Improving Your Book Listing
Too often our books don’t sell as well as we’d like them to sell. Or perhaps, my self-publishing indie authors, we had a book that was selling pretty well, but eventually, the sales slowed to a trickle.
We all hate these two scenarios above, but guess what, my authorpreneurs? All of us have the ability to save our books and kick-start or restart those sales again by improving our book listing.
One of the easiest and most effective things we can do is to change our book covers. Try not to fall in love with your book cover because changing it every once in a while could move it up the list and be a great sales strategy. Now, if you are in love with your book cover, sometimes it still makes sense to change it anyway.
When people see the new cover, they are going to think that you came out with something new. This is going to cause them to pause and take a look. Them pausing and taking a look is vital for our sales success. Most people are bombarded with too many images all day long, so they just brush right pass most of them. They have learned to ignore them to save themselves from sensory overload. But, if they pause and look at our new book cover, we have just done something awesome.
Don’t worry about people who have bought your old book accidentally purchasing this book. Amazon has a feature that will let them know they have purchased an earlier version of this book if they do try to rebuy it. This new book cover isn’t about tricking your customers and making them mad. It’s about getting the attention of people who previously didn’t notice your old book.
Also, with the new book cover, keep in mind that more and more people are buying eBooks. Our book covers have to be easy to see as the small square that will come across people’s screens. If they don’t know what your cover is about immediately in that tiny image, they will move on. This is a sale that we don’t have to lose to someone else.
A book cover that is easier to understand and know what’s happening as a small image will get the sales of our books moving again via the digital world.
Next, add additional formats to increase the number of products you have out there and book sales. If you have a paperback book that hasn’t been selling well lately, convert that book into an eBook and tap into the kindle and iPhone market. You now have a whole new market of digital readers to sell your book to.
Also, convert that same paperback book into an audiobook. Guess what? Once again, you have a whole new market of audiobook listeners who can buy your book now, too.
How about this one. Turn your paperback book into a hardcover book and market it as a coffee table book. Here is another whole audience of buyers for your book.
Think about this for a moment. You didn’t write a new book. You just took the same content you already had and created additional versions or formats. This opened up other markets, vastly increasing the number of people who can now see and buy your book.
What about adding a workbook? Can you now get schools to read your book?
Here’s another way to get more readers and purchasers. Change your book description. Use better sales copy for your book description and many people will think it’s a new book and buy it. Others will be better persuaded by the better sales copy and buy it too.
Getting more Amazon book reviews will help a lot with their algorithm and your sales. If you haven’t received any book reviews lately, Amazon’s algorithm will push you to the back, making you harder for people to find and buy from. Also, ask Amazon to combine the book reviews you have for your different book versions.
For example, if you have 18 paperback book reviews, and 10 eBook reviews, and 8 audiobook reviews, when people go on your amazon page, they’re probably only going to see that you have 18 book reviews. However, if Amazon combines your book reviews, people will see double that new higher number. You’re Amazon account will show that you have 36 Amazon book reviews. Thirty-six is more social proof than eighteen. Thus, more people will be persuaded to buy your book once they see the combined total of your reviews.
Finally, just like how you can change your book cover and book description to improve your listing, you can also change your book categories, so new people will see your book. New and more people seeing your book will help with book sales. Also, believe it or not, you can add more categories too. I know Amazon doesn’t make this easy, and most people don’t know it. But, we can add up to 10 categories for each of our books, which will result in a lot more people seeing our books and buying our books.
Watch the free video lesson on this chapter!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OE8RDgZaCU&list=PL_-39bUXJitwL8cHUpiZ5mO0-JJuaPOVl&index=95