You might be wondering why you still don't have that Amazon bestseller flag even though your books are great and deserve to be on top? Find out below how to become a #1 bestselling author on Amazon as well as some tips to make self-publishing easier for you.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is one or maybe a couple of overlooked secrets that authors miss when they're trying to become Amazon's number one bestsellers.
The topic that we're going to hit in today's article is how to become a #1 bestselling author on Amazon? Now I know exactly what you're thinking, you've got the very first book that you're either working on or you've released and you're thinking why is it not reaching the rank of number one bestseller on Amazon?
You've been working so hard, you put the book together, the quality is great, the cover, the design, everything's looking fantastic. Yet you still seem to not be able to get this elusive concept of the Amazon and number one bestseller flag.
You see these other books that are lower quality than yours and it leaves you feeling very frustrated. Well, that is what we are going to hit in today's article. Grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist Secrets, it will help you make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps necessary to win and get your book selling on Amazon and other places.
When I first got started, I put my very first two books on the market and they did make it into the top hundred thousand. What they call the basic sales rank or BSR on Amazon. This is a key issue because it means you're selling a copy a day of these books, at least a copy a day.
Now sometimes, it changes from year to year, how exactly it plays out. This is a very good starting point to look at which is are we able to get it in that range? But that's not good enough if you wish to be an Amazon bestseller.
One day is not going to be sufficient for you. So what happened was when I put out the third book, I followed many of the key rules for making a best-seller status. And I ended up hitting that best-seller status for 3 weeks.
A few months later, I hit it yet again in those categories that I was shooting for. The interesting part is that I learned all of this just by accident. I had no idea how many authors in fact do reach that status.
You don't even know you put a book on the market and just somehow seem to get this best-seller status. But later, I began to understand by choosing deeper categories, optimizing the book, and using great keywords in the book.
That was the reason why in this particular book, I was making that thing, getting the best-seller status. That has also happened with a lot of other books since that point. Even with the earlier books, I have the ability to optimize those books.
So we have everything in place to ensure that we're going to get the sales that we deserve for our books when we're putting them out onto the market. So how to become a #1 bestselling author on Amazon? Well, the first thing is you need to choose a niche that is selling a lot of books.
The Magical Ratio
We don't want to sell in a niche that doesn't even exist or there aren't that many book sales going on. And that brings us back again to the best-seller status. We look at the books that are the best-sellers and you'll notice there's a pattern among them.
In which categories that they're in and how many books are selling. That's why I like to look at the basic sales rank to make sure that it's in the top hundred thousand. How many books are showing in the top hundred thousand for that keyword or niche that you're in?
And if there are very few books total on sale, you get what I call the magical ratio there. I use a tool called KDSpy, that's what I use to figure it out. I take the total number of books and divide by how many of the top hundred books are in the top hundred thousand basic sales rank, the BSR.
So then that gives me a ratio. So I like to do books that are under 30. That would be 30, for every 30 books on the market one of them is in the top hundred thousand. This is what I use, you may choose to use a different tool.
I've also used Kindle, I've used Publisher Rocket to figure out which keywords can be very useful. But KDSpy is still my go-to tool when it comes to finding out the right keywords for our books that we're putting on there. Because we want to make sure there's low competition.
With high sales and low competition, it's a perfect market to be writing our books in. So this is a very key issue, you skip this one you may become a best-seller but in a niche or in a category that has too few books to even get the label of the best-seller.
Number two, you should optimize your books so they look and feel like a bestseller. So go ahead and take a look on Amazon for the top sellers in your niche. Now if you aren't finding any books, that's a problem but if you have the top sellers in your niche, well take a look.
What do they look like? How long are they? How many reviews do they have? Is there something special about the way the words and the titles that they use? Because if there is, you need to make sure your book looks just like those books.
But then comes our secret answer and this is a little bit of a combo. Because when we're coming out with our book onto the market, we must get these elements correct. And the secret answer is you should choose a category that is deep enough.
So you don't want to do a category like health. You'd rather want to go deeper down to find lower categories that you can rank for. I've even heard the comment you can ask them up to 10 categories, that was Sean who had mentioned it recently that you could have up to 10 categories.
You can do three initially but then you can ask them to add them into those additional categories. Giving you even more opportunity and that's a secret. I haven't even fully implemented that one myself but very useful advice.
Build A List
The other thing is you should use your list to get sales. You might be wondering what is a list, an email list? Well, that's the thing you should be building if you want to get lots of reviews and lots of sales.
This is a key strategy that all best-selling authors are using, I don't know why they're doing it because it definitely will help you build up an audience. That you can then ask them to leave reviews on your book. Also when you come out with new books, you make it easy for them to purchase from you since they like your books.
We're building up that audience, that lists customers. So if we ever leave Amazon, we could take those people with us. We just tell them where our new book is located and that was using your list.
The final thing I wanted to point out was that when your book first goes live on Amazon, Amazon itself will promote your book. And so if we can get a lot of sales in the early days when you first put it out there, Amazon also wants to do it. If you put your book into the KDP Select program, then that'll be perfect to get your book selling right from the start.
So that we have so many sales, so much momentum. They're pushing your book and we reach that coveted bestseller status. Where you get the flag on your book and at that point you've become an Amazon bestseller.
I would not recommend trying to cheat the system by paying people to buy thousands of copies of your books. These sorts of things are not very good strategies and Amazon may punish you. I've seen people even try this strategy with Click Banks.
Where you would have bots purchase your book. You put it on free promotion, have thousands and thousands, and then you end up getting warnings about Amazon shutting your account down. So I would not recommend that.
And also do not pay for reviews, that will get your account banned. Even though of course getting lots of downloads and all of these things but Amazon is very clever. They will see what's going on so it is best just to stay in the up and up.
Build a list, build an audience, and ask them for reviews. Make sure as you come out with new books, you're sending them out to that audience. And we're using everything we can in addition to ads to drive that traffic to reach the coveted Amazon bestseller status.
So I have a question for you, have you ever had a book selling 1000s of copies and become an Amazon bestseller? And I mean where you get the tag it says Amazon bestseller in whatever category it might be. If you have, I want to know about it. write "Yes" below in the comments.
And if you've never had that happen, write "No" below in the comments. That will help me understand where you're coming from. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.