Creating Top Selling Books on Amazon
We are the leading experts in Israel when it comes to marketing and sales on Amazon. Numerous authors have gained worldwide acclaim, sold thousands of copies of their book and received excellent reviews. Many have become bestsellers.
After years of research, our analysts have developed a unique method for book launches, marketing and sales, allowing authors international exposure and an excellent return on their investment. Marketing includes unique campaigns during “free book campaigns” as well as “bargain days”, guaranteeing a buzz on the internet and social networks.
Our methodology is being validated every day, considering the dynamic platform and algorithms of Amazon, and based on trends, keywords analysis and follow-up on bestselling books.
Let’s not forget that Amazon offers 7,000,000 digital books for sale and another 30 million books in print with thousands of books being uploaded daily. This explains why so many books put on Amazon don’t sell.
Why is publication on Amazon worth-while?
Writing a book is a significant investment and requires substantial efforts. It is a long process that demands creativity, perseverance, talent, as well as advanced language skills and writing abilities. Any individual who takes on this daunting task and completes it with success will usually reach the long-awaited and desired result – a complete and finished book, ready to be distributed and read. Authors who have written in Hebrew will naturally wish to distribute their books to the Israeli crowd of Hebrew speakers. However, the book market in Israel is relatively small, the method of distribution through bookstores is limiting and royalties are generally low.
After investing substantial financial and emotional efforts in their books, many authors are destined to remain frustrated and unable to cover their expenses.
Publishing on Amazon provides an alternative to the local market, where advantages are many and opportunities are endless.
Amazon is the biggest bookseller in the world, distributing every book simultaneously on 13 websites in different languages and reaching almost every country in the world. On Amazon, authors are not required to use a publishing service, but rather can open a personal account and upload the book themselves, earning 70! percent royalties from digital book sales and 60 percent from printed book sales. The reader audience is huge (approximately 300 million readers) and varied, and the books are published under countless categories and sub-categories, spanning nearly every topic in the world.
Exposure through Amazon is international, and every book is subject to the audience’s direct scrutiny. If the book is a success, it will receive good reviews and will continue to sell for years. A book on Amazon is never “taken off the shelf”. It remains ever available for purchase in global distribution and continues to gain online momentum.
Turning a Book into a Brand on Amazon
The challenge faced by potential readers is finding the book most suited to them. Even the most experienced web surfer who knows exactly what he wants to read will find, after a focused search process, a long list of books from which he must choose. Branding is what influences such a reader to choose your book in particular, out of all of the books on the list, click on the book page, read and be convinced by everything written there, and ultimately decide to buy your book.
Americans are particularly fond of brands and willing to pay for them. The American customer likes to know that there is a brand behind the book they are purchasing. Therefore, if you are a world-renowned author you will want to advertise your name, but if you are not quite famous yet, what you will want to highlight is the book’s message, creating an emotional connection for your readers and encouraging them to purchase your book.
Title and Subtitle as a Brand
In order to give your book a chance to compete against other older and more well-known books in its category, you must create for it a title indicative of its content. Our “Title Committee” at eBookPro is composed of a Literary Editor, a Creative Analyst, and a Marketing Expert, who together devise multiple options for a book’s title and subtitle, and reach a final decision through consultation with the author.
A good title is one that contains all the right words from an algorithm point of view and brings to life the essence of the book. A title is a short story within itself and is a powerful feature of the brand.
Book Cover Design as Part of the Branding Process
According to research, a book’s title and cover are responsible for more than 70% of a reader’s decision-making process while browsing for books. A cover should indicate the book’s genre at a first glance, and its design should point to promising professional work.
The majority of successful books on Amazon adhere to the fit to genre rule, knowingly or unknowingly.
As Amazon offers a vast choice of books available for immediate purchasing, the average attention granted to a book by a potential reader is minimal (a matter of mere seconds or less). The reader makes his decision fairly instinctively, and often cannot rationally explain why he made the purchase – it “just felt right”.
When you have several books, it is important to ensure uniformity in covers. Uniform branding is what links your books to one another and strengthens your brand.
Optimizing your Amazon Book Description
Completing the process of professional placing requires a short and engaging marketing-oriented description of your book, written clearly, eloquently, and accurately. The information about the book should be short and to the point, and the most significant marketing content should be contained within the first two lines.
Author’s Page as a Brand on Amazon
The author’s page is the place where your readers can connect to you on a personal level, and gain a sense of confidence in your abilities. When you have more than one book, the author’s page becomes your main brand. This is your business card as an author. A place that contains all the information concerning you and your books, as well as any information regarding methods of contact through social media.
A good and effective author’s page includes the author’s biography, professional photographs, and short videos that add greatly and give the page validity. One cannot underestimate the power of a photograph, as “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Choose an engaging picture that will show your readers they have reached the page of an interesting person whose books are worth reading. The photographs you choose should be interesting and indicative of your personality so that they reflect to the observer whatever you want them to know about you. If your book pertains to a professional field, your pictures should preferably be set within the relevant professional setting. Otherwise, choose pictures with a homey ambiance.
Winning Your Readers’ Confidence with Select Reviews
Your book page is a medium for positive reviews. This is the only place where you can control the content of the reviews and choose the most positive and focused ones. The reviews can come from newspaper references, well-known individuals or professionals related to the content of the book. They can include a mention of the writer’s name and profession (if relevant) or the newspaper source, and of course, everything must be written in English.
Branding Through an Amazon Store
An Amazon store is a specially designed marketing page on Amazon, which allows one to integrate images and videos and exhibits all of your books in one location.
This is also the only way to analyze clicks from traffic originating in external campaigns (such as Facebook, Newsletter, Google, etc.).
What is the Secret to Successfully Publishing on Amazon?
The fastest way to expose yourself as an author on Amazon is through free book campaigns. Every 90 days, Amazon allows 5 free campaign days, during which the target audience of any book can be found within a matter of days.
The more free downloads there are, the better the “free day” rating is. Amazon analyzes the number of downloads and places the book in a better position accordingly once the book returns to paid purchasing.
A good ranking exposes the book to a larger audience and attracts more readers, yielding more numerous sales. At eBookPro, we use these free days to create an initial buzz while launching a book on Amazon.
To maintain the buzz from the initial free campaign, we create a series of “sales days”, during which we offer the book at a discounted price.
These days are operated by the company per demand and help to maintain a high ranking on Amazon.
Amazon’s sponsored promotional advertising system allows one to advertise books on the actual website. This promotion is similar to Google’s existing system and is based on the concept of promotion through keywords – selecting choice words and phrases related to the book, “buying” said words, and pushing the book to the top of the results page for the words that have been bought.
It is important to remember that this type of promotion presents another advantage, as the book can be ranked closely to other leading books and authors in consideration of competing works in the same category, thus increasing its exposure.
How are Books Sold on Amazon?
Amazon’s marketing tools allow a book maximum exposure so that a potential reader can decide whether or not to read the book when he arrives at the page where it is exhibited. Considering the significant choice of books, this decision is a difficult one and is often made intuitively in a matter of seconds or less. Therefore, the way a book is presented on Amazon will have a significant effect on such a decision. The most influential factors on sales are, in order of importance: the title, the subtitle explaining the subject of the book, the cover, the book description, reviews, and the author’s page. Doing this right requires extensive experience in marketing, profound familiarity with the target audience, and advanced algorithmic analytical skills.
The title of the book should be engaging and must indicate the book’s genre.
The subtitle should describe the same thing in a few words, which constitute cognitive and algorithmic reinforcement of the title.
The cover must look professional and eye-catching, and it must reflect the appropriate genre. A brief glance should suffice for the reader to determine the style of the book.
The book’s description should be short and to the point, it should describe the plot without revealing spoilers and explain to potential readers why they should read the book. It is advisable to design a professional-looking title that stands out and catches the eye.
The contents of the reviews depend of course on the quality of the book and the reviewers themselves, but it is important to make an effort to acquire as many reviews as possible. The more reviews a book has, the more the reader gets a sense of “social approval”, an indication that this is a book in which many people have expressed an interest.
Finally, the author’s page should look professional, it should include a high-quality photograph of the author, a short biography of their life and literary experience, several choice images, and if possible some short videos about the books or the author.