Advice for self-publishing on Amazon I wish someone had told me

 

A bit over a year ago I self-published, Mindgames, my dark, dsytopian smutty novel about naked sex slaves.  The book is over 500 pages and by the time I published it I had been through three solid drafts.  I'm busy, and the writing process took years.

And then came the publishing process.  Formatting.  Creating a cover. 

Marketing. 

By definition, writers want to write.  But we also want to be read.  And that requires that we do the work of making sure people know about our awesome books.   

In my day job I run a business, so I'm no stranger to marketing.  But there were some tips specific to self-publishing on Amazon that would have helped me if I had known them in advance.  

1.  Every book on Amazon is placed into two or three categories and is ranked in sales in those categories ("the best-selling lists").  The exact algorithm for the ranking is a mystery, but what is clear is that the more books you sell in a single day, the higher your rank will be, at least for a short period of time.  Selling 70 books in one day and none the rest of that week will give you a higher rank on the day the books sell than selling ten books a day for a week.  

 

2.   The higher the book ranks, the more likely it is to be recommended to people browsing Amazon who have bought other books in that category.  You want your book in categories that are accurate for the book but in which there may be less competition.  For example, a few times Mindgames has ranked very high in the category "science fiction erotica."  But I don't think it has ever even broken into the double digits in the category "BDSM erotica."  

 

3.   You can have your book listed on Amazon for a period of time when it is available for pre-sales.  In the old days (maybe two years ago), people would try to make as many pre-sales as possible because all those books would count as sales on the actual publication date, giving it a bump in rank.  But that is no longer the case.  Now the sales are counted on the day they are made, even during pre-sales.

 

4.  So the game now is to try to get as many sales as possible in a single day.  That means a coordinated campaign to get people -- friends, family, social media followers, members of your book club -- to buy the book on the same day. 

 

 5.  A pre-sale period can still be useful.  That's a time when you can be seeking reviews, and those reviews can then link to the book's Amazon page.  You can also ask for reviews after the book is published (that's what I did), but you're not going to generate quite the same amount of interest in a book that has already been on the market for six months.  

 

6.  Speaking of reviews -- be careful of the format in which you give the book to reviewers.  Unfortunately some people will post your book on sites where it can be downloaded for free.  Once your book is published you can gift Kindle copies to reviewers.  While there are people out there who can crack that, it does seem to be the safest format (other than a physical book) to prevent pirating.   

 

7.   But if you're in the United States  you can't gift a Kindle book to someone in a different country.  There are several Amazon entities covering various regions of the world, and apparently Kindle books can't travel to a different region. 

8.  Don't be shy about asking your friends and family to post reviews on Amazon.  But beware of having two people from the same household post reviews -- Amazon will delete them both. 

 

Be safe out there, and have fun.