Instant Book Sales Explosion

Transcription

1 Instant Book Sales Explosion Boost Your Book Sales Overnight With A Simple Strategy and Top Resources by Rob Howard

2 The information presented in this Product is intended to be for your educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not presenting you with a business opportunity. We are not presenting you with a distributorship. We are not making any claims as to income you may earn. We are not presenting you with an opportunity to get rich. Before embarking on any endeaver, please use caution and seek the advice your own personal professional advisors, such as your attorney and your accountant. Where income figures are mentioned (if any), those income figures are anecdotal information passed on to us concerning the results achieved by the individual sharing the information. We have performed no independent verification of the statements made by those individuals. Please do not assume that you will make those same income figures. Please do not construe any statement in this website/product as a claim or representation of average earnings. There are NO average earnings. Testimonials and statements of individuals are not to be construed as claims or representations of average earnings. We cannot, do not, and will not make any claims as to earnings, average, or otherwise. Success in any endeavor is based on many factors individual to you. We do not know your educational background, your skills, your prior experience, or the time you can and will devote to the endeavor. Please perform your own due diligence before embarking on any course of action. Follow the advice of your personal qualified advisors. There are risks in any endeavor that are not suitable for everyone. If you use capital, only "risk" capital should be used. There is no guarantee that you will earn any money using any of the ideas presented in our in materials. Examples in our materials are not to be interpreted as a promise or guarantee of earnings. Many factors will be important in determining your actual results and no guarantees are made that you will achieve results similar to ours or anybody else s. No guarantee is made that you will achieve any result at all from the ideas in our material. You agree that we will not share in your success, nor will we be responsible for your failure or for your actions in any endeavor you may undertake. Please understand that past performance cannot be an indication of possible future results. Materials in our product and our website may contain information that includes or is based upon forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of Forward-looking statements give our expectations or forecasts of future events. You can identify these statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. They use words such as anticipate, estimate, expect, project, intend, plan, believe, and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with a description of potential earnings or financial performance. Any and all forward looking statements in our materials are intended to express our opinion of earnings potential. They are opinions only and should not be relied upon as fact. Copyright 2014 IAM Info Publishing. All Rights Reserved. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 2

3 Table of Contents Introduction Core Sales Strategy - Sales Trifecta - Keyword Optimization - Optimized Landing Page - Have A Huge Launch Resources To Gain Traffic - Big Dogs - Little Dogs Book Launch Strategies - A Book Series Strategy - KDP Select Strategy - Single Title Strategy FAQ and Troubleshooting More Resources Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 3

4 How Several Authors Exploded Their Book Sales Instantly By Using A Paid Traffic Resource That Cost Them Nothing Up Front! Thanks for grabbing Book Sales Explosion! Inside this guide, I'm going to show you some stuff that will make a huge difference to your book campaigns. Stuff that is easy to use, simple to understand, and also dirt cheap to implement. I'm going to show you a few case studies of students who utilized these top resources and strategies that sent their sales numbers soaring. In one example, a student of mine broke the 10,000 rank - getting all the way down 4,517 and sending over 254 sales in a three day period. Oh, and he paid nothing up front. And when he did pay, he paid 6 bucks. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 4

5 He's not the only one though. Another author blew their sales sky high, jumping up to 3,492 spot, selling over 100 copies in a single day and she only paid 50 bucks to make it happen. Or how about the author that didn't pay a dime and saw his sales rank go from 16,000 to 1,942, selling a crap ton of books instantly. I'm going to explore all of these case studies, and more, breaking down these strategies and helping you to maximize their effectiveness for your book business. After you are finished reading this, you will have everything you need to replicate these success stories! Before we get going, I want to let you know I'm making some assumptions about you and your books. I'm assuming that: A. Your books are of acceptable quality and free of most obvious grammar and spelling errors. B. The content and style is appealing to your audience. C. You have mostly positive reviews, in the 4 star range. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 5

6 Or, put simply - you have a book out and it's not junk. But what if you don't have a book out yet? Excellent! You can use this guide to get a "leg up" on your book business before you start writing. You can go in it with a "plan", knowing exactly how you will sell the book. Now, these strategies will work for both nonfiction and fiction. While all of the case studies I'll look at are for fiction, the strategies will work for nonfiction just the same. So, with all that said, let's get started. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 6

7 The Core Sales Strategy There are a few things you should know before you apply the techniques below. These are core strategies, something you should use with all of your books. Having these are vital to creating a sustainable book business, one that continues to sell copies of your book long after your promotion (that I'm going to teach you) is over with! This means these promotions I'm going to show you won't be a one-off sales spike then back to barely selling at all. If you do these correctly, then you will make a load of sales and your book will keep selling over and over again. Luckily, this core strategy requires next to no time. There is nothing special or time consuming about these things. You do most of them already, I'm just going to show you how to do them better. The Sales Trifecta - How to Sustain Your Sales After A Big Promotion Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 7

8 There are three things you need to do to maintain sales after a promotion. (Thus the "sales trifecta") Here they are: 1. Utilize Proper Keyword Optimization On Your Amazon Page 2. Optimized Landing Page 3. Bring Leads into an List (Optional, but HIGHLY recommended) Let's cover each one individually. Keyword Optimization I'm not going to lie, I heard about this one just a few weeks back from a 5 figure kindle earner, Nick Stephenson. What he told me was brilliant, though he admitted he learned it from someone else. He said that this marketing guy told him, to this effect... "Nick, don't think of Amazon as a book store, think of Amazon as another Google." Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 8

9 And boy, was that guy right! I've been implementing changes in my books and my client's books, following his advice and it has made a huge difference in sustainable sales. This is simple and quick to do. Takes all of 5 minutes to log into your account and make this change. It involves putting properly targeted keywords in your title and description. I'll explain here in a minute how to do it, with plenty of examples. But what is going on in the background? Chances are, right now, your targeted book buyers aren't able to find your book. At all. If people are searching for specific things inside Amazon, and your book isn't targeted to their searching, then best of luck getting found. Amazon has a search algorithm, just like Google. It's slightly different (doesn't rely on backlinks), instead, being heavily influenced by on-page optimization, reviews, "also boughts", and more. But by far, the most important is on-page keyword optimization. Meaning your titles and descriptions contain the targeted keywords people who would be interested in your book are searching for! Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 9

10 How do we optimize? First, we need to find the keywords people are using to search for books like ours. Fiction books seem to be the hardest to grasp as far as keywords go. But really, it's pretty simple. Fiction Books: The specific genre/sub-genre and possible themes our book has Genre Examples: Erotic thriller, romantic comedy, high fantasy, children's fantasy, supernatural horror, financial thriller Themes: Demon hunter, girl gets the boy, boy gets the girl, hero saves the world, serial killer, vampire romance, Some themes can double as a genre as well. Nonfiction books: People tend to have an easier time identifying keywords for nonfiction books. How-to's are really easy: how to train your dog, etc. Biographies: The name of the person Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 10

11 The key is to really brainstorm and think about what keyword your buyer might be using. Once you have the keyword, you use it in your title and description. For the title, use this format: Book Title; A Keyword Keyword About So-So I used the primary book title, which in the case of a series of books, can be seen as your book "brand". A lot could be said about this, but I'm not going to cover it much here. The second half after the semi-colon is your keyword rich phrase. Let's look at some fiction examples. Zombie Ever After; A Post-Apocalypse Love Story The Hunter; A Demon Hunting Supernatural Thriller, Book 1 Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 11

12 Finding Happy; A Romantic Comedy About A Man and His Dog Pretty straight forward? Using the keywords in your title will help your book get found. Be sure to use them wisely, though! No keyword stuffing. You'll also want to use them in your description. This is pretty simple. First write your description like you want it. Make it so it really sells the book. Then, add a line like this where it makes sense to do so: "Zombie Ever After is a post-apocalypse love story, written full of wit and humor." You could drop a few more post-apocalypse keywords in the description, but again, don't go overboard. Amazon won't like it and it'll end up reading like garbage. That's it for keywords - if you want more information, then I highly recommend you check out Nick Stephenson's guide about utilizing keywords with Amazon kindle. Now let's look at #2 - the cover image. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 12

13 Marketable Title and Cover Image; Optimized Landing Page Beyond just having a good keyword inside your title, the first part of your title is just as important to selling. The keyword in the subtitle text and description is how people find your book. The title and book cover image sell your book. This means you need to select a title and cover image design that meets your markets expectations. (Along with price and page count) If your title, cover, price, and page count all meet your markets expectation, you will make a load of sales! (All you need is the traffic) How do we find out the titles and cover images? A cool resource Paul Coleman showed me. Go ahead and click that link there. Then search for a popular book (or keyword) that will show you your niche. You will see a ton of Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 13

14 books all connected together. You can click a book to see its sales stats. One thing you will notice, your niche will likely have a "theme" as far as covers go. I typed in Nick Stephenson and took a look at his, and related books. I saw common themes in all the covers and titles. One to three word titles (and his keyword rich subtitle: A Private Investigator Series of Crime and Suspense Thrillers Book 1) I also noticed the covers tended to have all a guy or a couple of guys, facing away from the camera, with a city skyline or some dark scary scene. All of the books have very similar themes and feelings with their covers and titles. Emulate for your book. As a side note, you can use yasiv to see how the top sellers wrote their descriptions (lots of the top sellers have keywords inside) along with pricing and page count. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 14

15 List With MailChimp You know, I say this is optional, but when it comes down to it...well, it really shouldn't be. You SHOULD be putting all these buyers on an list. It's a way to add sustainable sales long after they download or buy your book. And that's the biggest advantage. Think about it! Every time you release a brand new book, you your list and sales blow in like wildfire! If you set your page up right (by following the above), then you should be gaining tons of sales each launch just from your list. And the thing is - it's dead simple and free to start! You don't even have to set up a website. You can do everything from inside mailchimp. Go there and sign up now. 12,000 s to 2,000 subs. That will last you for a while. In fact, if you have 2,000 book buyers on your list, that should equal 400 to 500 sales every single book launch. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 15

16 That's a grand or more for each launch! Of course, that's assuming you are doing things right. (And if you have 2k subs, then you ARE doing things right) And of course, that's also the beginning of sales. If you are going for sustainability, then these sales should continue for your new book. It's a snowball effect. Release a book, get subs. Mail subs new book, get better rankings, reviews and watch it take off. I can't stress enough the benefits. So, let's build a list. First sign up for free at mailchimp. You'll create a username, password, and they'll send you an . Verify. They'll then ask you some questions. You don't need a website, just enter your author blog, facebook page, twitter account or anything else. (You DO have a facebook page for your author/pen name, right? If not, go set one up. It's free and takes like 2 minutes) Put in your address (it's required for Can-Spam act if you live in the US.), it's required and select "Media and Publishing" for the market. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 16

17 Be sure to enter a company name. It can be anything you want. I entered Sneakyfox Publishing, because that's the name of my non- IM publishing business. They'll send you to a dashboard. This is where you can set up an list for your book buyers to go on. Hit "Create a List". It'll tell you that you have no lists. Hit the grey "create list" button up top. Then set up your details. This is a master list that all subscribers will go on. You can create segments for different books later. I'll show you that in a minute. Fill out the info on the page. List Name: Pen Name Book Notification List Example: Rob's Book Notification List From penname@gmail.com (This is an they can reply too. You can use an you already have or create one for just this purpose) From Name: Pen Name Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 17

18 (This is what they will see in their inbox. I recommend using your pen name) Remind people how they got on the list: You are receiving this because you wanted to hear about my future books! Unless you want notifications, you can just leave those unchecked. Hit save. It will take you to a page that says "no subs". Time to create the form to GET subs! Click on "Signup Forms" in the menu up top. It will take you to an form creator. You can play around with this, but when you a ready, delete the first and last name. You don't need them. (They decrease the sign up rate) Just click the mouse on the field, hit the "-" sign and then type delete into the popup box. Once that is done, you just need to add a message where it says "click to add message". Here is what you can say: Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 18

19 Thanks for reading (Book Title)! I want to give you something for free, as a way of saying thanks for trying me out. You can get it by entering your . OR clicking on the link here. You don't have to sign up - but if you do, I'll send you an letting you know when my next book is out. I'll also send you deals on books that you might like in the future, such as freebies and the like. Thanks again! I highly recommend that you use bait to get someone to sign up. How do you do this? Simple. Give away something that goes with your book or the next book in the series. Examples: Fantasy novel: A beastiary of all the nasty beasts in the novel. Or a book of history. Thriller Novel: A side story about one of your characters. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 19

20 How to nonfiction book: 20 additional tips/tricks. You can give away this extra content by simply uploading to dropbox, then putting a link in mailchimps "final welcome " (drop down box under "create forms". Just edit the text field to include a link.) In my message above, I mentioned they could download it without actually signing up. There is a HUGE discussion that could take place about why you do this. But for now, it's not necessary to know all the details. It has to do with spam compliant reduction and getting a list of hot buyers. Just go into the editor and put your dropbox link over the "here". As you can see, this process is pretty simple. Everything is drag and drop. When you are done, just go back to the sign up form and mailchimp gives you a URL you can stick in your book. This is easy. At the end of the book, offer more for free. All they have to do is click the link to receive the bonus material. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 20

21 So What Do You Send Them? This is also pretty simple. Blurbs. Here is an example "Howdy! Today I'm releasing my newest book in the Series, Monster Hunting for Toddlers Vol. 2, which you can grab by clicking this link: (link) It's available right now for 99 cents, but only for the next 3 days! Grab it now, before the price goes back to 2.99." That's it, really. That's all you have to send. Nothing fancy or special, just a blurb. Do that for every book that you release! Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 21

22 Tactics for a Huge Launch - No Sales to Hundreds a Day You'll have to forgive me for the previous section being so long. I wanted to make damn sure you knew exactly what you needed to in order to gain sustained sales from the techniques I want to show you. You can consider these tactics "catalysts" to sending your book ranking below 10,000 and finally start making a really good income with kindle. But hear this: your book sales will spike and drop unless you properly execute the core strategy! Our goal is to continuing sales long after the big promotions end. That is what will give you a true kindle business. So, with that said, let me show you the strategy, then the individual tactics to make it all work. Verified Resources This strategy is all about targeted traffic, in a massive blast, to your book. I'm talking about tens of thousands of interested Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 22

23 buyers suddenly going to your Amazon kindle book page. Book sales pour in, spiking your rank into the low thousands (or lower) and sending sustained sales for months (because Amazon promos kick in). This happens with what I call "Verified Traffic Sources". These are places that you pay money (as low as 5 bucks) in exchange for a book promotion. But unlike places you just submit your book to and hope for the best, these sources are verified in their sending power. Meaning people regularly experience success with these sites. They are sites like the big granddaddy - BookBub.com - but many of them aren't as well known and a hell of a lot cheaper. One site you only pay commission to them (25% of book sales) instead of upfront fees. And sometimes you get lucky and get featured in a site for free. Regardless, these sites are powerhouses and a lot of them are very affordable. What I'm going to show you are 9 sites that are the most powerful, including case studies of how people have used them for success. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 23

24 I'm then going to highlight how you can use them yourself, in three different tactics, all that will explode your book sales, and gain you fans and subscribers. If you pay attention, this is life changing information. So don't neglect this! Basic Strategy Below I'm going to show you the 9 sites. But before we do that, there is a basic strategy you can follow. 1. Publish your book. Set the price to Get 5 verified reviews. 3. Pick a launch date two or three weeks in advance. 4. Submit a paid ad to as many of these sites that you can afford. Try to get all of them to promote your book on the launch date. Let them know ( them) your book will go down to 99 cents and for how long (aim for a week or less). 5. Lower your book to 99 cents day before. Watch as the s go out from these book sites. If you've coordinated well, many of them might promote at the same time. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 24

25 If you couldn't get them all to do it at the same time, that's fine. Instead, get them as close together as you can. Watch and track your sales as each promo hits. You should see a huge spike in sales from each site. Track your ROI (return on investment) and know how many sales you need to break even. You only earn 30 cents a sale at 99 cents, so for a 25 dollar promo, you need to sell 85 copies to be in profit. Just remember, this isn't a "one off" game. If you followed the core strategy, you should be getting: 1. Leads on your buyers list. 2. A catalyst for Amazon rankings and continued sales, month after month. So, it's okay if you don't break even immediately. You will. I consider breaking even on a promo to be a bonus, not the expectation. That's the basic strategy. Now don't fret, several of these sites will cost you less than 50 bucks but will send you hundreds of sales in return. One site you pay via commission on sales AFTER the Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 25

26 promo is ran (so if you sell 100 at 30 cents, you would pay 7.50 after the promo is over). Another site is just 5 bucks. With all that said, let's look at each site with a case study of authors who used it successfully. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 26

27 List of Sites I've broken the list down into two groups: the big dogs and the little dogs. The big dogs can send thousands of sales...and is also reflected in price. The biggest dog is BookBub of course, being the most expensive but also the most powerful. (And the most picky) Big Dogs #1. BookBub.com The biggest dog out there, BookBub needs no introduction. I've never seen an author who hasn't had success with them and trust me, I've looked. So when I say every author, I mean it. But they are super popular, and with popularity, comes cost and pickiness. The chances of them picking your book is slim, unless you've got 30 some reviews and meet pretty specific standards. Still, keep submitting your books there, it's worth it. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 27

28 Case Study: BookBub #1 Author: Michael Hicks Book: Season of Harvest Michael is a firm believer that paid advertising is a waste of time and money. (Probably because he doesn't know what he's doing with paid ads - or he just hates spending money) However, oddly enough, he loves BookBub. Here is his story: He ended up getting over 20,000 downloads (free) because BookBub was trying to get his business. They sent one blurb to their targeted list of buyers. (Targeted to his specific book audience) And he got 20,000 downloads. Not a full dedicated to him, mind you. Just a blurb, a shout out, in part of a larger . And the dude walked away with 20,000 downloads! If that's not a testament to the might of BookBub, I'm not sure what is. You can read the full story on his blog here: Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 28

29 Case Study: BookBub #2 Author: Gretchen Galway Book: This Time Next Door Starting Rank: 100k+ Rank During Promo: 27 Kindle P aid #1 Humor #1 Romantic Comedy #1 General Humor Current Rank: 20k She didn't specify the number of sales, but at 30 cents, and the price she paid (contemporary romance...a lot of money)...she paid for the ad. This has to be 600 to sales. In a single day. In short, she was in profit, HUGE. She ended up selling 4000 copies at Amazon and over 1000 copies at Barnes and Noble. Close to 2 grand in sales ;) You can read more about her story here: tml#msg Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 29

30 #2. EreaderNewsToday.com Besides BookBub, ENT is one of the best places to get ads. And it's dirt cheap. You don't pay upfront costs, instead you pay on commission - meaning 25% of your sales on the promo. Also, ENT is a LOT easier to get into. This is my #1 go-to place for book promotions. And there are tons of success stories to back it up. In fact, some authors are saying with ENT, you are guaranteed sales. :) Case Study: ENT #1 Author: S.K. Nicholls Book: Red Clay and Roses Starting Rank: 300k+ Ranking During Promo: 2210 Paid #3 African American Historical Fiction #5 African American Literary Fiction #19 Literary Sagas Current Rank: 400k (She stopped promoting it) Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 30

31 SK Nicholls was running a charity promo for The Russell House back in July of this year. One interesting thing to note - I did some digging and her cover, title, and the rest really don't fit the genre. Her title includes no keywords - and she pretty much dropped the ball on promoting after ENT ended. I showed you this case study on purpose. It doesn't matter what your cover or title is like if you have a big dog promoting you. You WILL make sales! But, if you don't do the core strategy I discuss earlier, well...as I said, you can see the sales spike. From 300k to 2k, then back to 400k. You can read her case study here: (UPDATE: EReader News Today has changed its terms on me. Unfortunately they wizened up to their power and now charge an upfront fee to use their service.) Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 31

32 Case Study: ENT #2 Author: Lisa Grace Book: Angel Series Books (A Series of Books) Ranking During Promo: 260 Paid #1 Spine-Chilling Horror #5 Contemporary Current Rank: 300k (Again, no more promo) Another winner. She made a LOT of money on this promo. Selling the book bundle at $5.50, that means 3.85 royalties and proves you don't need to give away your book for free...or even cheap...in order to do well with these. She earned over 1000 bucks in 12 hours with her series. She sold over 260 copies. Read her full story here: #3. PixelofInk.com Rounding out the "Big Three" of the 5 big dogs is Pixel of Ink. Pixel of Ink works different than the others. First off, they are Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 32

33 completely free, so there is no guarantee your book will be featured. (Unlike paid ads with the other ones) Second, they only do cheap or free books. 99 Cents to free. If you are doing a book launch, you should take the 10 minutes of time to fill out their submission form. Case Study: POI Author: Mary McDonald Book: Box set of various authors Ranking During Promo: 303 Paid Simple little blurb to the effectiveness of POI (if you get picked), Mary's box set she was in got picked up by PoI and they sent sales skyward, ending up with a rank of 303 with just PoI promoting. The only problem with pixel of ink? They seem to be hit or miss with reliability. They don't cost a dime of cash, which I believe could be a liability. As an author, you need reliability in your book sales and that will only happen if you can guarantee listing inside these locations. Still, for only a few minutes of your time, it's worth it to submit. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 33

34 You can read the Pixel of Ink thread here: Also an older thread talking about Pixel of Ink: #4. KindleNationDaily.com The smallest and probably the most expensive guy on the list, KND can send a ton of sales to the right book. But unlike the top three, which seems to do no wrong (they can pull sales for just about anyone, almost guaranteed), KND seems to be more hit and miss. I say expensive because their prices are higher for a lower number of sales, unless you are perfectly targeted for their lists. However, they have one option - Free Book Highlighter - for 30 bucks that a lot of people said did well. If you have a permafree book, then use this. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 34

35 I would post some case studies here, but a lot of them are 3 to 4 years older. Back in the day, KND was one of the best, like bookbub is now. Unfortunately, they just don't seem to be anymore. However, there is a specific tactic that works well with them which I will talk about in a bit, in the tactics section. Little Dogs #5. BookSends.com Booksends is a much smaller site, but the people there buy like crazy. As you can see from the prices, many are really affordable for the 99 cent launch. Mystery/Romance (their two big genres), cost only 50 bucks for a full blown blast to 30k subscribers. The best deal is the 99 cent promo - and those are what people have had the most success with. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 35

36 Case Study: BookSends Author: Michael Kingswood Book: Pericles Conspiracy Ranking During Promo: 6276 #30 for First Contact (Science Fiction) #34 for Conspiracy (Thrillers) If there is one thing I've learned from gathering these case studies, is that a majority of authors really screw up the long term marketing and sustainability. This guy did EXTREMELY well with his promo. Best month he's ever had and sadly, he's back in the 200k range just a few months later. The reason? No list. Not being found on Amazon. In essence, he is not following the core marketing strategy I outlined in the beginning. You can read his entire case study here. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 36

37 #6. PeopleReads.com Another small site, but CHEAP. $7.99 only. I know of only one case study of a person who used it, and it's part of a brilliant launch strategy. (Which I will talk about in the next section.) He spent about 260 to 300 bucks on the strategy. But boy did it pay off! He sold over 2000 copies in a month and ended up making close to a grand before he upped the price (so he was about 700 bucks in profit). He's sales are also sustaining, which probably has to do with good marketing. Unfortunately, he didn't share his book. It's too large to reprint here, so just go read it. #7. KBoards Book Discovery I've been including a lot of kboard's case studies, and one resource many authors successfully use is kboard's own ad platform. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 37

38 Kboards ad discovery is great for a lot of reasons. First off, it works (You can see in the previous case study he used it as part of his strategy). Second, it only accepts NEW books in the 100k range (which will be a lot of authors). Finally - it's 15 bucks. Worth a try! #8. FKBooksAndTips.com This is probably the granddaddy of the "little dogs". They have over 600,000 readers on the app and I've seen some case studies where authors sell over 300 from a promo from them! But why are they a little dog? The difference is the promotion style. If they had 600,000 s, they could probably compete with BookBub. marketing is far more effective than blogging, so while their fanbase is huge, they don't have the instant reach does. They have a ton of options - the frequently selling out "Featured", which runs 100 bucks for paid, and 200 bucks for free books. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 38

39 Case Study: FKBooksAndTips Author: Keith Leonard He didn't list his book title, but he did generate 300 sales from FK Books and Tips. It only cost him 25 bucks, but he did end up making 105 (so about 75 bucks in profit and massive exposure)! Read his entire experiment here. #9. Fiverr Gigs Yes. Fiverr gigs. (Note, all of the above have been verified to work = send sales or downloads) There are a few gold gems out there in the fiverr world for book promotion. In the last case study, you'll notice that Michael mentioned bknights. book-as-a-featured-book-on-my-kindle-site-for-my-book-loving- audience?funnel= Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 39

40 That's one of the gigs offered by bknights. And as you can see from the star rating and the reviews, for five freakin' bucks, this guy can send some sales! Case Study: Fiverr Gig Bknights Author: Mark E. Cooper Book: Box Set (Sci-fi) Mark ended up selling 30 copies at 5.50, so he had decent profit. For a 5 buck ad as a test. Not bad! Read what he said here. (Say you're from kboards and he'll give the big package for 5 bucks) One author used him for a permafree and got a spike of downloads for 5 bucks. Here is another successful service (depending on the genre you're in) Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 40

41 And here is an entire thread on Fiverr and other cheap promo's. In fact, this thread, as well as the one linked to at the top are worth GOLD: Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 41

42 Book Launch Strategies With The Above Resources The above resources and case studies are examples of how powerful a few bucks can do for you. One big dog is free. Fiverr gigs are 5 bucks. One site is A few are only 25 bucks. Another is 15 bucks. Between the low cost options, you have access to close to 1 million book readers! And to access them all would cost you less than 80 bucks total. That's a LOT of marketing power for 80 bucks. But still, you are spending money. And if you are going to spend money on buying ads, then you need to make damn sure you get a high ROI. The sad thing is - most authors fail at this completely. A few in my search for verified resources was able to sustain sales past the initial promo. While most of them paid for the promo, none of them continued to sell well and that's a shame. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 42

43 The problem isn't in the promo - it's in the core strategy of the individual book... and in their book business strategy overall! Had they only put a few more minutes of thought into this, they could be sustaining sales. And that's what I'm going to show you now...how to garner long term sales with these resources. I'm assuming that you are implementing a core strategy per book. Meaning a mailing list, keywords in your title/description, and a great, targeted landing page. (Good cover, title, price, page count, etc.) What I'm going to share with you are three strategies to use that will garner you long term sales. They are: 1. Book Series (The best and most recommended method) 2. Select Free Days 3. Single Title Promotions Let's get started. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 43

44 Book Series Most authors think of their book as just a product they sell. Something they put a lot of love, blood, sweat, and tears...but ultimately, just a product they sell. It's "just a book". I'm going to challenge you to think a lot differently about your books. They are far more than "just a book". They themselves are key components to your entire book business strategy. And I'm not just talking about the "product you sell" and it's "quality". Granted, it IS the product you are selling, but it can be positioned as much more. I'm talking about them as much different things: - Lead generators (getting interested buyers on your list.) - Funnels of products - Brand building and audience awareness Your book builds YOU as a brand. And the better your book, the better the marketing around your book, the better your brand will appear to readers. The more value in your brand of books. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 44

45 This is exemplified the best in what I believe is the best book selling strategy available - A Book Series. By building a book series (fiction or nonfiction), you are creating a brand of books. Harry Potter is a brand. Hunger Games is a brand. Game of Thrones is a brand. The reason brands of books make so much money is because your reader doesn't just buy one book from you. They buy at least 2 books from you! (If the books are good) That could be double the income per customer. Instead of collecting a 2 dollar royalty, you know collect 4. Multiply that by 1000 customers and you've made 4000 bucks, instead of With 3+ books, that could easily be 6 or 8 bucks per customer. Now we are talking about 8000 bucks per 1000 customers! So obviously you want to do this. Strategy Here is the basic step by step strategy, followed by the smart book authors everywhere: Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 45

46 1. Release your first book on kindle. Place links to your opt-in page to collect leads, then leave it alone for now. 2. Write a complementary guide, side story, or novella that ties into the first book. Upload the side story as bait to collect leads on your optin page. Again, leave it alone for now. 3. Release your second book. Price at 2.99 and keep it there for a month. Create a follow up message telling the subscribers about your second book in the series and include a link. That gets mailed immediately when people sign up. Place first book for free on the ibook store or Nook and tell Amazon. (Or wait for it to go free on Amazon) The book is now permafree and this is where the marketing power kicks in! 4. Grab promos at the resources I describe above. Many of them are cheap for free books - budget 50 bucks for fiverr promos and a few others. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 46

47 Here is what happens: if your book's core strategy is excellent, you should get about 10,000 to 20,000 downloads! Then you will get between 3% to 5% of every 100 downloads on your list. That could easily be several hundred people. And if you set it up like I described in the section above, these people will be the most qualified and hottest buyers. This means you'll start seeing tons of sales on your #2 book in the series! When you make back your 50 bucks, which you should quickly, reinvest that 50 bucks back into more ads for your first book and keep writing your third book. 5. Release third book after you've had two full promos and you've gotten quite a few people on your list. Price it at 2.99 (Should happen in a month or two. Don't dally beyond that though, or your list will start to get cold. If you want to continue mailing your list so they continue to pay attention to you, then mail for related books that you like and are cheap/free. They'll appreciate the notice) 6. for the third book and a reminder for second book in the series. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 47

48 You should see quite a few sales coming in for your books and your books should now be getting viral sales from Amazon (if you did your keywords well and you continue to promote your books through those sites above and ing). You can rinse and repeat as many times as you want. So a 4th or 5th book, that's okay. Or you can branch out your brand. Use another character in your first few books to create a second series. Regardless, I recommend you release at least 3 books in the series. Keeping Sales Going If you kept your books at 2.99, then they should be fairly steady in the rankings. Amazon bases sales rank on pricing/sales over a month or so. That's why I said "keep it this price for a month, at least" - so no special promos. You should now have a good baseline to judge sales for special deals. To keep sales going, run your first 99 cent promo for your second book for just a few days and mail your list. You can also try to promote it with the other sites if you want, though make sure the book is good enough to stand on its own legs. (Meaning they don't Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 48

49 need to read the first book to understand everything. Some stuff might not make sense, but as long as people can still enjoy it, you should be fine) Also, box the group together and offer a special price, say 3.99, for all three. Then run promo's to that box offer using the resources above. Don't forget to put links in each book to your sign up! You'll get new readers from each release, and from the box set, so you need to make sure you are collecting those people on a list! Also, don't forget to put links to your other books in each one! Results People Have Gotten I know several 5 figure a month kindle earners who utilize this strategy with all their books. The first book is a freebie, a lead generator, to bring people into their lists and funnels. The novella is another freebie to act as bait to get people to click the link in the book and go to your site. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 49

50 I've mentioned Nick Stephenson, we had an awesome webinar together and his product about keywords was great. Nick follows this strategy and you can see it works. All his books are ranked under 20k, with several in the low thousands. Here is intro book: Suspense-Thrillers-ebook/dp/B00FYW9VHC/ That's his lead generator. His entire book series has gotten over 300,000 downloads (sales and free) in its lifetime. (Which is a little more than a year) Thrillers-ebook/dp/B00BJ92J2I/ Here is his current release: Thrillers-ebook/dp/B00MMAAKEC/ It's currently selling well, at (About 100 sales a day) Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 50

51 He also released a prequel which is also doing really well (about 50ish sales a day) Suspense-Thrillers-ebook He's currently working on another series and he says he's going to follow the exact same formula. It's proven. Notice he also follows the core strategy. Every book has keywords in them to help them be found. All of them have targeted covers that his audience would like. He has links to his opt-in page so he can mail his people when new books appear. It's a solid strategy and you should follow it. UPDATE: Nick has also been keep track of all his successes and strategies on his blog, which he has graciously allowed me to share here! So click this link and check it out. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 51

52 KDP Select Like the series strategy, using free days/kindle unlimited is a way to get leads. The only difference is that the book is only available free for short time. You can utilize this scarcity to drive a ton of downloads. There are some advantages and disadvantages of KDP Select: Advantages: - Can offer your book for free or countdown deals. - Kindle Unlimted (Permanently free, get paid 1.50 to 2.00 per download) - Can compete with other KU books. Disadvantages: - Can't sell on other platforms. (And that can be HUGE) - Kindle Unlimited (You might not want to offer your book for free) I see Select as a program that you should specifically write for. Utilizing Kindle Unlimited, you can write a serialized set of books - 3 to 10 or so. Then utilize the resources to promote it as a free book. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 52

53 There are other strategies too. For example - if you write or plan on writing in a certain genre exclusively, then you could have one KDP Select book that you use to generate leads for all your books. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 53

54 Single Title Promotions Compared to a series, a single novel has a lot of disadvantages. The biggest is no built in lead generator other than the book itself. (You are trying to build leads and sell at the same time. It can work, but it takes more effort, rather than having a free book to get people in the funnel.) It does have one advantage though, and that's you only have to write one book. The key then, is to sell it. Strategy #1 - The 99 Cent Release Month I call this the 99 cent release month because that is what you are doing. Instead of going for a three day 99 cent launch (using scarcity to drive sales), you have the flexibility to plan a lot of cheaper promotions throughout an entire month. With this, you can drive a ton of sales and chances are, your rankings will remain after the month is over. I've already demonstrated this strategy, just hadn't named it yet. I won't retype everything here, you can see it live, as it went down, on this thread: Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 54

55 As you can see, he scheduled out 300 bucks worth of promotions throughout the month, pretty much back to back. You don't have to use the same sites he did. In fact, I recommend you try different ones, as your book will be in a different genre than his. I'll talk about this more in the FAQ section, under "I have book XYZ in XYZ genre", but you need to make sure your book is targeted to the sites and their audience. Strategy #2 - The 99 Cent Launch With this strategy, you price your book at 99 cents for three to five days, and try to get as many sites to send you as much traffic as you can upfront. You gain the scarcity - deal going away in 3 days! (This is the one time I would recommend using KDP Select for its countdown deal) But you lose a month of consistent sales (which helps with overall rankings). There are debates going around of how Amazon ranks you. We know that part of your rankings come from your past book Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 55

56 history. If you sold 100 copies a day at X price in your first month, Amazon is going to expect that you'll keep that up, to some degree. (They have information on how fast books fall off, in what genre, and for what author...it's quite complex) So if you suddenly drop to 50 sales a day, but more than doubled your price, you'll experience a rank drop...but not as dramatic if you hadn't changed your price. Overall, it's recommended that you try to get a month's worth of sales data before you make a drastic change to your book. (Price, etc.) This establishes history. I have a theory that it's much easier to boost a book's sales rank after a month of poor sales than it is to boost a book after only a few days. So if your book sites at 500k for a month, a single 100 unit sales day could shoot it up into the 1000 range, instantly. Where as a book just launched gets 100 sales, it might be in the 5000 sales range immediately but then drop like a rock after the launch is over. That's just my theory though, and it could be debated. In fact, I've seen it debated on several forums. The point being, I think strategy #1 is better than #2. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 56

57 #2 is perfect for boosting a book with a long sales history. Price it on sale at 99 cents (after at least a month at 2.99) for three days, coordinate the sites to send you traffic, and watch your ranking explode. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 57

58 Strategy FAQ and Troubleshooting Inside this guide I've strived to give you the best resources for paid ads out right now, along with a rich collection of case studies and examples of what authors are using now to build their Kindle business. Many of those Case Studies come from forum posts at kboards.com. If you're not a member of kboards yet, you should be. That place is a goldmine. And I did my best to point out some of the best gold there is. I do know, however, that not everything might be clear. So below I've included a section of questions I expect people might have. If you have more questions, please let me know at my support desk and I'll try to update this section as best I can. Q. For the Series Strategy, do I need to put my book in KDP Select? What about Single Titles? A. No, in fact I recommend against it. With KDP Select, you must only sell the book via Amazon. While Amazon gives you some nifty promotion tools, being unable to sell on the Nook, ibookstore and others is a huge disadvantage. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 58

59 The strength of the Series Strategy is the free front end book. THAT is what you leverage as promotional power. As for single books, the only time I could recommend it is using strategy #2, a timed, coordinated book launch or book boost. Then you can use Kindle Countdown Deals to leverage scarcity. Q. I have book XYZ in XYZ genre, which site is best for my book? A. Oh man. First off, most of the sites offer genre options. Pick the one that closest matches your book. Second, that's the topic of another product. There are so many combinations of genres and promotions that it would eat up a lot of space here. My recommendation? Spend a lot of time on kboards and Amazon's forums. A lot of people freely share case studies of their books, which includes the genre they are in, and what sites they had the most success with. Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 59

60 Sites like BookBub...well they cover just about everything and I've never heard their promo's sucking. Same thing with Ereader News Today. So, if all else fails, stick with them. Q. Do I really need to do the core stuff? I want to just put a book out. A. Setting up your book page correctly takes, what, an hour including some basic research? You have to get a cover made regardless. You have to enter a title in regardless. You have to enter a description regardless. Why not do it right the first time? Oh yeah. The dreaded list. You know, you can go without if you want. But considering mailchimp is free...take the time to learn it and be successful with it. The benefits are huge: - An audience you can rely on for sales - A boost for each new book you release - You can promote other authors for profit. (Get authors to pay you to their book to your list) Instant Book Sales Explosion Page 60