So you now have your books on Amazon KDP and you're wondering, "why are my books not selling on Amazon KDP?". Let's get into the answers as well as some tips to help you sell your self-published books.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. It is a secret as to the number one reason you're failing to sell books on Amazon.
Let's get into it today's topic, it is why are my books not selling on Amazon KDP? This is an outstanding question because many of you out there are first-time authors. You're just getting started with self-publishing and you're so excited.
We get our very first book on the market, we've spent so much time making the cover. We are writing the book, editing it, and making it absolutely perfect. So we're going to put it on the market, we know it's going to sell thousands and thousands of copies.
Maybe hundreds of copies a day are what's going to happen when it hits the Amazon market. Well, that's not exactly what occurs for most authors when you first get started on selling your books on Amazon. You're going to see just a trickle, a book here and a book there.
Maybe a couple of books, you might hit the lottery but for the most part, that's what you're going to see happen. Unless you already have a huge following, in which case then we can predict something different will occur when you put your book onto the market.
But unless you already have an audience of people who are following you, who know, like, and trust you, then the question is why should they even give your amazing book a chance in the first place? And so this is what we're going to answer in today's article.
Before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my completely free Self-Publishing Checklist. To make sure that you're not skipping any of the 10 key phases when it comes to self-publishing.
When I first got started, I started publishing on topics that I was just interested in. I was interested in goal achievement, habits, and a lot of different topics that I was interested in.
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This whole self-publishing theme seemed very exciting so I didn't run ads for any of my books. And what happened was I set up an email list and I put some blog articles onto a website. Then I expected the sales to start rolling in.
But the problem was I did not get any traction, I did not have what's known as an author's platform. That is where you put a book out there, then it starts getting purchased by people who know, like, and trust you. Or they maybe have read again your previous books.
But if you have no previous books, how are they supposed to know, like, and trust you? That is a big issue that a lot of first-time authors began to discover. That your book can be the most amazing in the world but nobody's going to read it.
If you haven't created other books and built around this, so that creates a big challenge. I was seeing very little traction but then I started running ads.
After studying, wasting lots of money and time taking courses, and watching YouTube videos, I had my covers redone along with the descriptions that I had for my books. And low and behold, the sales started to roll in. Some even became best sellers which are amazing.
In An Excessive Market
I'm going to tell you one other little secret here, I discovered that even my lead magnet. That is where in my book, I give away something for free to get people to subscribe to just a short PDF. That was only 30 pages or something like that, I was giving it away for free.
Now, that book even outperforms most of my books. In other words, it was telling people how to do email. Jumping into a new topic, a new niche but telling people how to manage their emails is something that I've worked on very hard over the years.
And what happened was it began to sell and I just couldn't quite figure out what is the pattern here. I did know that by running ads and stuff, that was the key but there are some more tricks if necessary. So why are my books not selling on Amazon KDP?
Let's get into the three points. The first point is you aren't running ads or doing content marketing for them. When I say content marketing, I mean setting up a Blog, getting a Facebook Page, and putting out content. So that people would begin to know, like, trust you, and read what you've already done.
If you need help with understanding how to play the content marketing game, you can check out my brand new Course on Content Marketing for Publishers Made Easy. You can just check that out because I know a lot of you are in this boat. You're not making enough sales and it's because you have no audience.
Let's do yourself a favor, check out the course, and see if perhaps we can start building an audience. But let's move on to number two, the second thing is you're in an oversaturated or non-existent market. Those are two separate things.
Oversaturated, lots of people want to buy the books. So what happens is everybody and their brother is writing books on that topic. I don't know whether it's essential oils or maybe it's a cryptocurrency, you've chosen a topic to write on like a Harry Potter type book. But maybe it has flooded that particular market.
The chances of you getting sales on that market are slim to none because you have too much competition. Then, you might think I know what you'll do, why don't you write a book on a topic that nobody's ever thought of? This could be true you could be the very first author to come up with that.
But then why would nobody be going to be searching for it? It's a niche that they would be taking a risk on reading. Because they've never even heard of it before.
So if you imagine the most amazing book but you look at the cover and you look at what it's talking about, you're like I've never even heard of this sort of type of book before. Now you are correct that if you make a success out of that, you can make a killing but the strategies that I'm telling you won't work here.
Because the fact is nobody's searching or looking for it. You don't know which books are selling. We don't even know if it's a hungry market. That is to say, maybe you have come up with a new type of fruit that looks like a mix between a banana and apple.
You're thinking this is great, everybody's going to want one. But the fact is we don't know if they do. So a better option is to choose a market for which you already know some people are interested.
You Need To Optimize
You already see people buying but there's a low demand for that market. I use a tool called KDSpy to figure out where are these golden markets located. These markets where there's not too much and not too few books and a lot of sales going on.
These are a couple of little tricks you're going to want to remember. Now, moving on into our secret answer of the day and our third point, it is that the reason your books are not selling is that they aren't optimized. When I say optimize, this is the topic I hit the most with most of my students.
We look at the best sellers. Like we just talked about in the niche that you're doing and hopefully, it's a hungry market. Not many books and lots of sales for that kind of book. Then, do your book covers look like the covers of other best-sellers?
In that type of book that you're writing, do your descriptions look similar to their descriptions? Another issue is the length of the book, the number of reviews, the keywords that you're using, the title itself, are they telling your ideal readers, my books just as good as the best-sellers give me a chance.
You might be thinking people give you a chance all the time. But that is mistaken people trust and want to give money to people who they know. Unless you already have a platform and if your name is Stephen King, you can take that.
You can simply release a book and everybody buys it, terrible cover terrible market. They see your name, they're going to purchase the book. So that's just a couple of little things.
We're not paying attention to those authors but the best-sellers within anything. It's like puppy training or maybe you're doing some sort of a romance novel. Look at the best-sellers in the type of book that you're publishing and make sure that yours doesn't look any different.
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You're going to have different pictures and things like that. The title will be different but if we look at the two next to each other, they could very well be in the same series. Because the readers and the purchasers, the people who are buying those types of books, they're communicating.
What types of books? How they should look and feel? Another little trick on this optimizing is to look at the comments that they're getting. The reviews on those exact books and you'll be able to see very quickly the things people are complaining about.
And the things that people like and based upon those comments and reviews that you'll see, it'll tell you what you need to do with your book to make it even better than the best-sellers. That my friends will increase sales.
Do you also have this same question, why are my books not selling on Amazon KDP? Maybe you could tell me, are your books selling? Or are they not selling?
I would like to know if your books on Amazon are selling? If they're selling, then write "Yes" and if they're not selling, then write "No" below in the comments. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.