated children’s book awards. We’re sure you’ll love it

Click the cover to be taken to the book page…