Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Amazon Publishing & Marketing: How To Do It Right
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Amazon Publishing & Marketing: How To Do It Right
Amazon Has Flipped The Publishing Industry On Its Head
Have you ever noticed that there are trends in what the Internet marketing gurus talk about?
Not long ago Amazon publishing and building your market with Kindle e-books were all the rage. So much so that Amazon had to crack down on things like free so-called “books” that were really just thinly veiled marketing pamphlets.
But it is still very possible to make money writing and selling books on Amazon, and in today’s interview Amazon-published author, Brenda M. Collins, shares how she brought her business background to bear in switching successfully from being a high powered information security specialist to a mystery/romance/paranormal author.
Her “cozy mystery/romance” book, The Holly & The Ivy: A Frost Family & Friends Christmas Book, even got to a #11 rank in her category on Amazon.com! (And to my Canadian readers: We don’t discuss it in the interview, but she focused her publicity and review-getting efforts on Amazon.com. Unless your book would only be of interest to Canadians, you are better off targeting that larger market. But be sure you sell it on the Amazon.ca site too, because often Amazon won’t let Canadians buy from the .com site!)
When I published my first book, Canada’s Best Employers for Women, publishers typically gave the author only about 5 – 10% of the selling price of a book. According to Brenda, many have now bumped it up to about 30%, but at Amazon the author gets 70% as long as the book sells for at least $2.99. With that kind of price difference, you can sell a lot fewer books on Amazon and still make more money.
Even If You Don’t Write Books, Here’s What You’ll Learn in This Interview
Many of the marketing approaches Brenda has used apply in almost any business. For example:
Form Joint Ventures or Partnerships
Look for authors (or businesses) that have a similar target market to yours, and help each other cross-promote. She gives some really clever examples of how she’s done that in the book world. She figured out some brilliant win/win/win scenarios. (Wins for her, for the other author, and for the fans!)
Write for Other Blogs
Yes, you’ve likely heard that before, but it is sooooo important if you want to grow your audience. Brenda gives a great examples of a surprising way she customized her article to the other blog’s audience, by doing smart research about what they were really interested in. (Turns out, it wasn’t books.)
Reach Out To Your Competitors’ Customers
Instead of just asking other authors to review her book, she looked to see who was reviewing their books, and then reached out to those reviewers, noting that they might also enjoy her book. She offered them a free advance copy in the hopes they would review it. (Almost all did.) And this isn’t really a sneaky, underhanded thing to do, for the reason I discuss in the next point, below.
Don’t Be Afraid To Promote The Competition
OK, this doesn’t apply to everybody, but when you are selling words (books, podcasts, information) odds are pretty high that your customers are also consuming content from others. There’s room in their heart for more than one expert. That’s why I have no hesitation in promoting some of my favorite business podcasters. (I’ll post a list of them soon. Stay tuned…)
View all episodes
By Tema FrankAmazon Has Flipped The Publishing Industry On Its Head
Have you ever noticed that there are trends in what the Internet marketing gurus talk about?
Not long ago Amazon publishing and building your market with Kindle e-books were all the rage. So much so that Amazon had to crack down on things like free so-called “books” that were really just thinly veiled marketing pamphlets.
But it is still very possible to make money writing and selling books on Amazon, and in today’s interview Amazon-published author, Brenda M. Collins, shares how she brought her business background to bear in switching successfully from being a high powered information security specialist to a mystery/romance/paranormal author.
Her “cozy mystery/romance” book, The Holly & The Ivy: A Frost Family & Friends Christmas Book, even got to a #11 rank in her category on Amazon.com! (And to my Canadian readers: We don’t discuss it in the interview, but she focused her publicity and review-getting efforts on Amazon.com. Unless your book would only be of interest to Canadians, you are better off targeting that larger market. But be sure you sell it on the Amazon.ca site too, because often Amazon won’t let Canadians buy from the .com site!)
When I published my first book, Canada’s Best Employers for Women, publishers typically gave the author only about 5 – 10% of the selling price of a book. According to Brenda, many have now bumped it up to about 30%, but at Amazon the author gets 70% as long as the book sells for at least $2.99. With that kind of price difference, you can sell a lot fewer books on Amazon and still make more money.
Even If You Don’t Write Books, Here’s What You’ll Learn in This Interview
Many of the marketing approaches Brenda has used apply in almost any business. For example:
Form Joint Ventures or Partnerships
Look for authors (or businesses) that have a similar target market to yours, and help each other cross-promote. She gives some really clever examples of how she’s done that in the book world. She figured out some brilliant win/win/win scenarios. (Wins for her, for the other author, and for the fans!)
Write for Other Blogs
Yes, you’ve likely heard that before, but it is sooooo important if you want to grow your audience. Brenda gives a great examples of a surprising way she customized her article to the other blog’s audience, by doing smart research about what they were really interested in. (Turns out, it wasn’t books.)
Reach Out To Your Competitors’ Customers
Instead of just asking other authors to review her book, she looked to see who was reviewing their books, and then reached out to those reviewers, noting that they might also enjoy her book. She offered them a free advance copy in the hopes they would review it. (Almost all did.) And this isn’t really a sneaky, underhanded thing to do, for the reason I discuss in the next point, below.
Don’t Be Afraid To Promote The Competition
OK, this doesn’t apply to everybody, but when you are selling words (books, podcasts, information) odds are pretty high that your customers are also consuming content from others. There’s room in their heart for more than one expert. That’s why I have no hesitation in promoting some of my favorite business podcasters. (I’ll post a list of them soon. Stay tuned…)