Greetings authors, and reading enthusiasts! In the last month I've written several times about the importance of using social media to enhance your books sales. Most of us writers would much rather be writing than marketing, but if we want to make a living as an author, we have to do both.
We have to learn
how to drive traffic to our books. If people don't know they're there they won't be bought. We also need to teach our friends and family
the importance of rating books on Amazon, and we must become book raters for our author friends.
A couple of things I don't think I've touched on are also important and really crucial for driving traffic to your books and making a little extra coin.
Amazon Kindle Free Promotions
Notice the book above it's free today through the 10th!
If you're an indie author you're already familiar with using
Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, but you may not realize the importance of running promotions. Running a free promotion gets your books into readers hands. To run a free promotion your Ebook has to be exclusively listed on Kindle.
There is a great
fact page on Amazon for anyone who wants to know the complete details, but I did find this information regarding sales ranking that I thought was extremely beneficial. The question was asked, "
Will my sales rank be affected [by a free promotion]?"
This is Amazon's reply: "For the Kindle Store, Amazon Best Sellers lists are divided into Top 100 Paid and Top 100 Free. During the period when your book is offered for free, it will have a sales rank in the free list. Once the free promotion period is over, your book enters the paid Amazon Best Seller ranking.
It usually takes several hours for books to transition between the free and paid lists before and after promotional periods. In some cases, the transition may take longer due to system latencies. Since the start and end times of promotions are based on midnight Pacific Standard Time, the exact time your book reflects a free or paid sales rank will vary depending on the time zone from which customers are viewing your book in. For example, customers in time zones other than Pacific Standard Time may not see books reflected in the free list until much later in the day, depending on local time.
The Amazon Best Sellers calculation is based on Amazon.com sales and is updated hourly to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold on Amazon.com. Your book will drop in sales rank in the paid list from the time your free promotion begins to the time it ends. However, since sales rank takes previous sales into account as well as recent sales, your previous paid rank will influence your new rank when your book enters the paid categories again." (
Amazon)
I recommend using the free promotion option every few months. If you're book is with a publisher and also on Kindle ask about running a free promotion of your book. Remember your book marketing is important!
A Little Extra Coin
Another easy thing an author, or any blogger for that matter, can do to earn a little extra coin is to become an
Amazon Affiliate. It's free and easy to set up an account. I often have authors ask if they need to send me book photos for the posts I write. The answer is no.
I always locate the place the book is sold whether
Publishing Designs,
Hopkins Publishing,
Pryor Convictions Media,
Start2Finish or wherever. I try to link the books to the publishers, but if possible I also always link the books to Amazon.
Amazon has the option of using great picture links (such as the one of the book pictured. If you didn't know -- you can click on the picture to see it in the Amazon store!) You can also use in text links, or add sidebars or banners to your blogs. The great thing about using Amazon links as an Amazon Affiliate is that they will pay you a small percentage of whatever sales (and I mean small -- but every little bit adds up.)
With that said, bloggers and authors should be aware that this is a free program that can actually enhance your website. Notice the sidebar adds I've added to my site. Many of us sale Kindle books. A lot of people don't know they can get a free Kindle app. So, if you run an author's blog putting a widget or banner in a post or in the layout is actually beneficial to you and your audience! (You might also consider an audible banner -- notice the right sidebar of this blog.)
Notice the banner I've plopped down in the middle of this post. You can get the banners or widgets in all sizes.
One of the best things about being an Amazon Affiliate is that it costs nothing extra to the people who follow the links to purchase the products, nor does it take money from the authors. It's truly a win-win!
If you do participate in the Amazon Affiliate program make sure to post that somewhere on your blog. For example, if you look at the attribution section of this blog you will see I am an Amazon Affiliate.
I hope these tips will help with your future book sales, as well as making a little extra coin. After all we all want to sale more books and we can all use extra coin!
What ideas do you have for making extra money or book sales?
