Sometimes people self-publish a book on Amazon, and it seems like nothing happens. Nobody is really reading it, nobody is talking about it, nobody is reviewing it. Maybe you’ve done all the right steps, set up a website, promoting on social media, running a newsletter. Readers are not exactly subject to a paucity of choices. There are over 50,000 new ebooks published on Amazon every month. That’s a lot of competition. Which means readers have a lot of choices. Which means you have to do something to stand out.
Or it just means you have to keep doing something. The real trick to selling titles on Amazon as ebooks is to have a back catalog. Many readers want to know that if they get invested with an author, there’ll be more books to read. One wonderful book is wonderful, but if you want something to read a bit of every day on the way to work, then you may want a trilogy. Or a tetralogy. Or a 10 book series. If you get invested with a character you want to keep following that character, seeing their adventures and seeing their growth.
Many successful ebook authors also give away as a title as a reader magnet. If you only have one book, and you give it away, you have nothing else to sell. But if you have 10 books, and you give away the first one free, and your readers want to know what else happens, then they may happily buy the next nine books.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing tips, tricks, and strategies that form an overall goal to effectively leverage and monetize your writing.
So when you think of publishing your first ebook on Amazon, don’t think of it as the end of a journey, think of it as 10,000 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean, a good start.