5 Secret Strategies of Kindle Publishing: Earn Passive Income with Non-fiction Books [1 ed.]

Table of contents :
Is This Book for You?
Gift for Readers
Find a Profitable Niche and Target Audience
Evaluate Your Topic Profitability on Amazon
Improve Your Reach with More Categories
Plan Out Your Non-fiction Book Series with This Workbook
Write Your Book Content Strategically
1. Amazon Look Inside Sample – Use It to Sell More Books
2. Use Body Text to Drive Traffic
3. Write Effective Closing Part
Polish With Editing & Proofreading
Use a Book Title That Attracts Readers
Create a Book Cover That Stands-Out
5 Strategies to Build passive Income Streams from Your Non-Fiction eBooks
Perma-free Strategy
Book Series Strategy
Email List Swap Strategy
Value Ladder Strategy
Book Factory Strategy
Now It’s Your Turn
One More Chance
Found a Typo?
Other Books by the Author
About Author

Citation preview

5 Secret Strategies of Kindle Publishing Earn Passive Income with Non-fiction Books

Anita Nipane

1

This book was written by Anita Nipane of Digginet.

Copyright © 2020 by Anita Nipane.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Trademarks All product and brand names identified throughout this book are used for their benefit with no intention of infringement of their copyrights.

Affiliate Disclosure This book contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, we may earn a commission.

For more information, contact: http://www.digginet.com

First Edition: August 2020

2

Contents Is This Book for You? ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Gift for Readers .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Find a Profitable Niche and Target Audience ................................................................................................ 7 Evaluate Your Topic Profitability on Amazon ..........................................................................................15 Choose the Best Categories .....................................................................................................................20 Improve Your Reach with More Categories ........................................................................................24 Plan Out Your Non-fiction Book Series with This Workbook.......................................................................27 Should You Enroll in KDP Select? .................................................................................................................29 Write Your Book Content Strategically ........................................................................................................31 1.

Amazon Look Inside Sample – Use It to Sell More Books ...............................................................31

2.

Use Body Text to Drive Traffic .........................................................................................................34

3.

Write Effective Closing Part .............................................................................................................36

Polish With Editing & Proofreading .........................................................................................................41 Use a Book Title That Attracts Readers .......................................................................................................43 Create a Book Cover That Stands-Out .........................................................................................................46 Launch Your Book to Become a Bestseller ..................................................................................................53 5 Strategies to Build passive Income Streams from Your Non-Fiction eBooks ...........................................55 Perma-free Strategy.................................................................................................................................56 Book Series Strategy ................................................................................................................................59 Email List Swap Strategy ..........................................................................................................................62 Value Ladder Strategy ..............................................................................................................................65 Book Factory Strategy ..............................................................................................................................68 Now It’s Your Turn .......................................................................................................................................71 One More Chance ........................................................................................................................................73 Useful Tools for Authors and Content Creators ..........................................................................................74 Found a Typo?..............................................................................................................................................75 Other Books by the Author ..........................................................................................................................76 About Author ...............................................................................................................................................77

3

Is This Book for You? So, let me guess… You have an idea for a non-fiction book that you want to self-publish on Amazon. You dream of sharing your ideas online and earning passive income, maybe because you want to leave your full-time job or at least have a good side-income stream to pay your bills and fulfill your dreams. Maybe you already published one or more books on Amazon, and nothing happened… Probably you got a few sales but not enough to significantly increase your income level. Many new self-published authors struggle to sell their book because they just publish random books that they THINK will sell. The truth is, in order to earn a regular stream of passive income from books, you need to do thorough research first and plan your book publishing strategy well before you even write a word. This means having a well-thought-out book publishing and promotion plan, understanding how Amazon algorithm works, knowing your target audience, and having realistic expectations for the results. Do you want to know what strategies bestselling authors use to build their passive income streams? Reading this book is your chance to shorten your learning curve and do everything right, starting from the first time. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Simply follow the strategies revealed in this book and you will create your passive recurring income stream much faster. Your books will be your digital real estate that will earn you money every day in the long term. Each book you publish on Amazon will help you pay your bills and get one step closer to financial freedom. Although I had read many books about self-publishing tactics before I published my first book three years ago, I ended up being full of fluff. And I assume many other beginning authors had also fallen into the same trap. Therefore, I had to learn from my own trials and errors to figure out how the self-publishing system works. I wish I knew all these “secret” strategies I’m telling you in this book right from the beginning of my self-publishing journey because I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes. Even though there is a lot of information available on the Internet about self-publishing, it is very fragmented and doesn’t give enough information to help you succeed in the long term. You can find some bits of valuable information in a blog post, some – in a book, some more – in a YouTube video. In most cases, the information provided doesn’t give you a full picture. Therefore, you need to spend hours and hours putting all the puzzle pieces together. The worst thing is that you won’t even realize that a significant puzzle piece is missing because you DON’T KNOW what you don’t know. It means that you may not be 4

aware that there is an important detail that could lead you to many book sales instead of painful failures and confusion. Even if this book gives you just one unexpected insight that is your missing puzzle piece, it can take your book publishing to the next level. If you’re completely new to self-publishing on Amazon, this book will not only give you a solid overview of Kindle book publishing and marketing but also five strategies that will help you build your Kindle publishing business. You will learn how to write for a profitable niche and use Amazon’s algorithm to your own benefit. With proper knowledge, patience, and determination, everybody can do that. Learn it once and reap the rewards for years to come. To be clear - this book is NOT about getting rich and famous overnight. You will have to do a lot of work and invest a lot of your time, but it will pay off, eventually. There will be no fluff, no sugar coating – just usable facts and practical tactics. I’ll be teaching you everything you need to know and nothing you don’t. Moreover, no special skills are required, and most tactics cost nothing to use. Once you know them, it’s easy!

So, let’s get started!

5

Gift for Readers Do you want to sell more Kindle books to the same reader? Then get this FREE eBook and learn how to create book bundles and box sets on Amazon.

6

Find a Profitable Niche and Target Audience You might have heard this before: There are riches in the niches. In general, it means that choosing the right niche for your business or book is key to your success.

It’s not a good idea to publish a book just because you THINK it will sell. Instead, you need to do proper research and get proof that your book can be part of a profitable non-fiction book publishing business. The niche you choose to write in will make or break your chances of success. You can implement all the best book marketing strategies and do all the right things, but if you happen to pick a niche that doesn’t have a strong market, you’ll struggle to sell books.

What if you find out that there is NO sufficient demand for your topic and it most probably won’t sell? Would you still spend months of your life writing a book about it, considering that it will earn only a few dollars? Even if the money is not important to you, what is the point of writing and publishing a book that nobody is going to read?

Writing a good quality book takes a lot of time and energy. For example, you will need to spend at least 100-200 hours to write a 160-page book. That’s does not include the time it takes to edit and format a self-published book or promote it for the launch. Completing your manuscript will require commitment, research, creativity, and, last but not least, time (and a lot of it). Make sure you spend this time on a book that can earn sales.

Answer these 8 questions to find a profitable niche for your non-fiction book:

1. Is your audience passionate about the topic? Are the people in your chosen niche irrationally passionate? Moreover, are YOU irrationally passionate about your topic? Do you spend tons of your time researching it? What’s more – do you spend MONEY on information about it (books, online courses, private lessons, etc.)? Will you still be passionate about your topic even if you are not going to get any profit from it? If yes, that’s a good sign. ALWAYS choose a niche that you’re passionate about. It will be much more interesting and easier to write about. Do you love cooking? Write a book about cooking. Do you love traveling? Write a book for travelers. Do you love

7

being a mom? Write a book about parenting. You’ll understand your customers’ needs better, and you’ll enjoy the learning process ten times more, which is the key to successful non-fiction book publishing.

But are there others that are as irrationally passionate as you are? Are there Facebook groups and fan pages, YouTube channels, podcasts, or blogs in your niche? Does your audience have its own special language? For example, in the digital marketing world, you hear words like “lead magnet,” “split testing,” and “landing pages.” In the horsemanship world that I belong to, we talk about “lateral flexion,” “horse collection,” and “connection.” A passionate market always has its own vocabulary. It’s a sign of a strong community.

What’s more – is your audience WILLING and ABLE to spend money on information about your chosen topic? You can get an answer to this by checking out the other products in your niche. What are their prices, reviews, and sales ranks? Are there any products at all? If no, it might be a sign that there is no demand.

2. Is your topic broad enough for a book series? If your goal is to sell a lot of books and earn a decent income, the topic you choose should be broad enough so that you can divide it into several books and organize them into a book series. It’s a lot easier to build your non-fiction book business if you focus on writing multiple books within a chosen niche rather than writing many random books on unrelated subjects that have different target audiences. You want to avoid fragmenting your marketing efforts. Building ONE audience is hard enough. It’s better to avoid spreading yourself across multiple niches. I know this might be difficult for some people. It was for me. I couldn’t choose my niche, and I didn’t even understand who my audience was; therefore, my first books were complete failures.

My point is this – you shouldn’t be looking for a SINGLE bestselling book idea. Instead, you should find a niche that leads to a whole catalog of titles. That’s how you win with non-fiction book publishing! For example, if your topic is the ever-popular “Social Media Marketing,” you can divide it into smaller and more specific topics for several short and easy-to-read books, like, “7 Tactics to Build Your Social Media Content Calendar” or “Grow Your Social Media Following in 30 days.” You want to choose a broad market with multiple problems. The cornerstone of your Kindle business is to get returning customers. The best way to do this is to choose a specific topic and only write books for that audience. 8

3. Are there established gurus in your niche? When you are evaluating the potential of your chosen niche, find out if this market has established celebrities and gurus. There must be thriving businesses already selling information products in your market. Look around at the other experts in your niche and see what they are selling. Are there other books and online courses? What topics do they cover? Check out Udemy courses and see what instructors cover in their lectures. Read their reviews. Identify your place in this niche ecosystem and decide what your book will offer that others don’t. You want to find a niche with its own subculture already established.

So, you are not the first one that tries to break a new path. A BIG mistake new authors tend to make is trying to create their own niches. If you have an idea of such a unique book topic that no one else is selling, most probably, it’s because there is no demand for it. You need to find a niche that is already profitable and has an audience that is eager to learn.

It doesn’t mean you should write books about the same topics as everybody else. Develop your own angle to present your ideas from a different perspective. A good example is the book “The 1 Page Marketing Plan” by Allan Dib. The themes he is covering in his book are traditional marketing fundamentals that every marketing student learn in the university. However, he presents them in a very interesting and conversational angle making his book a bestseller in various categories.

4. Who do you want to serve? Most of us start with a book topic idea, never thinking about who we want as our readers. However, these are the people you will be interacting with, and you will “walk a mile in their shoes.” You will try to understand their problems, answer their questions, and ask them to buy your books, and maybe other products or services. You will devote a lot of your time to these people.

Therefore, before you write a single word, you need to make sure you can answer these questions: •

Who are my dream clients?

•

What do they look like (age, gender)?

•

What are their goals, dreams, and desires?

•

Where do they hang out online? 9

•

What blogs do they read, and what email newsletters do they subscribe to?

Find these people on the Internet, open their profiles, read their comments, and try to understand their pain points. You can easily find real people that represent your audience on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, and other media. Write out their characteristics and then choose an actual picture to represent them.

It’s amazing how your perspective changes when you have a physical picture of your ideal customer— instead of a blurred image in your head. In the marketing world, these are called customer avatars. They are fictional, composite characters that reflect the key attributes of your audience.

For example, if you want to write about productivity techniques, you may have a Freelancer and Small Business Owner avatars. While they both use the same product, their pain points may be significantly different. While the freelancer needs to manage his own time to be more productive, the small business owner may be concerned about effectively managing his staff’s time. Therefore, you would need to address two different audiences. Maybe you would even need two different books?

The point is you must know your target market and market only to them. And sell only to them. Forget the rest. Successful marketing comes down to one thing: having the right message in front of the right people.

The main mistake many authors make is that they assume that their book will be for everyone. It doesn’t work like that! There’s no book that has been written for everyone! Although technically anybody can read a book, not everybody will find it valuable. Therefore, you must identify the people that will benefit the most from your book. That group is your target audience. Knowing your target audience will help you address their needs precisely. The more specific you are, the higher the chances that you will attract the right audience. What’s more, you will know who to market to.

5. What result will readers get after reading your book? Do you know what problems your readers have? You need to be very clear on what result you want to give them. What will they gain after reading your book? How will their life change? Once you (and they) can see a clear benefit, it’s much easier to sell. 10

Non-fiction buyers usually buy because they want to get a specific knowledge or inspiration to solve a problem.

You need to switch your mindset from “how can I get value?” to “how can I give value?” and write a book that is so valuable that tons of people in a specific niche will want to buy it. Moreover, YOU would want to buy it.

6. Is your topic popular on Google? Use Google Keyword Planner to get an idea of how popular your chosen topic is. If you type a word or a phrase, you’re considering for your Kindle book in this tool, Google will show you the EXACT number of searches it gets on a monthly basis. This will give you an idea of how many people are searching for this topic on Google. A valuable information, isn’t it?

For example, if you search for the keyword “social media marketing,” you will find out that it has 165,000 average monthly searches, which implies that it is a popular topic with a high demand. However, it is very broad. So, you would need to narrow it down to find a more specific theme; for example, the keyword “social media content calendar” has 6,600 monthly searches and is a more precise theme. The best way to use Google Keyword Planner for evaluating the demand for your chosen topic is to create a list of related keywords and see how many monthly searches they all get on average. Although you can’t just rely on these data because people usually search Google for finding free information (not paid), it can still give you some insights on how popular your topic is.

Google Trends is another great tool that will help you to evaluate the interest in a given keyword or topic. It shows how search habits have changed over time and whether the interest in your topic is increasing or decreasing. It’s a good tool for making sure that you are not going to invest your time in writing a book about a still-popular-but-waning topic.

Let’s say you’ve used Google Keyword Planner and done the research to create a list of the keywords that are related to your book topic and have a significant number of monthly searches. Now it’s time to run them through Google Trends to see what the search tendencies are – whether they are climbing or going down. 11

If you have several topics in your mind, you can compare them in this tool to see which of them has a higher potential. If one of the topics shows significantly higher popularity within Google search results, you should choose that one. Look at the example below: Facebook marketing is a much more popular topic than Twitter marketing. Therefore, writing a book about Facebook marketing has a much higher potential.

7. Is there a demand for your topic on Amazon? And last but not least - one of the simplest and easiest ways to find popular topics is to check out the Amazon bestseller lists.

If you look to the left side of the screen, you can see all the different categories on Amazon. Go through various categories and subcategories and analyze their book topics and titles. This will help you get more ideas for your own book.

12

Make sure you are looking through the ‘Top 100 Paid’, not ‘Top 100 Free’ books, because you want to generate topic ideas for a book that people would pay for.

Your task here is to find keywords and terms that your book can be based on and that solve a particular problem for the reader. Most probably, you will notice some trends and ideas that are repeating. It means these are hot topics that have a significant demand.

13

Go through various lists and categories and note down any potential keywords and phrases that you see. During the process, you may also get ideas that pop into your head.

8. What other book reviews can teach you? Notice how many reviews your competitors’ books have – 5, 50, 150, or thousands? A huge number of reviews don’t always indicate good sales rank. Sometimes they were received during the book launch by using various techniques that I’ll explain in the later chapters. Maybe the book was published several years ago, and now its sales have declined. However, the reviews can still be very useful because by reading them, you can get new ideas about the topic for your book or its chapters. See if you notice trends – what readers enjoyed and what they felt could be explained better.

I hope by now you already have some ideas about your next book topics. Find a profitable niche that you feel passionate about so that it’s interesting to research and write about.

14

Evaluate Your Topic Profitability on Amazon Now, it’s time for the most important piece of this puzzle – using Amazon to determine the potential profitability of your book topic. Since Amazon is the marketplace you are going to sell your books on, you need to learn to notice hidden clues that will help you evaluate the potential success of any book idea. This is the most complex chapter. It may feel a bit overwhelming at some point, but please read it carefully because the information here is really crucial for your book success.

You might see Amazon as a bookstore, but in fact, it operates as a search engine. When people are looking for books to buy on Amazon, they usually type in keywords to find them. For example, if they want to find a book about cooking, they enter in the Amazon search bar a keyword like “cooking books," or something more specific like “cooking books for kids." And books that have those keywords in their title, description, or keyword list will appear in the search results. Since your goal is to make sure your book appears in the relevant search results, you need to find the most profitable keywords for your book.

If you just publish your book without putting any thought into how it will rank on Amazon’s algorithm, you likely won’t see many sales.

So, how to find good keywords? 1. Use Incognito mode on your browser so that your previous search history doesn’t affect what Amazon shows you. If you aren’t familiar with Incognito mode, or how to do it, check out this article. 2. Select “Kindle Store” as the Amazon category, because you need relevant data about eBooks only.

3. Put yourself in the shoes of one of your readers and picture the kind of phrases he might enter into the search box when looking for your book. Start typing a word in the search box and see what auto-suggestions Amazon offers. For example, “social media a..,” “social media b...," “social media c...." And so on with every letter of the alphabet – till “z.” You will be surprised by how many keyword ideas you will get.

15

For example, if I start typing in a phrase like “social media a..," Amazon automatically suggests to me to finish the phrase like in the picture below.

You can make this process much faster by using Google Chrome Extension - AMZ Suggestion Expander. This free tool expands the number of search suggestions that are shown in the Amazon search bar. It also shows the keywords that Amazon would suggest before and after the ones you have entered. Thanks to this tool, you can quickly see what keywords people use when trying to find books about your topic on Amazon.

Each “keyword” can actually be made up of several separate words. For best results, use phrases that are 2-4 words long. Don’t use single words, because they are too generic and won’t work. Your readers are most likely not going to search for a single word on Amazon but rather a more specific phrase, so the search results are more relevant. Moreover, shorter phrases or single words also usually have a very high competition. The goal of this task is to have a list of 10-15 appropriate keywords so that you have options to choose from.

16

4. Go through the books that show up in the result for a particular keyword. Notice how many titles contain your exact keyword. The fewer the books, the easier it will be to rank for that keyword if you include it in your book title, subtitle, and book description. When you have published your book on Amazon, check out where it is placed on the search results page. The position at which your book is on the search results page is its search rank. For example, when a reader searches for "book cover design” (a keyword that’s included in my book description), my book shows up as the first in the list of results. This means that my book is ranked number 1 for the keyword “book cover design.” If your book is ranking at 50, you should consider changing the keywords to something less competitive. Otherwise, people will have to go through various other books before they come across yours, which will rarely happen. Ranking high for your chosen keywords is important because the first few books on the search results page get the most clicks and sales. Therefore, your goal should be to get your book to rank in the top 10 results for the keywords you are using. 5. Click on some of the books and scroll down to the “Product Details” section to find “Amazon Best Sellers Rank” or ABSR. It shows where each book ranks compared to other books within the entire Kindle store. The general rule is – the bigger the number, the less the sales this book is making. It also means if your sales increase, your ranking improves (i.e., moves closer to #1). If your sales decrease, your ranking worsens.

To put it in perspective, if the rank is #95,100, it means that there are currently 95,099 books that are selling better than this book. Although nobody (except Amazon) knows the exact numbers, the general estimates are that anything over #100,000 is selling less than one copy a day. But anything that is under #1000 is selling thousands of copies a day. Even if ABSR is 10,000-20,000, the sales are really great – about 10-20 books a day. Use this calculator to get more precise daily sales estimates. If there are more than 3 books under ABSR 10,000, your chosen keyword might be too competitive for you. But, if almost none of the books are under ABSR 30,000, there is not enough demand for the topic.

6. When you type in your keyword and click “search," note how many search results Amazon generates.

17

In general, it’s advisable to target markets with more than 2000 book search results. Why is this important? If there are less than 2000 results, it may be a sign that the topic is not in high demand. On the other hand, if there are very many search results, it may indicate that the market is saturated, or the topic is too broad. For example, “social media marketing" has over 10,000 related books, which means it’s a very competitive keyword, and it will be difficult for your book to rank for it.

It may feel like a good idea to choose a keyword that populates a small number of search results, for example, 100 books, because you would have a better chance of getting to number one. However, it doesn’t always work like this. Because if you look at the sales ranks of these books and find out that they are pretty bad (100,000 or more), it means they are not selling, either because few people search for that keyword or people who do search for it didn’t find what they were looking for and didn’t buy.

Ideally, you should find keywords that generate about 2000 of search results with the books that have good sales ranks – at least 30,000 or better. Because then, you would have a higher chance of appearing on the first pages of the search results for the particular keyword and get sales.

7. Use Keywords Everywhere browser extension as an additional tool that will help you evaluate the potential number of search results for a given keyword. Thanks to this tool, each time you search for a keyword on Amazon, you can immediately see the number of the estimated monthly search volume on Google. Although these data won’t reflect the precise search statistics on Amazon, it might help you choose the most popular among several keywords. See how it looks like in the picture below.

18

Unfortunately, Keywords Everywhere is not a free tool (10,000 keyword searches costs about $10). However, it can be very helpful during your keyword research phase. Once installed, Keywords Everywhere automatically starts showing search volume and competition data within its supported sites, like, Google, Amazon, YouTube, and others.

I know it might sound very complicated for a beginner, but the best way to understand how this process works is by SIMPLY DOING IT. Go to Amazon and follow the steps I gave you, and you will find a profitable topic for your book. However, if you want to go an easier and much faster way, use Publisher Rocket. This tool will do all the hard work for you in seconds. It will find bestselling book keywords, categories that are easy to rank for, and show competitors’ book sales estimates so that you can position your books better and get more sales. Although Publisher Rocket is not a free tool (you will need to make a one-time investment), it’s a huge time saver. And, if you are serious about building your passive income stream with Kindle book publishing, I highly suggest you have it, because it will pay off.

Watch this video on YouTube to see how both methods work – the manual way described above vs. Publisher Rocket so that you can choose what suits you better.

19

Choose the Best Categories You have finished your book and are satisfied with the result. Now it’s time to publish. Choosing the right categories for your book is one of the most important steps for getting listed at the highest-ranking spot in a specific category on Amazon and earning the bestseller tag. Moreover, if your book is placed in the wrong category, it’s not going to sell. So, how to find the best categories for your book? Type in your most relevant keyword into the Amazon search bar (make sure you are searching within the Kindle store section). Take a look at the search results and browse through the top ten relevant books, open their descriptions, and find the categories they are listed in. You will find this information right under the ABSR. Usually, there are 2-3 subcategories for each book. Category titles are hyperlinks, so you can click on any of them to research that specific category.

For example, if you click on the “Time Management” link, you will be taken to a page that lists all the top 100 paid books in that category. These are the books you will need to compete with to get the number one position and the bestseller tag for your book in this subcategory. Then click on the book that is taking the #1 spot in this category and scroll down to its “Product Details” section and check out its ABSR number. In this case, it is #1,571. That means this is a highly competitive market and it would be very difficult to 20

become a bestselling author in this category. Therefore, you need to continue searching and browsing through different categories that are related to your topic, until you find one that its #1 bestseller has an ASBR less than 20,000. Create a list of those categories that look perspective by noting the category name and the bestseller’s ABSR # in each category to see the dynamics and how easy/difficult it would be to move up to the top.(Remember to switch to Kindle Paid store in order not to get confused by data of free eBooks and printed books, because they have their own tops.) Try to find at least 7-10 categories that could work for you.

You’ll need to determine what ranking your book will have to achieve in order to: 1) make it to the number one spot 2) make it to the top ten in the category

For example: Spiritual Self-Help category: Top 1 - ABSR #99 Top 2 – ASBR #225 Top 3 – ASBR # 951 (a highly competitive category) Top 10 - ASBR #132,061 (however, very easy to get in the Top 10 books of the category)

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the book number 1 and number 10 in the category. So, if you get above the #132,061, your book will be in the top 10 books of the category. Why is the #10 spot so important? Because if your book is in the top ten of the category’s list, it will get more exposure, and Amazon may include it in the recommended list, most wish for, top-rated, and other lists. This is free marketing for you! If your book becomes #1 in the category, Amazon may promote it outside of the site, too – by sending emails to its customers and in advertisements. This is why it’s so important to choose the right categories for your book.

21

Now it’s time to select the best categories for your book. On the KDP setup page, Amazon allows you to choose two categories. You may want to choose those where it’s easiest to rank the highest but don’t, because a very small niche category might not receive a lot of reader traffic. There is no point in selecting an obscure category, thinking that since there aren’t many books in the category, it will quickly move to the top and get the bestseller label. While that may be true, this book won’t get many sales and will quickly lose its rankings. Why? Those categories are so uncompetitive because not many people browse them to find books. And if your book has a bestseller label next to it, but no one buys it, what's the point? Therefore, a better strategy is to choose one very competitive category and try to reach at least the number ten spot, and one that is a less competitive and enables you to hit the #1 Bestseller spot. This way, you have a chance to get the desired bestseller label in a smaller category, plus you get visibility in a more popular category. It’s also a good idea to have a few alternative categories for your book because during the launching process, you may realize that you should opt for a less competitive category while growing your sales. For example, let’s assume that the Astrology category requires around 70 sales a day to reach the number one spot. But the Numerology category - only seven sales a day. If your sales aren’t good enough at the moment to chart in Astrology, consider moving your book to the less competitive category of Numerology and use that crucial visibility to help build yourself up. And then, when things are great, you can switch back over to Astrology.

Select Your Categories in the Kindle Set-up Page To make things more difficult, the categories you see when browsing on Amazon are different from those you can choose from on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) dashboard when uploading your book. It’s because Amazon’s categories featured on their website are determined by BISAC Subject Codes, an industrystandard system for categorizing books, but the categories in the internal publishing system don’t always reflect the actual categories in the Kindle Store. Therefore, it may be very difficult to find the category you want, or your book can be listed in a different category from what you thought you had selected. In case you cannot find your chosen categories, you will need to contact Amazon for that. I’ll explain how to do that in the next pages. When you are uploading your book, Amazon requires you to select your book categories. You are allowed to select two main categories, but your book will be automatically featured in more categories. These 22

additional categories come from a few special promotional categories Amazon has and the fact that some categories are hidden under various “parent” categories.

23

Improve Your Reach with More Categories Although Amazon allows you to select only two categories, you can and should list in up to 10 categories. If you have already published a book and want to see all its categories, copy your ASIN from your book product page, go to Bklnk.com and enter your ASIN. You will see all the categories where your book is listed on Amazon. You can also enter the ASINs of your competitor books and make a list of all the categories each one is listed in. This tool can also help you find new related categories you didn’t even know existed. If you click on the small button “Catalize,” it will show other categories that are related to the ones listed for the books in that genre. It will take some time and manual work, but it will be worth it. If you use Publisher Rocket, you can find many suitable categories just by doing a few clicks. Only in a few seconds, it will show you your niche categories, ASBR ranks of the #1 books, how many books you need to sell to get to the #1 as well as ASBR ranks of the #10 books and the top-earning books in this category. All this information is exactly what you need to make well-considered decisions.

Whatever method you use, create a list of categories you want to place your book (up to 10). Then go to your Amazon Author Central page, click on the “help” button, then on “Contact Us” and fill this form.

24

Politely request Amazon to add your book to additional categories like in the example below “Hello! Could you please add my Kindle book "xxx" ASIN xxx to these additional categories? Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Education & Reference > Education Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Industries > E-commerce > Marketing Thank you in advance!” Remember to provide the full title of your book, its ASIN number, and the categories you want your book to be listed (copy the full string). If you use this multi-category strategy, you will have a huge advantage over most authors on Amazon because many of them don’t even know this option exists. No matter how well you select your categories, it might happen that after publishing your book, you’ll feel a need to change them. It might be because your sales have decreased and you want to move to a less 25

competitive category, or just the opposite – your sales are going up and you feel able to compete in a more visible category. Either way, it’s good to know that you can change your book’s categories any time you want. Simply go through the same process I described before any time you see that the categories you selected aren’t working for your book as well as they should. And make sure that your book is a good fit for the categories you select because the main goal is to reach the right audience.

26

Plan Out Your Non-fiction Book Series with This Workbook Do you feel like there are too many moving parts in finding your niche and successfully publishing your books on Amazon? You need to research keywords and categories, book rankings, the estimated number of monthly searches and earnings and consider many other small details even before you outline your first non-fiction book... There is so much information to consider! That's why I created the workbook "Plan Out Your Non-fiction Book Series". It will take you through the process of evaluating your niche, identifying potential readers, and estimating the profitability of your prospective book topics on Amazon. Once you complete these exercises, you will have a much clearer vision of your book publishing and marketing plan. Use this workbook to: •

define your niche

•

describe your reader avatars

•

find profitable book topics on Amazon

•

plan your book sequence

•

make a list of keywords and categories that will be the easiest to rank for

The engaging, in-depth exercises included in this companion workbook will help you get your hands dirty as you plan out your book sequence, research your niche, and find the best keywords and categories.

27

Completing a book manuscript requires commitment, research, creativity, and a lot of time. Make sure you spend this time on books that can earn sales. Get this workbook and plan your self-publishing strategy the way the best-selling authors do!

28

Should You Enroll in KDP Select? The next big decision you need to make is whether to enroll in the KDP Select program. So, what is it? When you choose to enroll your book in KDP Select, you're committing to making the digital format of that book available exclusively on Amazon. During the period of exclusivity (the minimum is 90 days), you are not allowed to distribute your book digitally anywhere else, for example, on your website, blogs, other online bookstores like Scribd, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and others. However, you can continue to distribute your book in paper format. Breaching exclusivity can result in royalties being withheld, permanent suspension from KDP Select, or even account termination. The reasons to enroll: •

Besides earning regular royalties from your book sales, you will earn additional royalties from every page read by Kindle Unlimited (KU) and Amazon Prime readers. They will be allowed to read your book for free, but you will get paid for every page they read. There are authors who earn significant income just from the KU program. Additionally, it will improve your ranking, because authors who are not enrolled in KU have to rely only on their sales to improve rankings, but if your book is in KU, every time someone reads it, it positively affects your ranking.

•

Once a quarter, you will be able to use two promotional tools: o

Kindle Countdown Deals - short discounted promotions available only if you have enrolled in KDP Select. It allows you to run one Kindle Countdown Deal promotion every 90 days for up to seven days. During the Countdown Deal, you can drop the price of your book by a dollar or more to the point where the purchase price drops to $0.99, and you can still earn a 70 % royalty. However, your book has to be in the Kindle store for 30 days (at the same price) before you are able to activate the “Kindle Countdown Deal.” This means you won’t be able to use this promo for your initial book launch.

o

Free Book Promotion - allows you to offer your book for free for up to 5 days to the entire Amazon customers, which can help you reach new audience and get more readers. Since this is a significant part of many book marketing strategies, I’ll cover this type of promotion in more detail in one of the next chapters.

But at the moment, the question remains – should you enroll in KDP Select? As you can imagine, the answer isn’t straightforward. The truth is it’s almost impossible to be certain what will work best for you 29

and your books. The promotional benefits Amazon offers are great, but the real question is: will you make more money publishing your book exclusively on Amazon or “going wide” and placing your book also on other online bookstores, for example, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc.? Before you make the decision, you need to understand that you should always strive for better sales ranks. It means – if you get a sale, your sales rank will go up, leading to more visibility for your book on the particular bookstore. But if the sales are spread among five or more platforms, your sales rank on each platform may be too low to get additional visibility and generate more sales. There is no point in publishing your book on ten platforms and having very low sales ranks on each of them. It’s better to publish on one huge platform and work on having great sales rank on it so that your book has better visibility that leads to more book sales. Plus, it’s easier to focus on just one platform rather than trying to manage several. Therefore, I recommend starting on KDP Select, especially if it’s your first book and you don’t have a big audience yet and are unsure how to promote your book. Wait until you’re established and have a huge email list interested in your books before trying to go wide. The reason not to enroll: A good reason not to enroll in KDP Select is if you want to make your book perma-free in the nearest 90 days and use it to promote other books in your series or build your email list. I’ll explain how this works in one of the next chapters. So, stay with me. There is a savvy strategy behind this. Anyway, if you are in doubt whether to enroll in KDP Select or not, the good news is that you can enroll in this program whenever you like, and you can leave it easily at the end of your 90-day term.

30

Write Your Book Content Strategically Now, when you have chosen your book topic, it’s time to start writing your book. Draft your book outline to create a daily schedule with the main chapters. Write one chapter at a time and only focus on that chapter. Don’t think about the long road ahead. Instead, just focus on what’s in front of you. It makes the entire writing process easier. There is no ideal length for an eBook. Someone once said no good book is ever too long, and no bad book is ever too short! That goes for eBooks as well as for print books. Still, how long should your book be?

The average nonfiction eBook, if such a thing exists, runs about 10,000 to 25,000 words, but this can vary depending on the category. You don’t have to write long books. In fact, it’s highly advisable to write several shorter books on the topic and create a series. Focus on one problem that your book can help your readers solve, for example, how to write poetry or how to form a non-profit corporation. This way, your readers won’t feel overwhelmed, and you will earn more. Many non-fiction readers prefer spending one to two days reading a book. These readers want to feel as if they’ve learned something new and have their “aha” and “wow” moments. Reaching the final page, they should feel like the book was worth both the money and the time spent.

Generally, each non-fiction book can be divided into three main parts: look inside sample, body text, and closing part. Let’s see how to use each part of your book to your benefit.

1. Amazon Look Inside Sample – Use It to Sell More Books When you are working on the structure of your book, remember that the first pages and chapters can make a great impact on your sales. These pages are your marketing tool. Many people will use Amazon’s “look inside” feature to flip through the pages and decide if this book is the right one. As a general rule, the Amazon “look inside” will show 5% of your eBook and about 10% of your print book.

Make sure that the preview offers good, tempting hints about the remaining 95% and hooks in your readers! The first impression you give is crucial because purchasing decisions are often made based on the strength of the first chapter. You need to give your readers a reason to keep reading and to click the

31

“Buy Now” button. This is why your book must impress, starting from the first paragraph. Just make sure it actually delivers what’s suggested. Otherwise, you risk getting some unpleasant reviews.

When you finally publish your manuscript, check out your “look Inside” section and make sure it ends in the best possible place on something intriguing. You can always rewrite it if you feel it’s necessary. Moreover, you can contact Amazon and ask them to end your “look Inside" sample any place you want.

How to do that? After publishing your book on Amazon, identify the point you want the “look inside" sample to stop (you can select up to 45% of your eBook and 80% of your paperback book). Then go to your KDP account and click on “Help"->“Contact Us"-> "Amazon Product Page"-> "Look Inside the Book" and send your request to Amazon. Don’t forget to include your book ASIN in your email.

Another way to improve your “Look Inside” conversion rate is by using intriguing book chapter titles that will appear in your table of contents. Your potential readers will definitely read them to decide if the book might be interesting for them. Don’t use boring and uninviting chapter titles. You should captivate your readers’ interest so that they feel intrigued and buy your book.

It’s advisable to use the “look inside” section also to attract those readers who won’t eventually buy your book. Inside the introductory chapter, you should link out to a freebie of some kind. It could be another book, a free audiobook, an online course, or anything else that might be valuable for your audience. Offer your freebie in exchange for your readers' email addresses so that you can start building your email list and your own audience.

Your freebie or lead magnet must be something exciting that tempts readers to fill out that form because people aren't usually willing to give their email addresses. Think about what information would be juicy enough for them to want to exchange emails with you. In order to create a good lead magnet, you must know your target audience very well. It needs to be a no brainer offer that they will absolutely want to download. Placing your freebie in the “look inside” section will help you get email addresses from those readers who didn’t eventually buy your book and from those who bought it. This is an example of my active lead magnet. Check it out!

32

Why do you need to spend your time creating a freebie and building your email list? Because someone might read your book and like it, but when the reading is finished, he moves on to another book and forgets about you. This is the reason why building your email list is so important. As soon as your readers give you their email addresses, you can start communicating with them directly and build a relationship. You don’t depend on Amazon or social media anymore. You can contact your readers whenever you want and inform them about your next book launches, new blog articles, and other products, if you have them. What’s more, you can start building your sales funnel.

So, how to technically build a freebie? The first thing that you'll need other than the freebie itself is a landing page. To build a landing page with a subscription form and automatic responder that delivers the freebie to your new subscriber, you will need to use an email marketing software. My own favorite is GetResponse because it has all the features to build good-looking landing pages with subscription forms, pop-ups for my webpage, sophisticated email automation sequence, and even simple lead generation and 33

sales funnels like the one below that shows you statistics for every step of your potential subscriber. Thanks to the illustration they provide, you can see the flow of your leads, starting from the number of visitors to the landing page to the number of subscribers that converted in the final step of your funnel.

That way, you can easily see the weakest points in your lead magnet funnel and improve them to increase the conversion rate. For example, if you see that you drastically lose your leads in the second or third step, you may decide to improve the texts or design of your landing page or emails. Or, do some A/B tests. Anyway, it’s good to see the whole picture to not rely on guesses. If you want to learn more about building lead funnels and email marketing automation, read my book “Email Marketing for Authors Made Simple: The 1 Page List Building Plan".

2. Use Body Text to Drive Traffic The main purpose of a good non-fiction book is to help people solve a particular problem. If you do thorough research, have valuable information, and an interesting point of view, you have all chances to write a great book.

34

In order to do that, make sure you research facts from reliable sources and books to obtain valuable information and then transform it into an easy-to-read and well-explained material. Speak with your reader as with a human being – your friend who has asked for advice. Don’t be too formal. Use short sentences and a simple language, because you want to create a rapport and build relationships with your reader.

Although your nonfiction eBook content should be mostly educational, that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t mention your other products or services when appropriate. Include information and hints that subtly encourage your readers to buy from you or at least visit your website or watch your YouTube video. Usually, eBooks are free or very cheap; therefore, it’s very difficult to earn significant money from them. However, they work as a great marketing tool for driving traffic to your other resources and your more expensive and higher-value products.

When you are working on outlining your book, make a list of resources that you want to include in the book, for example, •

your blog articles to generate traffic to your website

•

lead magnets or freebies that will help you build your email list

•

your other books or online courses

•

your YouTube videos

•

your partner or affiliate resources

While writing your book, insert these links to direct your readers to specific promotional or educational web pages and videos. However, don’t overuse this tactic. Mention your other products, blog articles, YouTube videos, or other services only when they naturally fit into the context.

If you write about cooking, the resources also should be about cooking. Don’t stuff your book with irrelevant links. It will annoy your readers. However, if the additional resources add value, your reader will appreciate having them.

For example, in my book “Book Cover Design Formula,” I mention my other book: “100+ Free Tools to Create Content for Social Media” because it adds information about free resources everybody can use when creating their visuals. This is valuable information that is in line with the main topic. 35

You see, the idea here is that your book must not only give highly valuable information and many “aha” moments to your readers. It should also work as your promotional tool that helps you generate traffic to your website or YouTube videos, build your email list, and increase the sales of your other books, online courses, or services, if you have them. In order to make the most of your book, you need to plan its content strategically and make your book a part of your sales funnel that helps promote your other products.

3. Write Effective Closing Part The last chapter of your book is your chance to address those readers who have made it to the end and invite them to become your follower, your fan, or even your loyal customer.

These are 5 tactics you can use: 1. Include a list of paid or free resources you can offer to your readers. If you have other books published, include their titles with short descriptions and link to the Amazon product page. And each time you launch a new book, remember to update this information – in every book you have published. 2. If you have a YouTube channel or other social media profiles, invite your readers to follow you. This is your chance to communicate with your audience outside Amazon. 3. Ask your readers to follow your Amazon author page (You will need to set up one) so that Amazon will automatically send them e-mails every time you publish a new book. Free marketing for you! 4. Ask your readers to leave a review for your book (with a clickable link). This will be one of your most effective review tactics – so, use it! This is how you can create one. Publish your book to get its ASIN code (ISBN -10 for the printed book, or the ASIN for the Audiobook). Then take the following link, and add your ASIN number after “=": http://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin= Here is an example of a review link for this book. If you click on it, you will get straight to its review form. However, the above link is only for the US market. If you want a different market, you need to change the “.com” to the appropriate one like “.de” for Germany, or “.co.uk” for the UK, and so on. 5. Remind your readers about the freebie you offered in the beginning of your book. If your reader has made it to the end of your book, most probably, he enjoyed its content. Therefore, this is a good time to remind about your freebie and invite him to subscribe to your email list. Present your offer as a free gift or ‘thank you’ for reading the entire book. That way, you will have a list

36

with your target audience when you are ready to launch your next book. I explain all the right steps of launching a book in the 3rd book of these series “Book Launch Formula: 3 Proven Strategies to Launch Your Non-Fiction Book on Amazon”.

37

Write Book Description That Sells Good book description is one more important puzzle piece that can help you sell more books. You need to optimize it for both: Amazon algorithm and readers. In short: 1. Your book description must include your main keywords so that the Amazon algorithm shows it in the relevant search results. 2. Your book description must arouse readers’ curiosity so that they want to buy it. Let’s discuss both factors deeper.

Attract Readers The Amazon book description is one of the most important sales factors (along with the cover, the reviews, and the "look-inside" section). Although it’s called a book description, you don’t need to describe your book here. You only need to emphasize your selling points and explain what makes your book the best choice on the topic. Think of your book description as a pitch. You want to arouse the interest of your readers by giving them a taste of what your book has to offer. When you start writing your book description, the first thing you need to consider is the structure. Usually, it looks like this: 1. Title or the first few lines of your book description that Amazon displays. They are very important because their goal is to define your target audience and arouse their curiosity to read more.

38

2. Hold your readers’ attention by explaining that the problem they face is negatively affecting their lives, and they need to find a solution. The key is to use simple and personal language so that it sounds like you’re speaking only to the reader and no one else. 3. Show your readers exactly how your book can help solve their problems. Here you will talk about the content of your book, how it will help your readers achieve their goals and all the related benefits. Paint a fast picture of what they might get out of your book. Use bullet points to create a clear structure. The goal of this part is to create a desire to buy your book. Work hard to make the copy readable, natural, and convincing from a pure sales standpoint.

Bullet points are easy and quick to read because they’re scannable, so your readers are going to look at this area with priority. Make some text in bold or italics, so it stands out. Since the Amazon setup page doesn’t offer formatting options, you can do this with a free book description generator. Simply paste your text in a box, do your formatting, and then press “generate my code.” Then take that copy and paste it into the Amazon KDP setup page. You will get a beautifully formatted book description. 4. The next step is to persuade your readers to take immediate action and buy your book. If someone has made it to the end of your description, it means you've got their interest. All you have to do now is explain why your book is the one they should buy and read.

39

Here you can also mention reviews, awards, and brands or celebrities involved and talk about yourself – who you are and what’s your expertise in this field. Remember that the goal of your book description is not to summarize your book. The goal is to SELL your book!

Get Found by Amazon Remember those keywords that you found previously? Now it’s time to use them in your book description. Use the keywords in a natural way, considering the context. The goal is to help your book show up in the results when people type these keywords into Amazon’s search engine. Adding them to your book description will increase the chances for potential readers to come across your book when they search for the specific keyword on Amazon.

However, don’t overuse your keywords and don’t add them in your book description if it feels like they are forced into the sentence. They must fit in naturally and be relevant. Keyword-stuffing can be heavily penalized by Amazon, but as long as your title and book description remain relevant and natural to read, everything should be OK.

Additionally, it’s very advisable to include your main keywords in your book title, subtitle, and description to make it appear in more relevant search results. For example, the main keyword for my book “Book Cover Design Formula” is “book cover design”; therefore, I have included it in my book title, in its keyword list on the KDP setup page and in its description. And every time somebody searches for this keyword on Amazon, my book appears at the top of the search results, which lead to more sales for my book.

Therefore, don’t skip this step. It is very important!

40

Polish With Editing & Proofreading Let’s assume you have finished writing and formatting your book. That’s a great achievement; however, it is only one of many important steps. The next step is to do an in-depth edit. Editing your book allows you to examine how your ideas connect with each other in terms of structure and content. Maybe you need to rearrange the content so that similar ideas are presented in the same paragraph, chapter, or subchapter. Putting your draft aside for a few days can help you look at your work with fresh eyes when you decide to review it. Take the time to rewrite or revise any part of your book that you're unsatisfied with or that you think could be written better. Use online grammar checking software like Grammarly. It will point out your mistakes as you are writing, suggest synonyms that will improve your writing style and readability. You can use either their online tool or download a free plugin for Word and get suggestions from Grammarly directly in your text document. Make use of good formatting - like bulleted lists, bold text, italics, and font size changes for chapter titles. This will help draw the reader’s eyes to your most important content and emphasize certain points you want readers to remember. Check out this official guide on Kindle book formatting for more information. Your book should be easy to read. Therefore, don’t use long sentences and paragraphs, because you want your readers to make it to the end and leave a good review. So, don’t confuse them with a cluttered text. This one extra consideration can help your book earn more positive reviews. When you have finished editing your book and are satisfied with the result, move to proofreading. I know you think you caught every typo and grammar mistake in your manuscript, but I promise, you didn’t. It’s difficult to notice your own mistakes. Good spelling, grammar, and punctuation are extremely important to make your book look professional. Therefore, the best thing you can do is to outsource to somebody who will do that for you. Though many computers and word processors offer spell-checkers, they cannot catch tricky and commonly misused words. Proofreading will cost you a bit of money, but it‘s worth it. You can find proofreaders on sites like fiverr.com, freelancer.com, upwork.com, and others. Browse through the offers and choose the service according to your budget. Prices vary from a few tens of dollars to hundreds. It depends on the number of words your book has and the experience level of the proof-reader. It also depends on the quality you get. 41

You may also want to involve your friends and family members. Ask each one to let you know any mistakes they find in your book, and then make the corrections. If you have a launch team (a group of people that have agreed to read your book manuscript prior to official publication and support you during your book launch), do what I do and ask anyone who is willing to read your book in exchange for an honest review. Most probably, they will find some more typos and email them to you. If you don’t know how to build your book launch team, check out my book “Book Launch Formula: 3 Proven Strategies to Launch Your Non-Fiction Book on Amazon. " You will learn how to recruit your launch team even if you don't have an email list or huge following yet. Even when your draft was edited and proofread, I still recommend you carefully check it with fresh eyes again. The chances are that you will find a few more mistakes.

42

Use a Book Title That Attracts Readers The title you choose for your nonfiction book can make a huge impact on your sales. A good book title will establish an instant rapport with your readers because they will clearly understand why they should buy it and how they will benefit from your book. It’s very important because a general assumption is that you have only about 3 seconds to grab a person’s interest while they are browsing on Amazon.

Titles of Kindle books usually consist of two parts -the main book title and a sub-title: -

The main title is typically short—just two to five words. The reason – the fewer the words, the easier they are to remember, and the larger the type size they can be set in when creating your book cover, for example, “Book Cover Design Formula.”

-

The subtitle can be much longer and include phrases and keywords that your potential readers would use to find your book on Amazon. It has both – descriptive and searchability function, for example, “Create Book Covers That Captivate Readers: Complete DIY Book Cover Design Guide for Self-published and Indie Authors.”

Here are 5 time-tested techniques you can use to craft the right title for your non-fiction book: 1. Choose a title that promises your readers to solve a problem or help achieve a desired goal. Nonfiction readers buy books for a purpose. Usually, they are looking for specific information that will help improve their skills or solve problems. Consider this when creating your book title.

Compare the following two titles: -

The Visual Design Principles for Advertisers & Marketers

-

Improve Your Marketing Results with Visuals That Sell

The first title simply tells what the book is all about. The second title emphasizes the benefits that readers will enjoy. Which do you think is better?

2. Identify your target audience in your book’s title by naming it or describing its characteristics. The more obvious you are, the better. Here are some ideas:

-

Clearly name your target audience - “Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook.” 43

-

Describe the problem your readers are experiencing - “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”

3. Use numbers to add credibility to your title, since people associate numbers with facts. Moreover, numbers attract attention as they’re differently shaped from letters. This is why they stand out. For example: -

Use numbers to structure your information – “100+ Free Tools to Create Visuals for Web & Social Media.”

-

Numbers can make big goals appear easier to achieve, like “10 Steps to Self-Esteem - The Ultimate Guide to Stop Self-Criticism.”

-

Numbers emphasize how quickly readers can achieve their goals, like “You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less.”

Mix two of the rules and get a double effect, for example, “10 Steps to Self Esteem in 10 Days”.

4. Use unexpected words, contradictory terms, and metaphors to engage your reader’s curiosity. An excellent example is the book “Juggling Elephants: An Easier Way to Get Your Most Important Things Done Now" by Jones Loflin. The contradiction between “juggling” and “elephants” evokes curiosity and encourages people to read the subtitle.

5. Place your main keywords in your title and subtitle to adapt them for the Amazon search engine. Readers usually search books by phrases and keywords related to the topic. Therefore, you should put the most relevant keywords for your book in its title or subtitle to make sure your readers can easily find it when they search on Amazon. For example, “Book Cover Design Formula: Complete DIY Book Cover Design Guide for Self-published and Indie Authors.” In this case, the main keyword is “book cover design."

However, don’t overuse keywords just for better ranking. If you stuff your title with keywords that don’t sound naturally and look spammy, your audience won’t trust the title and won’t buy. Remember that your primary goal is to speak with humans, not algorithms. If you have a huge following and great book launch campaign, you can also use an emotional book title that doesn’t mention the main keywords, for example, “Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday. You see – no apparent keywords. That’s because the author can afford to ignore them, thanks to great and most probably, 44

expensive marketing promotions. But if you don’t have a marketing team and a huge budget behind you, it’s advisable to make use of keywords and Amazon algorithms.

When it comes to finding the right title, you need to get inspiration from different resources and brainstorm a lot. Scroll through books on Amazon, including books outside your genre, and write down your ideas, along with words that you would like to highlight. Expect the process to take some time. Feel free to generate many title ideas and don’t stick to one until the last minute before publication. And even then, you can still change it.

In conclusion of this chapter, let me tell you a story. In the 1920s, mail order guru Haldeman-Julius sold more than 200 million of books in nearly 2,000 different titles. They were simple little books that cost just 5 cents each. They covered a wide range of topics - from Shakespeare to the Debate on Birth Control. Many of them were also self-help or "How To" books. What’s more, Haldeman-Julius also conducted an intensive marketing experiment. To advertise his books, he placed large ads on the biggest USA newspapers consisting of only the books’ titles. All the titles were listed on the order form, and prospects could select the ones they wanted to buy. Since there was no description or selling copy, customers chose the books relying only on their titles.

Therefore, the key factor for the success of any book was its title. Haldeman-Julius had a policy that if a title didn't sell over 10,000 copies a year, it was revised to a more attractive one. Nothing else was changed except the book title. The results were astonishing. Just by changing the title alone, sales of the same book, in some cases, increased even by up to 1000%. The moral of this story is that sometimes all you need for success is to change the book title.

45

Create a Book Cover That Stands-Out You know how hard it is to write a book. You have spent weeks, months, and maybe even years writing something you truly care about. If you have a day job, then you had to spend your free time. Early mornings, late evenings, nights, and weekends were devoted. Maybe you even had to steal your precious family time to keep writing.

Don’t let all this hard work go down the drain by using a poorly designed book cover because it can be one of the most powerful tools for selling your book! Book covers serve only one purpose: to get the reader to read its description. Because chances are, if they find its description compelling, they will buy your book. This is how your book cover can help you make more sales.

Think about how we buy books. Usually, we choose to buy a book because of one of these reasons: it is recommended by somebody we trust, it is released by one of our favorite authors, or it caught our eye as we were browsing a bookstore or Amazon. Oh, and sometimes a great discount or a free promo helps us to take the decision, too. Take a look at the results of this interesting survey to see the most common reasons we buy books. You will see that appealing book cover is one of the most important factors that influence readers to buy a book. Of course, the cover alone cannot make your book a bestseller. However, it’s the marketing element that can significantly help you on the way.

So, you have written a book and need a book cover. The question is, where to get one? You can hire a designer. But it's very expensive. It can cost you hundreds of dollars. Maybe you can buy a book cover design gig for $5 on Fiverr, but the risk is you will get a poorly designed one. Not everybody who present themselves as designers are actually professional designers. A bad-looking book cover can cost you even more in the long term because of the lost sales.

Most probably, while browsing a display of books on Amazon, you have noticed that some of the book covers pop-out while others don’t. The design of these book covers somehow grabs your attention and spurs your interest. Most likely, it is because they have strong and effective focal points.

In simple words, the focal point is an eye-catching part that stands out from the rest of the book cover design elements. Its purpose is to capture and hold the viewer’s attention. Effective focal points are one 46

of the key factors that define a great book cover design. If your book cover doesn’t have a focal point, it can virtually go unnoticed.

Use these 7 simple techniques to create a book cover design that gets noticed:

1. Make contrast. Use contrast to create a focal point. Contrast is the most powerful design principle that is used for creating focal points and drawing readers’ attention. Moreover, it creates a hierarchy and attracts the reader’s eye to start communication. This is why the most important element of your book cover should be the most emphasized. The second most important element should be less emphasized, and so on. Since contrast helps organize information, your reader will know where to look first, second, third, and last. That will help you create the visual hierarchy and lead your reader’s eye to the direction you want. For example, the main title of the book below is the “Effective Logo Design,” which has been emphasized the most.

2. Go extremely big. Make one element on your cover extremely big. It can be either an image or text. This is a simple technique that can give a very professional result.

47

3. Use Faces and Silhouettes. We are social beings that are genetically programmed to be drawn to living beings. Therefore, images of eyes and faces (humans or animals) are much more likely to grab our attention. Moreover, facial expressions communicate emotions and feelings very well, which help set the mood of your book and trigger associations and fantasies of your reader. Since we unconsciously tend to make eye contact with other humans, we try to do that even when we see faces and eyes in a picture. Therefore, eyes and faces (human or animal) are some of the strongest focal points on book covers. Use them to your benefit. Look at the example below. Most likely, your eyes are unconsciously trying to meet the eyes of the person on the cover.

48

4. Direct the Gaze. According to studies such as Eye Gaze Cannot be Ignored, human beings have a natural tendency to follow the gaze of others. Moreover, we have been trained since birth to follow arrows directing us to where we should be looking or going. In marketing visuals, it is a commonly used technique to lead the viewer’s eye to specific information or an element. You can lead your audience’s eye with the help of arrows, triangles, illustrations, or photography. If you use a face image, make sure the person is looking at your book title. Double the effect by using a gaze and a pointing finger.

5. Use symbols. Try to find a symbolic way of showing what your book is about. Utilize a symbol that anyone would understand at first sight. Use it as your book’s cover focal point. If many other 49

books have used this symbol already, present it in a different way. Symbols will help you avoid being too literal and expositional with your design. Moreover, you will be able to represent a larger idea or concept. To grab the attention of non-fiction audience, combine symbols that are not usually used together and are unexpected. Take a look at the example below. By combining two symbols that are not usually used together, you can make your cover tell a story and pique interest.

6. Utilize white space. White space is very important in creating contrasts and focal points. Covers that have a lot of white space with a color/gradient background and a single image or symbol that illustrates a concept works well both: for fiction and non-fiction covers. Simple and minimalistic covers are more legible, which is important for small thumbnail sizes in online stores. White space is just a term. Actually, it can be any color – red, yellow, black, or whatever color or background texture you use in your design. In the example below, the white space is actually yellow. Its main purpose is to reduce noise and clutter so that the focal elements of the design can be easily recognized and perceived. Using white space creatively, you can incorporate multiple meanings into your book cover design, like in the example below.

50

7. Use expressive typography and formatting. Typography is one of the most important elements of your book cover design. A book cover usually has very few words on it. However, those words (title, subtitle, teaser, author’s name) have a huge influence on your audience. The fonts you have chosen for your book cover can either improve its design or make it fail. Correctly selected fonts and formatting will communicate the genre of your book and arouse relevant emotions like joy, lust, fear, anger, or romantic feelings. It is important for attracting your audience’s attention.

51

On the other hand, inappropriate fonts and their formatting will confuse your readers and convey unprofessionalism. Nowadays, there is a huge variety of fonts you can choose from. The good news is that you can add new fonts to your computer free of charge. Check out this list of websites that offer free fonts. You can easily download them by following this tutorial.

One of the simplest ways to create a good quality cover design for a nonfiction book is by using bright colors, well-aligned and formatted texts, and an appropriate image that illustrates the concept. The image should catch the audience’s attention and convey the topic immediately. Moreover, the chosen picture and design must immediately communicate, if the book is about traveling, marketing, technologies, politics, or recipes. When you are looking for an image for your book cover, try to find one that fits your genre and set the mood of the book. Do not use cheap clip art on your book cover. I’m talking about the clip arts that come free with Microsoft Word and similar programs. However, it doesn’t mean that you always need to pay for images. Check out this list of more than 49 free stock images websites. There are thousands of images that are under creative commons (CC0) and can be used even for commercial purpose without paying a dime.

My opinion is, if you are a self-publishing author and are starting out on a low budget, a homemade, DIY book cover is a practical solution. Unless you make an appalling one, it won’t hurt your sales. If you are interested in this topic, read my book “Book Cover Design Formula" and learn how to create professionallooking covers for your books.

By the way, I made all my book covers by myself, and I’m not a professional designer. Moreover, I made them with free online tools. If I can do that, you can do it, too!

52

Launch Your Book to Become a Bestseller

The best time to become a bestselling author is during your book launch period. However, it’s possible at any time of your book life cycle. The book launch period (especially the first 30 days after your release date) is the time when it’s easiest to create a marketing buzz because Amazon gives additional support and exposure to new books. Therefore, you need to promote your book as much as possible to generate sales, attract new readers, and prove to Amazon that your book is worth promoting. Your goal is to plan on getting a consistently high number of sales on each day of the launch period of your book. When Amazon’s algorithm sees a pattern that is consistent or trending upwards, it will start selling your book for you via on-site recommendations and emails to your target audience. This is the-dream-cometrue of every author. If you are a self-published author, you usually don’t have a big marketing team who can support you and implement many activities at once. Therefore, you need to be very selective on what tactics to use and work only on those who have the highest potential to be effective. My book launching strategy adheres to the “80/20 rule”. It means I focus on the tactics that get the best results and ignore everything else because nobody can be everywhere and do everything simultaneously. You must be selective and spend your time doing the things that have the highest potential to bring results rather than spread yourself on too many activities just because you think they should be done. In short, these are the 3 main steps you need to implement for a successful book launch: 1. You focus on building your launch team. 2. You launch your book on Amazon and do a free promotion for 5 days. 3. You do additional promotions when the book is back to its regular price. Do you want to know what strategies bestselling authors use to launch their books? Then you should read my book “Book Launch Formula: 3 Proven Strategies to Launch Your Non-Fiction Book on Amazon.” It’s the third book in my book series “Sell Books on Amazon." Since the launching topic is so broad, I have devoted a separate book for it.

53

The tactics I’m explaining in this additional book are used by many successful authors, including myself and, as you can see in the picture below, have led me to getting #1 Bestselling spots in different Amazon categories.

54

5 Strategies to Build passive Income Streams from Your Non-Fiction eBooks In order to build a recurring passive income from your self-published books, you need to think strategically. Don’t just press the “publish” button and wait for a miracle. You need to have a clear goal of what you aim to achieve and what steps you are going to take to do that. It won’t work as a get rich quick scheme. You will need to create a lot of content and write many books to succeed.

In the next chapters, I’m going to show you 5 different paths you can take to build your self-publishing business. Use them as your road map. You can implement either one of the strategies or use all of them simultaneously and build a very powerful sales funnel. Either way, it's good to know that these strategies exist even if you are not ready to implement them now. You can always return to them later.

55

Perma-free Strategy Although, it might sound contradictory, making one of your books permanently free can be a savvy strategical move because it can significantly help you build your audience. I would even say that having a “perma-free” book on Amazon is the equivalent of guest blogging on steroids. Let me explain. You don’t need a permission, and there are no special editorial criteria that must be met to publish your books on Amazon. Therefore, you can freely publish whatever content you want and steadily build your audience. Of course, the content must be VALUABLE for a specific target audience like we discussed in the first chapters of this book. Or else it won’t work. However, as long as you don’t violate laws or copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights, you can publish your books as often you want and are capable. Moreover, Amazon website gets more than two billion visits every month. It means a potential of thousands of new readers who might want to download your book and enjoy your ideas. I doubt you know many websites in your niche that could provide you similar “guest blogging" benefits. This is the reason why writing a great book and then giving it away for free on Amazon may actually be a smart idea. Amazon gives you a great opportunity to build audience that loves your work and shares the same values as you do.

There are three main ways you can use your perma-free books to build your audience:

1. Drive sales for your other books If you have authored many books, you can use your perma-free book to naturally promote them. It works best for a book series. Make the first book perma-free to lead its readers to the subsequent books. They will more likely be interested in buying your other books after downloading one of them for free. Remember to subtly mention your other books when you are speaking about related issues and use the back matter of your book to direct readers to their pages on Amazon. There is a general assumption that free books get about ten times more downloads than priced books. Hence, they can significantly increase your book exposure and sales.

56

2. Get more reviews The more downloads your free book gets, the more readers it will have and that in turn will result in more reviews. As you already know, reviews can play a significant role in your book sales because they provide the social proof or trigger that your readers may need to click that “buy now" button. Making your book perma-free may help you earn a bunch of new reviews.

3. Build your email list Like a good guest post, your free book can lead people to opt-in for your freebie. Therefore, use your book to offer a great lead magnet that will give additional benefit to your readers. This is your opportunity to build your email list free of charge without any ad expenses. Yes, it is additional work. You will need to create one more valuable piece of content, build a landing page with a subscription form, and write an automated email sequence for building relationships with your readers. Still, I would say it’s a must if you want to build your audience and earn from your self-published books in the long term. So, by now, you may have a question... how to make your book perma-free on Amazon? You won’t find such an option in your KDP setup page. The lowest price Amazon accepts is $0.99. You cannot directly set the price of your book to free, or $0.00. The only way to make your book perma-free on Amazon is to first list it somewhere else as free and then request that Amazon price match to the free copy on the other site. These are the steps you must take to make your book perma-free on Amazon: 1. When you are publishing your book on Amazon, make its price $0.99 and DON’T enroll in KDP Select. 2. Sign up for a service like Smashwords or Draft2Digital. These platforms will let you publish your book on many other book retailers like Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Kobo, and others. 3. You may want to customize your book manuscript to remove Amazon links, because some of the competing online bookstores (for example, Apple) do not want to promote Amazon and will reject your book. However, other sites like Kobo, Scribd, and Barnes & Noble may allow them. Then publish your book with the price $0.00.

57

4. Once your book is listed for free on Barnes and Noble or Apple’s iBooks, login to your KDP dashboard and send a note to KDP Support. In your KDP Account, select “Help” and “Contact Us.” Then under the “Pricing” section, select “Price Matching” and tell Amazon that your book is available for free on these other bookstores. Provide them with the links to the retailers where your book is free and kindly request that they match that price of $0 on Amazon, as well. 5. Wait for a response from Amazon. Usually, it takes 24 – 48 hours for the book to be made permafree. If after some time you want to price your book again, you can easily do that. Simply go to your KDP dashboard and increase your book price to whatever number you want.

58

Book Series Strategy There’s a saying in the publishing industry that goes, “Nothing sells book one, like book two. Nothing sells book two, like book three…” The more books you publish within short time intervals, the more Amazon tends to promote them. Moreover, it’s a good idea to publish books in a series of 3-5 or even more books. This way, you will build your readership in the same market. If you have multiple book titles in one series, you get more covers, more categories, more opportunities to show up in search results, more KDP free promotion days, and more days of free fresh release promoted by Amazon. It’s important to stick to one niche because publishing books in very different niches; for example, a cookbook and a book on marketing will mean you need to double your marketing efforts in two absolutely different markets. Unless you already have established audiences in both niches, the chances of success are very low. In general, you need to publish at least three books in a particular niche to start earning a significant income from royalties. Therefore, before you decide on the topic of your first book, make sure you will be able to write at least two more books for the same target market. Your first book will give you a starting point that you can develop in your subsequent books. The goal of your first book is to hook your readers. So, make it exceptional. Don’t include all your content into the first book. Save some of it for your next books. However, remember that EACH book in your series must give value. Make it clear to readers that the book is a part of a series. Mention your other books and include links to them. Continue the same strategy with all other upcoming books, and you will extend their natural life cycle on Amazon. Moreover, the rank of all your books will rise, and they will stay prominent longer. Additionally, a book series shows your audience that you’re a serious author that can deliver valuable content with each book release. So, how often to publish your books? Generally, if you can do it at least once in 30-90 days, it would be great. But could you have enough patience to wait till you’ve written two more books before you publish the first one? If you’re writing a series, holding back till you’ve got the first three books ready to launch could result in a strong marketing strategy. I’ll explain. When a book is new on Amazon, it gets promotions and sales boost during the launch period. However, after some time, it starts slipping down the rankings. The lower the ranking, the fewer the people who will see the book and possibly buy it. 59

If you follow this strategy, schedule all your book launches 3-4 weeks apart. The goal is to publish the next book, so it hits before the first one drops in the rankings. Once a new book is published, make sure it has in-content references to your other books. Continue with all the next books in this same manner. Each book in your series should link to the entire series, so when a reader opens a description of one of your books, they will see all of them like in the example below. This is a distraction-free page that shows only your books. That makes it a great landing page to link to from your website or social media because you won’t promote other authors’ books.

Additionally, by creating a book series, you will be able to sell all the books in your series in a bundle. It means if somebody is so interested in your topic that he wants to buy all of them, he will be able to do it instantly with just 1 click. It’s a win-win because the reader will get all your books with a small discount, but you will have more book sales and better rankings. For example, I have written two book series. Their bundles look like this.

60

Having multiple books also allows you to play with their pricing and promotions. You can deeply discount one of them or even make it perma-free to get more eyeballs on your other titles. Or, you can increase your book prices gradually. Make the first book in the series $ 0.99, the next book – $ 1.99, and the third one – $ 2.99. The best part of this strategy is that each time you promote one of the books in the series, the sales of your other books will also increase. Creating a book series is also great for your branding. But you must do that in a correct way. The moment people look at your books, you want them to know that they are part of a series. It can be a common element, for example, a bar across the top of your book cover, similar background colors, cover layout, fonts, and design style. If people can easily recognize your books just by looking at their covers, they will more likely notice them while browsing on Amazon and eventually buy them. Moreover, by creating similar covers for your books, you will cut down the time spent creating their design because you won’t need to invent new design concepts or layouts. You will just need to adapt the existing one by changing the titles and maybe a few more small elements. So, how to technically create a book series? I won’t rewrite Amazon guidelines because you can read them here. The main idea is that when you have published at least two books in your series, contact Amazon support and ask to link them in their system. It usually takes about 24-48 hours.

61

Email List Swap Strategy If you’re serious about building your author platform and becoming a bestselling author, you need an email list. There are many different ways to build a list, but the single fastest way to do it is by using the lists other people have already built. That’s the essence of the Email List Swap strategy. The way this generally works is that your partners will mail their list and encourage their readers to visit your landing page where they will have to join your list before they get your freebie. This is how you can quickly increase your reach, generate traffic to your landing page, and grow your email list. Of course, the success of this strategy is completely dependent on your niche, who your partners are, and the size of their list, but it’s possible to add hundreds or even thousands of people to your list in just a few days, using this strategy. However, what to do if you don’t have partners yet that could agree to promote your freebie to their list? Luckily, there is an easy solution, thanks to platforms like BookFunnel.com, BookClicker.com, MyBookCave.com, StoryOriginapp.com, and ProlificWorks.com. All these sites provide a feature that allows authors to promote each other's free books or just their samples to their email lists. So, how does it work? Simply sign up on any of these sites and add a book or books that you’d like to give away for free to readers in exchange for their email addresses. Then join group promos where authors in a similar genre as yours gather and promote each other's free books to their lists. In general, it works like this. Let's say 10 authors join a non-fiction promo group. They add their free books that are automatically placed on a good--looking landing page like the one below. When other authors send emails linking to this page to their email list, they promote your book and help you grow your email list.

62

When the promo starts, everybody invites their list to check out these freebies on the landing page. That's a win-win strategy because thanks to the joint email campaign, all the promo participants can grow their email list. You can use this strategy to grow your email list and to get new readers for your book series. For example, giving away the first book for free on a promo like this is a great way of getting readers hooked and making them want to buy the entire series. However, a serious mistake many authors make when using this strategy is that they simply collect these email addresses and forget about them. They don’t regularly communicate with their new subscribers. Instead, they assume that these people will remember them even if they send an occasional email in a month or even a year. That’s a completely wrong assumption. If you want to build your email list, you must implement an automated welcome email sequence and communicate with your audience at least a few times a week. Otherwise, there is no point in even starting. Use email marketing software like GetResponse or any other to build sophisticated email automation sequences and even simple lead generation and sales funnels I cover this topic in more detail in my book “Email Marketing for Authors Made Simple: The 1 Page List Building Plan." 63

64

Value Ladder Strategy Usually, when we begin self-publishing, we start off with just one idea – one product that we hope will turn out to be a million-dollar idea. However, in most cases, it’s not really just one product that you need to create to scale your online business to significant sales numbers. If you’ve never heard the term ‘value ladder’ before, it’s an effective way for you to maximize the lifetime value of each customer. I’ll explain. Think about how people buy non-fiction books on Amazon. They buy a book that they hope will help them solve a particular problem or at least provide useful information. Usually, they pay between $ 0.99 - $2.99 for a book, which results in 35-70% in royalties for the author. If you cannot offer additional books or other products, that’s all you can earn from a single reader because they cannot buy the same eBook twice. It means that the lifetime value of one reader is very low, and you need to write many books in order to earn a few more bucks from the same reader, even if the reader is very loyal to you. Or, you need to attract more and more new readers that will also have a low lifetime value. It’s not a very effective business model. Therefore, if you want to scale your business, you should create additional higher-value products that will help you build relationships with your readers and serve them as they grow with you. Moreover, it's much easier to sell something to an existing customer than to a new prospect. If somebody buys your book and receives value from it, he will naturally want more. Most probably, this reader will want to ascend your Value Ladder and see if there are other ways you can provide value. So, if you don’t use your books to cross-sell and upsell other products, you're just leaving money on the table. The ladder, as you can see in the example below, actually is a great metaphor because it helps visualize how we’re going to create offers that will increase in price and value and naturally lead from one to the next.

65

Here is an example of a value ladder to give you some inspiration. •

At the first step of the ladder, you offer free content that your website visitors can download in exchange for their email address. It’s called a freebie or a lead magnet. The freebie must be irresistible. This is usually something that a prospect would normally have to pay for. This increases your authority and builds trust in you.

•

The next offer is called a tripwire. It's a small offer (usually between $5-$10) sold to new email subscribers after they opt in. Its main purpose is to start the buyer/seller relationship. The small price helps those potential customers overcome the fear of buying from you and help you gain their trust. It can be a book or a short video tutorial on your subject that gives additional value. Something that you can automatically deliver by using email software like GetResponse or similar. It helps you earn some money and establish yourself as the go-to expert.

•

The third step of a value ladder is the core offer. It can be a complete online training course, membership, or one-on-one coaching session. Usually, it’s priced $97. Your core offer is the main product or service you are selling. Focus your core offer on a specific outcome or “quick win” you can give your clients.

•

The next step can be a much more expensive premium level product, for example, masterminds or “done for you” service. This must be a product that offers deep, life-changing transformation. It’s usually priced $299 or more. 66

As you can see, you start by offering something of value for free and then increase the price and value with your subsequent offers. Your job is to earn your customer trust and build your authority in the field to sell them more valuable products. The only limit to your value offerings is your imagination. Keep providing higher and higher levels of service that you can charge for more and more money. There’s always something else you can offer. At this point, you’re probably trying to figure out how the Value Ladder applies to your topic. Could you map it out based on the level of value? Can you see gaps where you can improve your offering? Remember, the underlying goal here is to deliver more value to your clients. It’s called a VALUE ladder, not a price ladder for a reason, because the priority is to focus on providing value to your clients. I know this might sound too overwhelming because building a value ladder that actually turns into a sales funnel requires a lot of effort and time. However, the good news is that you don’t have to build the whole ladder at once. You can start by implementing your lead magnet and tripwire offer first and move to more extensive offers only when you feel ready. It’s not a matter of how many steps your value ladder has. The purpose is to take your customers to the next logical step or give them the solution to the next problem. This is actually a very short and general overview of the value ladder building process. If you want to dig deeper into this topic, check out the very inspiring book DotCom Secrets by Russel Brunson.

67

Book Factory Strategy

There is an assumption that book writing is a long process that must take months or even years. However, thanks to modern technologies, you can significantly shorten your writing process while still maintaining good content quality. The idea of the Book Factory Strategy is that you should work on producing many non-fiction books simultaneously in order to publish as often as possible. You should build like a conveyor belt in a factory to scale with less labor and time expense. Ideally, you should always have some new books in production on its “conveyor belt.” In this “factory," your books can be in different “manufacturing" stages – some in the research stage, some in the outlining stage, some in the writing stage, some in the proofreading stage, and so on. Most probably, you won’t be able to do everything yourself; therefore, you will need to outsource at least some parts of the process: 1. Hire a ghostwriter either to write your entire books or some of their chapters 2. Dictate your books to a voice recording app and then transcribe them Let’s look closer at both tactics.

Hiring a ghostwriter Depending on how much you want to be involved in the writing process, you can hire a ghostwriter either to write your entire book or only some of its chapters. For example, if you want a book written on gardening, provide your ghostwriter research materials, main ideas that must be presented in the book and define book outline and title so that it’s clear what content must be included in the book. This way, you can significantly increase your book production speed. However, this is a very expensive approach and will take longer to pay off. Moreover, you need to be sure that the content quality will be good enough and that you don't fall into the plagiarism trap. It means you should review what the ghostwriter has written. Use online plagiarism checkers like PlagiarismDetector, Grammarly, Quetext, or others to make sure that your ghostwriter just didn't go and copy from someone’s blog. However, you will never know if a part of your book has been stolen from another book because no

68

tool can check book contents for plagiarism. Maybe except Amazon, if only the book is published on its bookstore. Or, a reader notices that and raise an issue. A safer and more cost-effective way is to outsource only some chapters of your book that don’t require much of your attention but would significantly save your time. Use these chapters as a draft to adjust later according to your voice tone and point of view. Either way, when you decide to hire a ghostwriter, look for someone familiar with the subject of your book. If you need a book about gardening, make sure the potential writer can prove at least basic competency in the gardening field. You also need to find someone whose personality and writing style appeal to you. Ask the writer to show you some of his other works so that you get a sense of the person’s writing style. Good communication is a must when reaching out to prospective ghostwriters. The cost of hiring a ghostwriter depends on the amount of time and work the person will have to devote to your book. Nowadays, it's possible to get all the help you need at affordable prices from around the world. Check out these websites and you will find the best price-quality relationship: fiverr.com, upwork.com, guru.com, or similar.

Dictating your books Writing a good book takes a lot of time. However, what if I tell you that you can get a draft of your book ready in just 2 hours? If you have done a lot of research and know your topic well, simply dictate your book to a voice recorder. Thanks to your voice recording, you can save up to 90% of your writing time because dictation is much faster at getting words on the page than typing. Moreover, you don’t need any specialized equipment to start dictating. All you need is a smartphone and a transcription app. Dictating your book can be broken down into three steps: •

Recording the audio

•

Transcribing the audio

•

Editing

Everyone dictates in their own way. You can dictate standing up, while walking, sitting, or lying in bed. Experiment and find a way that feels natural to you and stick with it. When you are dictating, imagine that you are telling a story to a single person – somebody who represents your audience. You can also ask your 69

friend or family member to listen while you are dictating or ask questions if this helps you. Thanks to this technique, you will have a conversational tone that sounds friendly and is easy to read. Momentum is essential. Therefore, don’t stop to verify facts but rather leave a phrase that would mean that you need to recheck something, for example, “check this." You will include the facts later.

What tools to use? Depending on whether you have an Android or Apple smartphone, there are different apps you can use for your voice recording. Simply check out what your smartphone offers. When the file is ready, you can send it to a transcription service like gotranscript.com. The beauty of human transcription is that it will be of very good quality. However, if you produce a lot of content, it might be too expensive, and you may need to use a cheaper solution like speech recognition apps temi.com or descript.com. If you want to easily switch from voice typing to regular typing in the same document, use the free software that’s inside every Windows operating system or Google Docs Voice Typing. When the transcription files are ready, clean up the text by removing all the necessary phrases, insert the facts or numbers if needed, and polish the style. Use Grammarly or ProWritingAid to eliminate apparent grammar mistakes. Both tools will allow you to edit faster and more efficiently. The key of this strategy is to write valuable and well-researched books. Faster is only better if you can achieve greater speed without sacrificing quality.

70

Now It’s Your Turn In this book, I shared with you the best tactics and Kindle book publishing strategies that I have learned during my 7-book launching journey. All I know about writing has been self-taught. I can’t tell you the number of tireless nights I spent researching everything related to writing, book marketing, and selfpublishing. And I still invest a huge amount of time and energy into learning new skills. The reason I’m sharing my publishing experience with you is that I think it’s important for aspiring writers to see the whole picture of Kindle book publishing strategies that all bestselling authors use. I don’t want you to waste your time and abandon your dream just because you didn’t have sufficient information to become successful. Do you know that English is not my mother tongue? I’m Latvian that lives in Latvia - a small country on the Baltic Sea. Actually, it’s not easy to write in a foreign language at all. But I believe that nationality doesn’t matter when it comes to the digital world and self-publishing. Moreover, other obligations are not excused either. I actually wrote all my books while working a full-time job, blogging, being a mother, and a horse owner, which is also a huge commitment. Everybody who has enough motivation can do this – because everybody can use the same tactics. The strategies taught in this book are a great business model and simple to follow. Moreover, it’s a relatively low start-up cost. Once you learn them, it’s rinse and repeat. You will truly have passive income for years to come. Follow the strategies I gave you and publish enough books so that you can be a success. When you become a little more experienced, you will find your own strategies and tactics that work exactly for your genre. But for now, start off with this basic template. However, the ideas given in this book will help you only if you actually put them into use. Don’t be the one who read this book just to be entertained. Practice everything you learned and get success with selfpublishing, spread your ideas, earn more money, and live your dream life. No matter what you write about, I hope my book will help you succeed. If one day you can attribute even a tiny percentage of your success to what I’ve taught you, I will have succeeded as well.

71

If my book gave you some valuable insights, please leave a review. Your review is very important because it will help other readers decide if this book could be useful for them, too. It doesn’t have to be a long paragraph. Just a line or two would mean a lot to me. In case you want to be notified when I publish new books, please follow me on Amazon and subscribe to my readers’ list here for a personal email from me. You can also follow me on Facebook or Twitter and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Let’s stay in touch also in the future!

72

One More Chance Do you want to sell more Kindle books to the same reader? Then get this FREE eBook and learn how to create book bundles and box sets.

73

Useful Tools for Authors and Content Creators I get asked all the time what tools and resources I use to self-publish my books and create content for social media. I have published a list of my favorite ones on my blog. Check them out here.

74

Found a Typo? Although I do my best to ensure that this book is flawless, it is inevitable that a mistake or two will get unnoticed. If you find an error of any kind in this book, please let me know by sending an email to [email protected]. This will ensure that other readers will never have to experience that terrible typo. I appreciate your taking the time to notify me – you will make the world a better place.

75

Other Books by the Author Sell Books on Amazon series: - Book Cover Design Formula: Complete DIY Book Cover Design Guide for Self-published and Indie Authors - Book Launch Formula: 3 Proven Strategies to Launch Your Non-Fiction Book on Amazon - Email Marketing for Authors Made Simple: The 1 Page List Building Plan - Plan Out Your Non-fiction Book Series

Free Online Tools Series: 100+ Free Tools to Create Content for Web & Social Media 200 Free Tools to Save Time on Social Media Managing: Boost Your Social Media Results & Reduce Your Hours 100+ Online Productivity Tools: Get Things Done Quicker

Be Your Own Designer Series: Graphic Design for Beginners: Fundamental Graphic Design Principles that Underlie Every Design Project How to Create a Logo? Fundamental Principles of Effective Logo Design

76

About Author Anita Nipane is a two-times Amazon bestselling author and owner of the marketing blog www.digginet.com where she shares useful tips for content creators and self-published authors. With a Master's in Business Administration and numerous qualifications in Marketing, Anita has a long experience as a marketing manager in different industries. In her books, Anita explains complex content creation matters in an easy to understand and structured way. When she is not writing books or spending time with her horse, she is passionate about exploring the world, one awesome adventure at a time.

77