The Five Best Things for Marketing Your Kindle Book

There are a lot of things you can do to drive people to the page on Amazon where they can buy your Kindle book, but all those efforts will be in vain if when they get there, they don’t buy. Before you start your marketing efforts, you MUST get five essential things right.

1. A good book. What can I say? It better be a good book, or it won’t sell. Duh. You might get a few folk to buy it in the beginning, but word will soon spread through word-of-mouth and negative reviews if you have a bad book. On Kindle, the best part of your book should be the first few sentences and chapter one and two. Why? Because on Kindle, readers are able to download a sample consisting of just the first little bit of your book to sample before they buy. It better be soooo good that the reader MUST pay to read the rest.
   
   Example: Friends, and Other Perishables by Dale Whisman. Go download the sample of this book. You get the first three chapters. Does this make you want to pay $2.99 to read the rest? I hope so. I use Dale’s first paragraph in this book as an example of a great opening paragraph for a novel whenever I am speaking to writers.
   
   
2. Price - It’s very important to price your book right. I’ve read where unknown authors shouldn’t price their novels more than $2.99. B-list authors, $6.99 at the most and NYT bestselling authors better keep their books under $9.99. Unless you are self-publishing your Kindle book, it may be difficult to dictate the price. There are various pricing strategies for book promotion that I won’t get into here, but for the most part, you’ll want to price your book between $2.99 and $9.99 to take advantage of the highest royalty rate from Amazon (abt 70%). Here’s a good read on the subject: How to Price eBooks for the Kindle by Stephen Windwalker. It’s only $2.99… it MUST be priced right… right?
   
   
3. Cover art. A professional cover speaks volumes. If you are self-publishing your Kindle book, create as professional of a cover as you can. If you are incapable of doing so, pay someone to do this for you. This is one of the biggest mistakes that self-publishers do--create a book with a cover that looks like a third-grader put it together.
   
   
4. Title. More than what you might think. The two books I mention in this post have longer titles than what I put here. Dale Whisman’s book, Friends, and Other Perishables doesn’t have a title that tells you what it is. We added to the title on the Kindle page. It is now, Friends, and Other Perishables: a Carl Jacobs Mystery. Now from the title you know it is a mystery series with a sleuth named Carl Jacobs. Much better.
   
   The book, How to Price eBooks for the Kindle by Stephen Windwalker is pretty clear from the title on what it is all about. But Stephen goes even farther and gives his book the longer title of: How to Price eBooks for the Kindle: A Pocket Guide for Authors and Publishers to Maximize Sales and Royalties with the New 70 Percent Royalty Option. Better! Now I REALLY know what this book is about from the title. The Amazon search engine is bound to pick up more from this longer title and more people who are looking for a particular subject will be able to find this book.
   
   
5. Description. You must have a good hook here. Just like the first chapter of your novel or the opening of an article or short story, the synopsis or description of your book needs to entice a reader into at least downloading a sample or better yet, buying your book. This is your sales pitch, so take your best shot and close the sale. You may want to include the length of your novel (350 pages 120,000 words) so the reader knows what they’re getting for their money… a novel, not a novella. (Although a novella is fine for a Kindle book, it just needs to be priced accordingly.)

There you go. A good start on your road to a bestselling Kindle book.

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Promoting Books for the Kindle

In December of 2008, I was asked by one of my authors if he could publish his novel as an ebook for the Kindle on Amazon.com. I thought, why not? “Sure go ahead.” I had looked at the new Kindle and figured it would go the way of most expensive ebook readers… down the drain. I didn’t think it was worth my time and trouble to put our books on Kindle. After all, how many people would buy a $400 device just to read ebooks?

Just for grins, I signed up on the Amazon DTP (Digital Text Platform) site and went through the process of converting one of my books into Kindle format, uploaded it, made it available and then forgot about it.

Moving forward a few months to January 2010, I was perusing my bank statement and noticed a payment from Amazon that looked a little different. I receive payments from Amazon 1 to 3 times a month for various selling programs on Amazon, so I don’t usually pay a whole lot of attention, but this particular payment said, “Amazon Digital.” Huh? I logged onto my Amazon account and browsed for several minustes before I remembered where I had uploaded that ebook. I finally found the Amazon DTP site and ran the report on my sales. I had sold 15 books in 2009 and Amazon had paid me more than $150 over a year’s time. Wow! I hadn’t done any work at all. That’s when I decided that I better look a little closer at this Kindle stuff.

Amazon was suddenly projecting ebook sales would surpass paper book sales before the end of the year. Whoa! I better get busy. We immediately started a program to convert all of our titles to Kindle and any new books that we publish are now simultaneously brought out both in trade paperback and Kindle. Our publishing company isn’t the only one. Just recently, Dorchester Publishing, publisher of Leisure paperback books, announced that they would no longer be producing mass-market paperbacks, but instead be bringing their titles out in Kindle first and follow it up a few months later with a POD Trade paperback starting with their September titles.

Guess what? Promoting your books on the Internet is now more important than ever. Actually I should say, promoting your Kindle books on the Internet in now more important than ever. The Internet you say? Yes… well I think that’s where most Kindle lovers hang out… and BTW (by the way) the new Kindle is priced lower than ever. $139 for the cheapest version of the Kindle 3 and now, you don’t even need a Kindle to read Kindle books. There are Kindle apps that are free for the iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, PC, and Mac. There are literally millions of Kindle users now. The market is HUGE.

I have been researching a LOT on promoting Kindle books—what works and what doesn’t. I’ll post a series of BLOGs here over the next few weeks that deal with just Kindle book promotion. I’m not being a Kindle geek about this. We could just as easily started by talking about promoting books for Barnes and Nobles’ Nook, or the Sony Reader, or the Apple iPad, or any number of other ebook readers. The reason for Kindle? Depending on the source, anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of ebooks sold are for the Kindle. I’m going where the money is first. I’ve interviewed several bestselling authors—formally unknown authors before the Kindle—and compiled a stack of promotion ideas and information for you.

While doing all this, I, along with author Dale Whisman, have tried out many of the promotion ideas on Dale's detective novel series, The Carl Jacobs Mysteries. There are now three books in this series. The first book, Friends, and Other Perishables was originally published in hardback by a publisher whose main customers were libraries. It received some great reviews from Kirkus, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and others, but didn't sell beyond it's first print run. I republished this book in trade paperback and now in Kindle along with the next two installments of the series. I thought these books would be my best bet on trying out Kindle promotion ideas, because they have what most of the interviewed bestselling Kindle authors say is the most important things for selling a Kindle book.

1. A good book. What can I say? It better be a good book, or it won’t sell.


2. Price - It’s very important to price your book right.


3. Cover art. A professional cover speaks volumes.


4. Title. More than what you might think.


5. Description. You got to have a good hook here.

We’ll go into these in a later post. But here are the three books in the Carl Jacobs Mystery Series and their links on Amazon Kindle:

Friends, and Other Perishables - $2.99

A Witch among Friends - $2.99

Friends on Fire - $2.99

Check ’em out… and while you’re at it, buy ’em and put ’em on your Kindle. (That’s me in my detective voice.) :-)

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How to Sell 50 books (and More) at a Book Signing

I mentioned James Megellas in an earlier post. Here's an article I wrote about him a few years ago. James is now in his 90's and still selling his book.

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I met Jim at the Books-a-Million in Grapevine Mills Mall in Grapevine, Texas on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. He was at a table set up by the entrance where thousands of people passed by that day. I couldn’t help but notice that nearly everyone who stopped at his table purchased one of his books, All the Way to Berlin.

“How are book sales?” I asked.

“Pretty good today. There’re lots of people buying my book for
Christmas presents.”

“How many do you suppose you’ll sell today?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve never sold less than 50 books at
a book signing.”

50 books! I’ve never heard of an “unknown” author selling those numbers at a book signing. I decided I better get to know Jim a little better.

James Megellas, Jim, was a 1st Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division during WWII. He fought in the mountains outside Naples then was part of the landing at Anzio. Jim’s brigade, the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, nicknamed “Devils in Baggy Pants,” were so decimated by the carnage at Anzio that it did not rejoin its division until the famous “bridge too far” campaign of September 1944. At the end of the war, Jim was part of the occupation forces in Berlin.

Jim was the most highly decorated officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts.

Jim is now 86 years old. He started writing his book about his experiences in WWII at age 80. “Writing the book revitalized me,” commented Jim. It sure did. Jim is the youngest looking 86-year-old I’ve ever seen. Presidio Press picked up his book and before it was published, Ballentine purchased Presidio. So when the book came out, Ballentime Books with the Presidio Press imprint appeared on the title page.

“How did you get so many sales at your first book signing?” I asked.

Jim chuckled at that question and told me the story. His son called a local “sports talk” radio station, “The Ticket” and told them about his dad and the book. One of the talk show teams wanted to interview Jim on their show. Jim had already set up a book signing at the local Barnes and Noble Bookstore, so when he was interviewed on the air, the guys really talked up the book signing. They had such a great time with the interview that Jim was on for the whole show and after he was off the hosts continued to talk up the book signing. When Jim finally arrived at the B & N to sign books, there was a long line of people waiting on him. They sold 125 books. Jim had to start signing book plates to put in the books when they restocked.

After that, both major newspapers in Dallas and Ft. Worth reviewed the book and Jim continued to have successful signings throughout the DFW area.

Jim was also a lecturer at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. The museum did a nice postcard with Jim’s book cover and a picture of him during the War that they sent out to their members. After the lecture, Jim sold over 150 books, ran out and had to take orders for more. He will be doing similar lectures elsewhere. On January 29th, Jim will be at the D-Day Museum in New Orleans and will sign books afterwards.

I noticed that Jim was not shy about talking to everyone who passed his table.

Each person he talked to, he attempted to establish a link between them and to the subject of his book. “Are you a veteran?” or “Is your father a veteran?” or “Do you know a veteran?” are some of the questions that start out the conversation. He would then go on to tell about his WWII book. Nearly everyone he spoke to bought the book.

Jim showed me a letter from a company in Ontario, California. He has been invited to be a guest at 2004’s “Weekend of Heroes.” The company is making an action figure of Jim in his Anzio battle outfit for the event. I’m sure he’ll sell lots of books when he’s there.

Several people came up just to shake Jim’s hand and say “Thanks” for defending our country. When I left, I not only thanked Jim for being a veteran, I thanked him for showing me how to conduct a great book signing!

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