Book Marketing Blogs - Worthwhile Posts to Investigate

With several new ideas for ebooks in the works I have been spending what free time I have lately researching more about successful book marketing. Here are a few blog posts I have found interesting and worth sharing.

The focus in my latest search for information on book marketing has been focused on using the internet and anything that helps sell books on Amazon.

The Good Book Marketing Blog

7 Reasons Why Authors Should Use a Book Landing Page

Leverage Customer Images and Notes to Optimize Your Book's Sales Page on Amazon.

Basic Blog Tips

Four Incredibly Simple Ways to Increase Blog Traffic Without Relying on Goggle

The Savvy Book Marketer

Boost Your Profit Margin With Amazon Associates

How to Promote a Book With Video

The Creative Penn

Book Marketing Tips From Amazon's Best Selling eBooks of 2011

How to Find Your Target Market

Marketing Your Book - Keyword Searches and Amazon's Auto-populate Feature

Amazon is the 900 pound gorilla in the retail book industry. There is nothing you can do as an individual to sell as many books as Amazon can sell for you. For self-published authors, Amazon is the best venue to reach as many potential customers as possible.

To say it is critical for a book to show up in the first page of Amazon search results to maximize sale potential is not an exaggeration. Countless authors have tried to "game" the Amazon search engines through a wide variety of methods, many of which Amazon considers to be "black hat" techniques. 

If Amazon deems an author has used a black hat approach, it will penalize the author and the book and the results are not pleasant.

Using keywords though is an approach Amazon not only approves of, but when an author is going through the process of uploading their book files via either Amazon owned CreateSpace or Amazon's KDP Kindle platform, Amazon will allow an author to provide up to seven keywords in the book's metadata.

These seven keywords, when combined with a well worded title and the correct choice of categories for the book, can do wonders for a books search results.

It is worth noting, Amazon is beginning to crack down on the words inserted in book titles. Why? Here is the information Amazon provides during the process of uploading a book for sale on the Kindle platform. It is straightforward.

 

Some authors evidently have been adding words to a books title in an effort to add additional keywords and enhance the book's chances of rising higher in the search results.

Since Amazon only allows seven keywords and two categories per title and both are critical in producing the best possible search results, just how can an author determine what are the best possible choices?

First, search for as many books as possible that are similar to your book. See how these books rank in the search results. Check which categories these books are listed in. There are lots of factors in making a final choice concerning category selection, but this is a good start. In some instances, it is better to list a book in a category that receives fewer results but has significantly less competition.

Determining keywords for your book on Amazon is a bit different than searching for keywords to promote a website. There are no keyword search tools as such for Amazon.

Don't worry, Amazon provides just such a tool, albeit one probably not designed for the purpose of providing optimal keywords for a book.

When doing your own search for books similar to your own, take note of the words that appear in Amazon's search box as you type in words for your search. I have been reading an entertaining series of thrillers set in the 1880s and 1890s by Kim Wright. The stories include actual historical events and figures and are both informative and entertaining. 

The current novel I am reading in the series is City of Silence, set in St. Petersburg, Russia. Here is the search result Amazon's auto-populate feature produced when I typed in Russian.

Amazon will provide you with ideas for keywords for your book. You simply need to take the time to work you way through a variety of searches for books similar to your own and make lists of keywords suggested by Amazon's auto-populate feature. Track which words produce the best results in producing the highest search results for the books you are researching. Narrow the list to the best seven words and you'll have a good starting point for your seven keywords when uploading your book's files.

If you have yet to determine a subtitle for your book, it is a good idea to do this research prior to the creation of the interior and cover files you will upload to Amazon for the book. This will allow a white hat approach for you to include one or two essential keywords in your books title and subtitle and avoid the displeasure of Amazon.

Kindle Select Marketing Experiment Update

My 5-day experiment with KDP Select has ended. I gave away for free, for five days, the Kindle edition of Fine Tuning Your Three-Point Attack. 110 readers took advantage of the offer. I "think" these results were good as the title climbed quickly to the Number One position in Amazon's Top 100 Free Kindle results for basketball. I wish more readers had taken advantage of the offer and it was not until after my free give away period started that I learned of bookbub.com and ebookbooster.com, services that help authors and publishers promote ebooks.

Why did I select this title for my experiment in giving away a Kindle book for free? It has great content and this is not just my opinion either. While the book only has 4 5-star reviews, the coaches who read the advance copies to generate feedback and blurbs loved it. I have gotten e-mails from coaches asking questions based on the content of the book who loved it.

But the book simply has not been selling. As a result, it has declined steadily in Amazon Sales Rankings to the point where I was not selling any copies, either POD or Kindle. As of this afternoon, with the book once again on sale at its normal price, it has risen to 74th out of 1,600+ titles in its category.

Still not on the first page of results, but I take the second page any day over where the book was showing up (somewhere past page 20 in the results).

Hopefully a good number of those 110 readers who take advantage of the free copy will write a few good reviews, say some nice things to other coaches and come back to buy copies of my other books.

Time will tell if the experiment to boost the book's rankings in the search results will result in more sales of the title. I have no way to measure if this free giveaway  results in sales of my other books.

My next experiment has been to drop the price of five Kindle editions to .99 cents for each title. I will be promoting this in my weekly eNewsletter to just over 3,500 coaches. I am interested to see which will get a better response, FREE or .99 cents. I am also interested in finding out which approach will result in higher search results on Amazon.

When that experiment is over, I will try one more each of a KDP Select FREE promotion for five days and a .99 cent sale of specific titles but this time I will promote both on the aforementioned ebook promotional services.

Marketing Kindle and POD Books When Releasing a New Title

Since introducing Kindle versions of two of my POD titles, I have been pleasantly surprised by two results, an increase in sales of the POD versions and the fact the Kindle versions have far outsold the print version. Late this month or early in April a Kindle version of my best selling POD title will make its debut on Amazon as well.

I have been thinking about what approach I should take in marketing the launch of my third Kindle title. I am concerned still about the possibility of Kindle sales hurting the print sales, especially since this is my best selling title. I hope the opposite is true and like the other two titles the sales numbers for the POD version improve AND the Kindle sales do well.

The first title I offered as a Kindle version I used my e-newsletter and an introductory price as an effort to spur sales initially. I also indicated in my newsletter that the introductory price would only be good until mid-January of this year and then there would be a price increase. I was stunned at the number of copies of the Kindle version I sold in December and early January. The numbers did drop after the price increase, but not dramatically. The title in question, The Game of Basketball, is ranked second if a search for coaching basketball is done. The first six weeks of sales drove the Amazon Sales Ranking up high enough that the long tail of Amazon did the rest. The decrease in sales numbers has not resulted in a loss of profit as the price increase combined with the minimal drop in total sales numbers means the Kindle version is earning more profit on the slightly lower volume.

The e-newsletter was a definite plus in marketing the release of The Game of Basketball and will be used for the next Kindle title. My price point will be higher for Game Strategy and Tactics for Basketball, my best selling title. I am also debating if I will use a lower initial price to drive early sales of the Kindle version as well.

One of the marketing issues for my target audience is how many of the potential readers of my books have Kindle reading devices? I worked to circumvent this issue by noting in each weekly issue of my in season e-newsletter that Kindle books could be read on a lap top and other electronic devices. I included a direct link to the page on the Amazon site where FREE software to read Kindle books could be downloaded to the device in question. If you have a means of providing this information with a link to potential customers I would encourage you to do so. Yes, you might sound like a shill for Amazon, but if it increases your Kindle sales, so be it.

I have a blog on my business website and I did use it to promote the Kindle titles but spent most of my promotional effort on the e-newsletter. 

There are several message boards where coaches visit to exchange information and often mention new books or DVDs they have obtained and offer reviews for other coaches to read. I am toying with the idea of giving away a few print copies to coaches to review with the request the review be honest, but mention that both a print and a Kindle version are available.

The only really different step I have taken in promoting my Kindle titles when compared to promoting my print titles is the effort to let potential readers know about the FREE Kindle software for devices other than the Kindle reader.

I would love for other authors to share any effective ideas they have successfully used to promote and drive sales numbers up for their Kindle titles.