7000+ Downloads in Less Than a Month

Hello Authors!

A few weeks ago I launched an eBook that I co-authored with my friend James Roper.

It was the first eBook either of us had ever written and published on Amazon so we didn’t really know what to expect.

We searched the internet looking for advice and found TrainingAuthors.com. What a HUGE help! We used many of the tips & tools on the site & the book was a much bigger success than we ever thought possible.

In less than a month, it’s been downloaded 7,000+ times and we’re averaging 114 purchases per day so far in December (87.92/day since the paid launch).

In this post, I’m going to break down EXACTLY what we did to reach the success we’ve had so far.

If you’ve never published an eBook, this is a great place to start. If you’ve been in the eBook space for a while now, maybe you can pick up a few tips to maximize your next launch.

I’ll start from the beginning and work my way up until where we are now.

Pre-Release

Title & Subtitle Choice: The keywords we wanted to rank high in were “Productivity”, “Work Life Balance” & “Time Management”. Because of this, we made our Title & Subtitle as keyword rich as possible while still sounding authentic.

[easyazon-image align=”left” asin=”B00GJYXA5I” locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41f%2BZCN%2B7WL._SL160_.jpg” width=”113″]Title: The Productive Person

Subtitle: “A how-to guide book with productivity hacks & daily schedules for entrepreneurs, students or anyone struggling with work-life balance.”

Notice all of the keywords there? …”productive”, “how-to guide”, “productivity hacks”, “daily schedules”, “entrepreneurs”, “students”, “work-life balance”

Write a keyword rich description that makes them want to buy: We started out doing only one of these things. We had a great description that sold people on the book and made them want to read it.

The problem was, it wasn’t keyword rich and we weren’t showing up high on searches in Amazon. You can’t sell books if you don’t even have a chance to get their eyeballs on your page.

So we went back and added to the description, adding as many keywords as possible without watering it down.

The result was a description that still sold people on the book while also driving more keyword traffic. Since this change, our book sales have increased by 43/day.

Cross-Category Selection: When choosing our categories, we strategically cross-categorized our book. This means choosing a sub category within 2 different major categories. Doing this will put you in front of twice the audience when you reach the top of the charts.

Our Example:

Business & Investing -> Business Life -> Time Management

Self Help -> Stress Management

PRO TIP: When choosing categories, don’t blindly select a category using the KDP tool. Instead, pull up Amazon & manually click through the categories. This will show you the categories that readers are actually clicking instead of the hundreds of categories that are available but not clickable on Amazon.

It will also show you the categories that you would be more likely to click on & the one’s with the most competition for the top spot. (Learn more about choosing the best categories here.)

Launch Week

Pre-Release List: Before launching our book, we posted up a link for a pre-release list on our social media. People who signed up for the list gave us their email so that they would get a reminder when the book came out and download it for free.

This helped boost downloads early and it helped get us on the ranking charts within Amazon.

Social Media Push: Initially, the posts were centered on the book and how our friends could download it for free.

After the book started doing well, we used the posts to thank them for all of the support and encourage them to download the book while it was still free.

KDP Free Promo

We signed up for the KDP select promo and originally planned to make our book free for 2 days. Because of the huge response, we extended the promotion to 3 ½ days.

Free eBook sites & Facebook groups: Because our book was free, we were able to submit it to tons of free eBook sites that promoted the book for us. We found out about them from the Training Authors post: 47+ Places to Submit Your Free KDP Select Promotion for Your Kind eBook. The Author Marketing Club’s free submission tool (found in this post) made this as streamlined & efficient as possible.

We also posted the book on many of the free eBook sites within Facebook. There are tons of them out there, all you have to do is look.

PRO TIP: Don’t wait until the last minute to submit your book to the free eBook sites. Many of them require at least 3 days notice and some even require 1-2 weeks. Do your homework & submit in advance.

Free Promo Stats:

#1 in Self Help

#1 in Self Help – Stress Management

# 2 in Business & Investing

#1 in Business & Investing – Business Life

#1 in Business & Investing – Business Life – Time Management

#39 overall Kindle Top 100 Free List

5,247 Total Downloads

Switch to Paid ($0.99 week)

After 3 ½ days of the free promotion, we switched to paid. We started with the price of $0.99 so that we could continue with a high volume of sales and establish our spot on top of the paid rankings.

PRO TIP: When your book switches from free to paid, you have a window of 3-5 hours where your book will continue to show up on top of the free charts. Only when people click the book will they realize it’s paid.

Take advantage of this and make sure you end your promo during peak sales time. For us, this was between 5pm to 11pm EST. To make sure it ends during this time, you’ll most likely have to end the promo manually.

Price Increase

After a week at $0.99, we changed the book to the regular price of $3.99. There’s no exact science for pricing your book but pricing it at $2.99 or above gives you a royalty of 70% on Amazon instead of 35% (if you’re below $2.99).

For our book, we had some great reviews and we felt like we had a quality product so we priced it at $3.99. We wanted people to see the book as quality and not just another $2.99 eBook. It also helped that we were on top of the charts (and still are) surrounded by books that were priced up to $12.29.

Hopefully this will help with your Kindle eBook launch! Please comment below with your favorite tip from the post.

If you’ve got a few tips of your own, leave them in the comment section. We’re all in this thing together!

If you want to check out the book, CLICK HERE. We appreciate the support as we continue our climb up the charts!

Fun Fact: As I’ve been writing this post here in Austria, it’s during our dead period for sales (2am-4am EST) but we’ve still sold 16 copies of the book!

 

About Chandler Bolt

After a near miscarriage by his mom before birth and an action packed entrance into the world, Chandler grew up as a rebellious adventure seeker trapped in a small town.

Chandler was bit by the entrepreneurial bug at an early age when he saw that he could make a lot more money working for himself. While his friends were off searching for jobs, he was out starting businesses.

He began early (age 11) by selling his personal snacks at scout camp and, by age 17 he hired his friends to help him operate his landscaping business that earned him $10,000 for college. All in all, by age 20 he started and ran over $320,000 in businesses.

During this time, he taught other college students how to run their own successful businesses and received the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Young Entrepreneurs Across America.

Chandler now speaks to students across the country teaching them the lessons he’s learned as a young entrepreneur and encouraging them to take the entrepreneurial leap.

(If you’d like to reach out to Chandler, email him at [email protected])

 

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