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Friday 1 March 2013

How to Promote a Kindle Book - 5 Basic Steps

Expert Author Adam Kisiel
1. Your book title
Believe or not, but marketing process of your book begins right here, when you are still writing it. A good title may be one of the most important factors of success, bad one may drag you down.
A good book title is:
- relevant (matches your book content)
- short and memorable
- unique (always check Amazon if there are no other books with a similar title)
- Easy to say aloud (this is very important, as many people talk about books they have read).
2. Cover
It does not matter that your book is in fact an ebook - it is still regarded in terms of a traditional book, and a good cover is very important. Of course, a pretty cover in my opinion may look dreadful to other people, so there is no rule. But what you should know is: regardless of your cover contents, it should be of a good quality.
Good quality means:
- professional fonts, optimal sizes of title and author name,
- colors matching themselves,
- good placement of objects on the cover grid,
Many self-publishing authors make their covers themselves, and they do a good job. However, if you are unsure, I'd strongly advise taking a cover designer. We have had a lot of authors which took our recommendation to have their cover prepared by a designer, and it always has been beneficial to their sales.
3. Your place in the web - website,blog, Facebook account, twitter account.
This can be a very important step - starting blog and social profiles to promote your books. This can be quite simple, as there are many platforms to do this (I'd recommend WordPress if you are more technically savvy, and blogger for the easy way). However, you should only start your website if you are sure you will have the time and, most importantly, content that may gather users.
A lot of writers do the same thing: they start a website, put their cover and link to Amazon, and this is it. They have a few visitors monthly, which make absolutely no impact on their sales. So, how to get content? Here is what you can do on your website and social profiles:
- talk to readers, discuss about literature,
- do giveaways and contests,
- share advice, tips and tricks connected to your book theme,
- share interesting finds and information connected to your book.
4. Get reviews
Reviews are very important feature of Amazon, and book without any reviews seldom gets significant sales. The best way to get reviews is contact book review sites (you will find lists with addresses on the web) and send them free copies. You'll have to wait a bit, though, as they seem to have more and more submissions.
What you should do:
- encourage your readers to write a review of your book if they liked it (you can put a short message in the end of the book)
- give free copies to kindle book reviewers
What you should not do:
- never, ever buy reviews as this can get you in trouble
- don't ask your friends to do fake positive reviews
5. Start to build online presence of your book in the web
Now it is the time for the real deal: reach as many potential readers as you can. To achieve this, you have to be where the readers are. They are of course on Amazon, but they also search for recommendations and info about books on kindle recommendation websites.
There are many websites which promote kindle books. Some of them accept only free books, some accept books with a minimum amount of reviews, and some require a payment - all the same, what you should do is try to submit your book to as many as you can, always with your link to Amazon.
Pro tip: avoid inserting the same description everywhere. Try to write different descriptions to different sites, focusing on most interesting features of your book.
We have briefly covered 5 most important basic steps in Kindle book promotion. Now it is the time to move to advanced promotion strategies, which we will discuss in the next article.
Thank you for reading.
Best regards,
Adam
Adam Kisiel is a co-founder of http://Goodkindles.net - a kindle book promotion site. Submit your kindle book to Goodkindles to promote your work.

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