There are most important factors for eBook that are needed to consider and you might not be giving importance to those that really matter. Learn which factors are the most significant when publishing an eBook.
It Should Be Backwards
A question that was sent to me today was, which important factors for eBook that matter the most when trying to sell Amazon Kindle ebooks? Well, this is an excellent question and it’s one that a lot of people don’t ask.
Usually, when we’re trying to figure out how to increase our sales and trying to figure out what it is that matters the most with our book or a product of any sort. A lot of people just create a product without even considering the fact that there are different things.
These things matter sometimes in very surprising ways which are, in fact, the case when it comes to your Amazon Kindle ebooks. By the way, that would be the same also with the audio or the paperback version of this book that we are looking at here.
So, that’s another important thing there. But before I answer the question, grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Secrets Checklist. Now, onto my story. When I first started, I thought, wow, you can just create a cover and you can just create a book.
How much more can there be to it? You put it out there and I’m sure it will sell just fine. I discovered quickly that, that is incorrect. I took several courses, I read books, I watched lots of Youtube videos, I read blogs and I subscribed to a podcast.
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I did everything you would imagine. Over some time, I began to understand that things can sometimes be a little bit backward.
I thought the content was the most important factor for selling an ebook, and that was completely backward. So what is the answer to that?
Well, the answer is that the most important factors for eBook when we’re trying to sell, it depends upon what type of book I’m focusing on.
Know Your Target Market
If we are trying to sell nonfiction, but this would also be true to a degree with fiction, but usually nonfiction especially it’s going to be the keywords that the book is built upon, so there needs to be a market.
If I am going to sell books on ‘How To Use Your iPad?’, I need to know that there is a target audience out there who’s looking for help on how to use an iPad.
So, for example, like one of the examples I have heard previously, it was like with hairdressers, if you want to know how to cut hair, you are generally not going to buy a book to tell you how to do that, right?
Even the latest fashion trends, it would be a magazine where most people might be getting that. What we are going to do is we are going to look and see which books inside of the genre that we’re writing for already are selling and doing well.
We are going to jump into that, maybe an underserved market. That is where there are not so many books in that market. But there are always a lot of hungry people who are looking to purchase in the market. So, that is something we are going to look at.
The second factor in making better sales on your Kindle ebooks is the cover. People will buy your book if they see the cover. So they have to see the cover, the thumbnail for that cover in the first place.
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The only way they are going to do that is if they search for your book or they already knew you or something along those lines. But generally speaking, it is going to be somebody searches on Google or another site, most likely on Amazon itself.
Then, at that point, they are going to see your cover. It is very important that the cover pops and you need to look at the other covers in the market. To make sure that you are not completely off the mark on what a good cover is.
This is also an entire science of its own. What should that cover look like? But I’ll hit that in another day on another question.
Then comes the next one, which is the title of the book because the person will see the cover. They search, they see the cover, that’s great. Now they look at the title of the book and then when they see that title, then they are going to see that it is exactly what they are looking for. Your subtitle and keywords matter for the same reason: they help Amazon show your book to the right searchers. KDP gives you seven keyword boxes of up to 50 characters each, so use a different phrase in each and don’t repeat the words already in your title.
It Is Not Actually The Contents
They will then going to click. That’s the first point at which we get our click. They are also going to look at the number of reviews that we have.
Are they positive? Are they negative? Many people don’t even read the reviews, they just look to see if there are reviews that are coming in that are going to be positive on the book.
Price comes in here too. Readers compare the price to similar books before they decide. On Amazon.com the 70% Kindle royalty option now covers prices from $2.99 to $12.99 (it used to stop at $9.99, and this changed on 7 July 2026), so check your price against your competitors and against that band.
Then, they are going to look at the description. Some people at this point will start skimming that description and seeing how the bullet points of what we are promising to deliver with this particular book.
Your description can carry more than plain text. As a KDP author you can add A+ Content (extra images and text) to your book’s page, and you can set up an Amazon Author Page.
Finally, they may look inside the book to see the contents. Maybe the table of contents, but generally the contents of the book is the least important aspect of the entire book. That said, the first few pages still matter, because Amazon’s Look Inside shows them. Put a clear table of contents and a strong opening up front, and check your formatting in the KDP previewer before you publish.
It is crazy because I thought the point of buying a book is to read the book and for the contents. But they will never even get to the contents if you have made mistakes on the other end.
In my experience, people who have studied marketing tend to do a better job of selling a book than other self-publishers. So you do not want to lose track of this aspect of it which is that it is not the contents of the book that sell the book.
The contents will still affect your reviews and star ratings, but it is the other things, which come before the reader gets there, that make the sale. We have to follow the buyer’s journey.
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We have to see how do they go about finding the book in the first place. Also, what is it psychologically that’s causing them to go about buying that ebook?
And so these are a few of the factors. There are hundreds of different things and each one of these has a whole series of strategies that involve helping your book sell better. A few more to put on your list: a series page if you write more than one book, Amazon ads, and how quickly you can earn your first honest reviews. KDP also asks whether your book contains AI-generated content, so decide how you will make your cover, title and text and answer honestly.
And I won’t, of course, be hitting those here but I would just say this is another one. You can ask an additional question if you’d like in the comments below and I can do that.
What have you found? What issues and important factors for eBook have you found?
Go ahead and leave your comments below and let me know. I’ll try to answer any additional questions that you may have. I would highly recommend you check out my other blogs and videos for similar questions.
If you would like help working out your target market, cover and title, you can book a free discovery session or look at my coaching.
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