June 6, 2020

Selling Books on Amazon: 13 Steps to Successful Business with Amazon Kindle Direct [UPDATED 2022]

Are you thinking of selling books on Amazon and make a significant amount of money with the help of Amazon Kindle publishing? If yes, it is up to you to learn the step-by-step guide on how to sell your book successfully.

It is always fulfilling and exciting to publish and sell a book. That is because of Amazon, where most people sell books to make an income while enjoying writing a book. But what makes Amazon Kindle Direct a useful tool to start a business like selling books online?

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Why Selling Books on Amazon Is a Successful Decision?

Amazon is not just all about online shopping; it is much more than a web store. It is where you can make your selling of books successful due to several benefits.

Amazon is considered the worlds largest paid search engine where everything is ready to buy. If you are a first-time book publisher, you will get surprised how to dominate the entire book market.

Amazon ranking book and book sales review system helps a lot for buyers to find an interesting book. It will refer your books to others even they havent heard about you before once you start selling several copies.

The process of selling books on Amazon is quite easy. When you publish your book first to Amazon, you have the best opportunity to focus your sales in one place and climb the Amazon BSR chart faster.

Using Amazon BSR Chart 2021, you can easily identify book themes that are interesting for buyers, and write your own unique book that you can sell.

Many authors have long earned money in this way. This 2022, you will be able to be successful in selling books on Amazon, and here’s how you can do that.

  1. CHOOSING A TOPIC

To ensure that people will buy your books, you need to select a topic that is not well-known. You can try seeing a few of the bestselling books in different categories on Amazon or check the Amazon ranking book results.

You also need to choose a topic that is close to people. Meaning, it could answer their real questions or solve problems that concern many. Pick a topic that appeals to you while ensuring that you can establish a relatively broad audience. If possible, plan a series of books and launch sales after several of them are ready.

  1. WRITING A BOOK

After choosing a topic along with the title that offers a clear message what readers can get from the book as well as the outline of the book that will contain the main points and general ideas you will include in each chapter, it is time for you actually to start writing the book.

You make your book more interesting, you can try providing your personal life stories or others in supporting the main points. Avoid just giving dry facts. You need to make it real since people will always love stories.

The main thing is your book should be good and necessary for people. This way, the sales will be profitable, and good reviews will help to increase sales further.

  1. CREATING AN INTERESTING COVER

Sometimes people choose a book based on its cover, so see to it that your books will look professional.

You can look for Amazon ranking books sold or bestselling books and decide what cover you may like. Hiring a professional graphic designer can help you in creating an interesting book cover. If possible, you can provide some examples of designs or styles to your designer.

  1. CREATING AN AMAZON KDP ACCOUNT

You can create an Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account whether you already have a book to sell or not. It is a better idea to create an account before having a book ready so that you can access the KDP publishing tutorials and helpful tools.

In creating a KDP account, go to kdp.amazon.com. Below is the information you need to complete to sign up:

  • Author or business name;
  • Address and phone number (if it is for Amazons use, make it not public access);
  • Bank routing and account routing for the royalty payment deposits;
  • Tax information (employee identification number for business entities or Social   Security number for individuals).

After completing your KDP account sign-up, you can now log into the KDP dashboard where you can upload, manage, priced, and track Amazon ranking books.

  1. FORMATTING THE BOOK ACCORDING TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF AMAZON

When using Amazon KDP, you cannot just upload the PDF or document to Amazon. The book needs to be in the format based on the requirements of Amazon.

In learning how you can correctly format your book, you can go to the Amazon official Kindle simplified formatting. Formatting your book requires a lot of work, but you can hire someone to do the job for you.

  1. HIRING A PROOFREADER

Before selling your book on Amazon, you need to hire a proofreader first. This way, you will be able to acquire professional advice as well as a thorough edit to ensure that your book offers the best quality content and free from errors.

Apart from professional proofreaders, you can also work with your friends or family members who have the skills you need.

  1. CREATING AN ATTRACTIVE LISTING

An attractive title and a good description are very important for potential buyers to become interested in your book. It is important to make the title clear, simple, and at the same time fascinating. Let readers understand that after reading your book, they will definitely find answers to their questions, get valuable advice, and can apply them in real life. You can see which titles your competitors use for similar books and make your listing better!

Most readers make a first impression about a book through its cover where the design or style should be attractive and give a few visualizations of the content. It should get the attention of the readers from the introduction of the book, and each chapter should have a good view. Thus, the book should leave a significant effect on the readers, whether it delivered new learning or not, and whether it solved the conflicts encountered by the readers.

It will be a big mistake if you do not pay proper attention to this and do not describe your book in such a way that buyers really become interested in it. After all, an attractive title and a beautiful cover can't guarantee big sales. Of course, they are important, but after reading the description the buyer must understand for what he pays the money.

However, do not disclose all the details at once, otherwise, the interest of the buyer will be lost. You must motivate the buyer to make a purchase, and for this, he must see that your book will be useful to him.

To create an attractive book listing, you will use the Amazon KDP dashboard. To do this, go to the Bookshelf and then, click on the type of book you will publish.

If you are a new KDP author, you can try publishing print-on-demand paperbacks if you wish. Your book listing can be a faster process if you will prepare everything ahead of time, including book details, book content, and cover files.

You should also use special HTML formatting to give your listing an attractive look.

  1. CATEGORIES AND KEYWORDS

You are allowed to choose two categories, and you need to pick a category that will target the book's subject matter. As for the keywords, you are allowed to input seven keywords or keyword phrases.

You are not required to repeat the keywords since these keywords in your book title and description will show up on Amazon. You can use Long Tail Pro to generate up to 800 related keywords. For additional keyword ideas, you can consider using the Google Keyword Planner.

You can also change the keywords at any time, especially if your book is not performing well in the market.

  1. FILLING THE AUTHOR PAGE

The author page will act as a central location for all book titles pm Amazon. This page will help you to have more valuable information about your book.

On the author page, you will have the following information:

  • Compelling biography;
  • Professional author photo;
  • List of books;
  • Book trailers;
  • Feed to blog posts;
  • +Follow button;
  • Website and social media information;
  • URL.
  1. PREPARING THE END MATERIAL

The end material of your book offers a more complex set of functions. That is because you need to attract your readers to buy another book from you and provide you with their email addresses.

You also need to encourage them to bond with you as well as encourage them to write reviews about their experience during and after reading your book. Thus, you need to make the structure of the book series or other works.

  1. BOOKSELLING MARKETING

When selling books on Amazon, you need to market and promote your books to generate sales, downloads, and top the Amazon stats book.

You can consider using some of the book advertising programs for Amazon. Amazon Ads are running under the PPC model where you are only charged when the potential readers click on them and go through your listing page.

You can choose between Sponsored Product Ads and Sponsored Display Ads for Books. The Sponsored Product Ads will allow you to set your specific keyword to appear at the top search results of Amazon while the Product Display Ad will appear as related products on other book pages.

  1. ASKING BUYERS TO LEAVE FEEDBACK

Feedback like product reviews is a huge marketing tool when selling books on Amazon. The best way you can ask for feedback is by including a request for leaving a review at the end of your book. You can also ask your readers to leave a review via the link.

  1. MARKETING OUTSIDE OF AMAZON

You can market your book beyond the borders of Amazon. This is where you can launch your website, where it will serve as your primary branding and marketing tool. You can start by creating an easy-to-manage website on a budget.

Other than building your website, you can also use different social media platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram. It is easier for you to share posts about your work-in-progress teasers, new releases, and free promotional announcement from these channels.

Pricing

How to understand in what way to evaluate your book? First, you need to understand how much you will get from the sale of each instance. Amazon has three types of royalties:

  • 35% - for a book sold for $ 0.99 -2 $;
  • 70% - for a book sold for $ 2.99 -9.99;
  • 35% for a book sold for $ 10.00 and up.

You may decide that it is the most profitable to sell books of $ 2.99 -9.99 $. But this way does not always guarantee big sales. To make your book profitable, Amazon must be sure that it is interesting to the buyer.

Amazon rate a book as necessary for buyers not at its price, but by the number of copies sold. Therefore, sometimes to get a better place in search results, first, you need to stimulate sales by setting a lower price. And only after you sell a large number of copies in a short period, you can safely increase the price.

But remember that your book should not be too cheap compared to its closest competitors. The low price may be suspicious among buyers, and instead of increasing sales, you will see that almost no one buys your book.

Conclusion

Selling books on Amazon is an amazing and exciting way to make money online, especially if you have a fondness for writing. But this does not mean that you can immediately get high profits after the publication of your book. After all, you will have competitors with a high rating. And Amazon's ratings and book sales are related. The higher the rating is, the more sales you’ll get. Conversely, the more sales (and positive reviews, of course) you make, the higher the rating is. That's why your book should be really interesting for buyers.