This is something that many authors wonder about after putting non-selling books on the market or maybe even at the time of planning to self-publish. Let me tell you why your self-published books aren't selling!
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to the one thing that's going to cost you a lot of money on your books that will prevent them from selling.
Now let's get into it. So today's topic is why your self-published books aren't selling! Now, this is something that many authors wonder about before they're even getting a book onto the market is whether or not the market will even want to buy your book at all.
And for some of you who may already have put your books onto the market and aren't seeing the sales that you would like to be seeing, you're not sure what exactly you did wrong. That is stopping you from getting the sales that you would like to see and also what you deserve.
Your book is a high-quality book but why exactly aren't people buying it? And that is what we are going to look at in today's article. But before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist.
The checklist will help you make sure that you are not missing any of the important steps to getting your book published properly and making the sales that you deserve on your books. So let's get into it. My books didn't sell, so I spent tons of time putting my books onto the market.
We started first with Amazon then Smashwords and moved on from there. But in our initial attempts of putting our books onto the market on Amazon, we weren't seeing very many sales.
Check out this related article: Self-Publish For Under $199!
The thing is that I had also heard of another strategy which is that you can hire people to write books on different topics. I realized that would be a faster way to produce even more books on the market.
I could then have more data to play around with. To see what exactly it is that it takes to make a book sell versus not sell. And the thing is that by putting these books, I was ordering books based on topics that were already popular in the market, things that were popular at the time.
I was only choosing to put them at about 3,000 words. I discovered that at 3000 words, it's long enough to be a paperback book, a 20-minute audiobook. It sort of gets in and gets out and hits a subject.
That was an experiment that I was playing. We'll just choose topics that are currently popular and see if those books will sell. Well, the interesting thing is these short books were outperforming my hundred-page long books.
And that was something that I took notice of. Why exactly would these short books be doing better than the longer books that I had written myself?
Outperformed Books
The problem was my books weren't optimized for a target market. In these shorter books, I was specifically choosing themes and topics that were already popular. There was an existing hungry market of buyers and readers who were looking to read on these subjects.
And when I came out with my topics, I wasn't choosing the correct topics and it was a huge mistake. So what happened is I started optimizing my books by choosing the correct keywords and such. To make sure that my books were being put out there and finding audiences that were interested in these topics.
It wasn't that my books were completely off-topic. It's just that nobody was searching for some of the clever titles that I had chosen. Or even the covers not being optimized.
It was crazy to imagine that simply 3,000-word pamphlets or short books would outperform my books. So why your self-published books aren't selling! The first thing is you aren't making different formats and maximizing distribution.
That's a very important one that you have to remember when you're first getting started. If you're not maximizing the distribution and the format, there may be an audience out there for you but it's spread across different networks and different platforms.
For example, when you put it on Amazon, it also distributes across several other platforms. But Smashwords has even more and Ingram spark has a different set. So the combination of these different platforms, networks, and types of books means that there are several readers.
These readers may perhaps only read that type of book in the format that they wish to read the book in. It maybe hardcover, softcover, softback, audiobook format, eBook, EPUB, Kindle, and all of these different formats.
They're not going to purchase your book if it isn't in a format that they want to read. So that's your first one. The second is you aren't marketing them in terms of ads content marketing and social media marketing. All of these three can be very powerful.
The most powerful of them all is content marketing but it takes a lot of time. Producing blogs and videos about your books takes a lot of time. But it will in the long run bring more traffic from Google and other places like that.
Build A Connection
So that people will see that you're an authority on it. You can also use social media marketing which means you're going to put your books onto groups like Facebook groups. You can hire gigs on Fiverr to get that done like that.
But a lot of people find that it doesn't move the needle on sales. The most effective and works in the short run and the long run is running ads on Amazon. So specifically running ads and monitoring the ads daily to see how you're doing with regards to your books.
This is the one I found that works fantastic. In terms of just making sure your books are getting in the front of the eyes of readers or people who are looking for books that are just like yours. So that's a very powerful trick that many people simply don't use.
The secret answer of the day is that your books just aren't optimized. They're not selling because your title, cover, description, keywords, and content are not optimized. The whole process is not telling people what the book is about.
But understanding the needs and the problems that your readers have when they're coming into it. The risks that they're taking if they buy your book as opposed to buying somebody else's book on the same subject.
We have to get into the minds of our readers with regards to both the cover, the title, and the keywords they're looking for to understand. Just as I gave the example on my books being outperformed by short books that were written by ghostwriters.
Check out this related article: Lacking Creativity To Self-Publish?
This is the same thing that would be very relevant for you also to keep in mind here. That by taking your books, make sure that there is a target audience. And also learning some of the copywriting skills necessary to write a description.
A description that isn't built to tell them what the book is about. But built to get into the mind of your readers. Make sure you're speaking to them in a way that will make them want to take action and buy your book as opposed to somebody else's book.
So those are the three top reasons. Why your self-published books aren't selling! Are you having a problem getting your books to sell?
If you are, write the word "yes" below in the comments, if you're not and everything's fine, write the word "no". That will help me make sure that I'm reaching you with the right content here on this blog. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.