by Susan U. Neal RN, MBA, MHS @SusanNealYoga
Would you like to be an award-winning, bestselling author who sells over 500 books a month? To achieve this goal, you need a multi-faceted approach to book marketing. It is not one specific technique that causes a book to sell well. In this article we will review the strategies used to get one of my book’s overall Amazon rank to 4,400 out of 6,000,000 books. That ranking is better than 99.9 percent of Amazon books. A snowball effect occurred as layers of techniques were utilized to improve book sales and Amazon ranking.
Book Marketing on Amazon
Meet the Readers Need
First, a book must be well written and professionally edited. It should provide the reader with delightful entertainment, significant information, or transformational power. Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction the reader must gain something positive from the book content. It needs to be so good that a reader will tell their friends about it and write an unsolicited Amazon review.
Determine Categories & Keywords
Determining your book’s best categories and keywords significantly improves your book’s viability. Categories are similar to genres. Amazon has over 12,000 categories for you to choose from. It takes time and training to figure out a book’s categories. Many times, publishers appreciate an author performing this analysis for their book.
To help your book be found from the millions of books on Amazon, you want to incorporate highly searched keywords into your book’s title, back cover, and Amazon description. This helps readers find your book because it is more likely to populate on the search feed when your book contains a keyword that an Amazon reader is searching for. If you want to figure out your book’s categories and keywords, take my course, Improve Your Book’s Amazon Rank by Expanding Categories and Keywords, at CIPA.Podia.com.
Obtain Amazon Reviews
Next, the book’s cover and description must be captivating. A significant amount of positive Amazon reviews lets the reader know the book is vetted. An author needs to get at least fifty to one hundred Amazon reviews before they occur naturally. When I receive positive feedback from a reader, I ask them if they would please write an Amazon book review because reviews are like gold to authors. If you would like more information on this topic, read How to Get More Reviews.
It took me two years to get my first fifty Amazon reviews. At that time, I also expanded all of my books’ categories and keywords. Two years later, my number one Amazon best-selling book, 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates, had 1000 reviews. Most of the reviews occurred organically without solicitation. It was the first fifty reviews that were the toughest to get.
Win Book Awards
When a book has won awards, it endorses the book’s content and shows the reader it is an excellent book. Enter your book in numerous awards so it can become award-winning. Check out the great resource, Book Contest List, which lists fifty Christian book contests at CIPA.Podia.com. My books have won first place in the Selah, Directors’ Choice, and Golden Scroll awards.
Books that win contests demonstrate to the reader that the book is superior. Adding the gold seal to the cover is an excellent marketing technique that propels book sales. Awards boost sales and lengthen the life of books.
Market Your Book
I’ve found splendid success with marketing my books through guest blog posts, magazine articles, and podcast and television interviews. I have been a contributing author to this award-winning blog, The Write Conversation, since 2018. I’ve written guest blogs for many other sites as well.
A month prior to my book’s best Amazon rank, I was on the cover of the Leading Hearts magazine, which included a feature article about me becoming the director of the Christian Authors Network (CAN) and Christian Indie Publishing Association (CIPA).
Continue Marketing Years After Publication
This year, I attended the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) convention where I met a WATC-TV representative. Of course, I pitched my books and dropped off my media kit. From this marketing effort, I landed four television interviews where we discussed five of my books. I highly recommend authors attend NRB as you can get a year’s worth of media interviews from this tradeshow. I have a CAN/CIPA booth at NRB annually for my members.
My first television interview was recorded over Zoom. After that, I asked if I could drive to their studio in Atlanta for an additional interview. The studio scheduled three interviews with me in their studio. One show, Atlanta Live, was broadcast live.
Four years after my books publication, this interview brought my book up to being a number one Amazon best seller right before speaking at the Blue Ridge Mountain Christian Writers Conference (BRMCWC). After this exceptional day of being interviewed at their studio, I sent them an Edible Delights arrangement of fresh fruit. Since my genre is healthy living, I thought that was a perfect gift. I received an email from the studio president thanking me for the arrangement and offering additional interviews after the publication of my next book. We want to be remembered, so send your hand-written thank-you notes.
The day before my book ranked 4,400, my third television show ran in the Atlanta area. Sometimes it takes readers seeing the product several times before they will buy it. The next day my book had its best Amazon rank ever.
Obtain Speaking Engagements
Speaking engagements have a broad reaching effect. In the first half of this year, I spoke at four Christian writers conferences. The BRMCWC had 600 attendees. During the awards ceremony, I went up on stage twice to receive awards for the Selah and Directors Choice awards for my children’s book, Eat God’s Food: A Kid’s Guide to Healthy Eating.
While I was teaching my BRMCWC practicum about expanding your books’ categories and keywords, my book ranked number one in the Candida category. And my second book in the series, Christian Study Guide for 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbohydrates, ranked number five in this category. It amazed the class that my books got such high Amazon ranks. One attendee commented, “Expanding your book’s categories and keywords really works.”
When your book achieves number one in any category, Amazon places a best seller sticker next to it. This sticker is a huge marketing flag. Now that is advertising at its best. If you determined narrow categories for your book and obtained a good amount of book sales, your book may rank on Amazon’s top 100 Best Seller list in that category.
Run Amazon Ads
Running Amazon ads is a key marketing element. Amazon wants their cut of your profits. If you will share your earnings, and have done your research for applicable, high-ranking keywords, Amazon will show your book to many readers. If the cover and high number of Amazon reviews reals the reader in, you will obtain higher sales.
There are many facets to marketing your Christian book from obtaining Amazon reviews to awards. Just like you keep raising your child, after it is born, you need to continue marketing your book years after its publication. The highest Amazon ranking of my book came four years after its publication. A snowball gets larger as you roll it in the snow, and so does book marketing. The more layers you have, the more book sales you will achieve. What effective marketing technique have you used?
Great article! FYI: The link for 7 Steps to Get Off Sugar and Carbs goes to the post How to Get More Book Reviews.
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ReplyDeleteGreat tips. Thank you , Susan
ReplyDeleteThank you - very helpful. Continued success to you!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Susan; great ideas! But what I wonder is, with all the other stuff you're doing, how do you keep finding time to write new books?
ReplyDelete