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how to get more book sales

Is $0.99 The New Free?

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I happened to stumble across a book on Amazon recently called Is $0.99 The New Free? by Steve Scott The title intrigued me, so I decided to do some searching. This book, and most of the other author’s books are priced at $0.99, and many of these books have over 100 reviews. His books are close to 50 pages, and I decided that I should be able to do something like that. On Kindle Direct Publishing, selling a book for $0.99 results in you getting a 35% commission per sale while selling a book for $2.99-$9.99 results in you getting a 70% commission per sale.

The next thing that came to mind is the highly successful App Store in which most of the successful paid apps are priced at $0.99. Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and all of the other cool paid games are worth $0.99.

While working on Lead The Stampede, I have decided to give this a try. I am aware that this would result in a commission cut, but the volume of sales can easily make up for the commission. It is better to make 5 sales and make $10 than it is to make 1 sale and make $10. As more people get their hands on the $0.99 books, that will result in more reviews which will result in more customers as well.

Lead The Stampede will still be published in the summer, but I may be able to write another book before the start of summer. By the end of the year, I will most likely be selling a $0.99 eBook.

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How To Properly Ask For A Book Review On Twitter

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One of the best ways to increase book sales is by having a lot of good reviews. For most authors, the quality is there, but getting the reviews is the problem. Authors turn to social networks such as Twitter to get reviews, but most people do not properly ask for a review. The common mistake authors make is sending a tweet to all of their followers that says something like this, “Please review my book. Here is a link (link to book).”

In order to properly ask for a review, you have to ask one customer at a time. This may not be as quick as sending out a tweet to the masses, but quicker is not always better (in this case, quicker is not better). In order to properly ask for a book review on Twitter, follow these steps:

  1. Identify the people who have bought your book. For some authors, this is the hard part. I use KDP to publish my Kindle books, but their statistics only offer the numbers. Their statistics do not show names of people who have bought your book with a link to their Twitter account. The best way to find the people who have bought your book is by looking at the tweets of people mentioning you. Most of the people who buy my books send out a tweet to me (with my username so I get to see the tweet).
  2. Favorite the tweets of people saying that they bought your book. By favoriting the tweet where someone says they bought your book, you are showing them that you are grateful that they bought your book.
  3. Ask them about your book. After a day, ask the person how far they got in your book and whether they liked it or not. If the person does not like the review, continue the conversation anyway. By continuing the conversation, you have the ability to clear up something that may sound confusing, and the reader will like you for continuing the conversation. If the person likes your book, implement #4.
  4. Ask the person to write a short blurb about your book and submit it on Amazon. People cringe at the thought of writing a review because they take a lot of time to write. A short blurb sounds quick and easy. Sure enough, it is, and by wording your tweet to say “short blurb” instead of “review,” you are more likely to get feedback for your book.

By implementing these 4 steps, you will be able to get more reviews for your book. This process will allow you to build a strong fan base versus going for a hit or miss opportunity by sending a single tweet to all of your followers. Quality customers come one at a time, not in bulk.

Why Narrowing Down Your Customer Audience Is Better Than Expanding It

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Many people are focused on creating different products to satisfy the needs of different people. They want to create products that millions of people would want. Then they want to create another product that a different group of a million people would want. The problem is that the web is a very noisy place. There are millions of sellers who sell the same products. Some of them do a better job at making their product unique than others, but they are selling similar or identical products.

Instead of going into the mainstream head first, you need to narrow down your customer audience. Instead of writing a book about social media (2 million potential customers), you can write a book about a specific social network such as Twitter (200,000 potential customers). You can also write a book about how to perform a specific function on Twitter such as getting more retweets (50,000 potential customers).

The numbers are not real, but they serve as an example. Most people would decide to write a book about social media since the amount of potential customers is the greatest in that area. However, the competition for social media is a thick one. The competition for Twitter is smaller, and the competition for performing specific functions on Twitter is even smaller.

The mainstream is the place where too many people go. In order to get noticed, your products have to satisfy a small group of people. If the audience size is 2 million, and your product satisfies 200,000 people, that is a small audience compared to the big audience of 2 million. The smaller your audience, the more specific your product is. When your product is specific, it will get more sales because your product will solve specific problems.

Don’t focus on the quantity of customers. Focus on the quality customers: the people who will buy all of your products and tell all of their friends about them.