How to sell your book successfully on Amazon KDP Publishing

If you have chosen KDP Publishing for your book (and so many authors do), you may have uploaded it and are still waiting to see some serious sales come through, scratching your head, and wondering what’s going on.

But then most of us know that by just uploading your book with the basic information doesn’t necessarily translate into an overnight best seller, there is of course a bit more to it.

So, what should you do to give your book the best chance?

Firstly, you need to approach your book as an advertiser or publisher would, try to step away from it and view it from another perspective, as someone who will be its intended audience, and granted, this can be hard.

Your Book’s cover

Starting with the book cover design (and I’m assuming that the interior/manuscript has been edited, proofread, and polished to perfection), if your cover looks amateur, then the first impression your reader will get is of an amateur book, if you look at the best-selling authors (those who you dream of emulating), you’ll see that their covers all look professional, yours needs to stand up these.

There are two ways to do this, firstly, hire a professional to create your book cover, look upon this as an investment into your book (you’ve spent a long time writing this, so make sure that one of the last steps is not rushed and gets the respect it deserves). The second option is in making a cover yourself, however, know your limitations, if you are an artistic designer on the side then great, if not, will your DIY cover look amateurish? If so, again, get a professional to design the cover for you.

Getting your keywords correct

Taking your time with your book’s keywords is a necessary step and will ensure that the book can be found with the appropriate search from your reader, you can find out how to choose the right KDP Keywords for your book from our article on this part of self-publishing with KDP.

Choosing the right categories for your book

KDP have a great deal of categories for their books, and this can feel a little confusing to most authors when they first start publishing with them. But getting these correct can and will make a difference to how easy your book is to find.

Spending some time on Amazon’s own website and searching for books is a great place to start, on the left of the screen you’ll see the categories and sub-categories, from here you’ll see how popular they are and if they are a relevant option for your book.

Next is in the blurb/sales page description for your book.

This is highly important and something that you should take your time over, it’s going to be a small sales pitch for your book and as such should leave the reader wanting more. Amazon give the space for 4000 characters which is around 700 words, this you can use for a sales description of around 250-300 words and the rest for a couple of quotes.

The sales description should tell the reader the basics of the book (without giving anything away) and give a hook to entice them to want to find out more, using descriptive text and language to appeal to the emotions.

Getting quotes for your book is also a great sales tool, and by adding these into the sales description you give the reader another reason to purchase your book.

Your Amazon author’s page

Being realistic, for many genres this may not be seen as important as the copy for your book’s sales description, however, many readers do look at your page, so it is worth getting right. When you create this page, ensure that you add an image which looks professional, selling a book as an author should be seen as running a small business, portraying an appropriate image for your genre and style of book is worth getting right.
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With your bio, keep it within a reasonable length and interesting, droning on about details which are not relevant to your book or reader will put them off, remember, people by from people they like.

Get as many reviews as you can

There are three main elements which help to sell your book, first is the cover (to catch the eye of the reader), second are the reviews and then finally the sales description.

The more reviews you get the better, at first these can seem hard to obtain, but you can give out copies (i.e., eBook promotions on Amazon) to your friends and family and ask for their feedback via reviews, you ideally want to get these into double figures and grow them.

The more reviews you get (especially good ones), the higher your chances of selling the book become.

Finally, advertise on Amazon

Amazon does give you the option to advertise your book directly with paid advertising campaigns, this (when done correctly) can have a great impact upon your book sales and is another option worth considering, you can find out more about Advertising your book on Amazon with our other article.
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