If you’re self publishing a book, Amazon matters a lot. 69% of adult nonfiction books are bought online. Amazon isn’t the only place readers look for books, but it’s probably the most important.
That makes the most crucial sales page for your book … your Amazon book page!
Here are the 7 essential elements you need for creating your Amazon book page:
Number one, your book title and subtitle are essential to the success on Amazon.
I’ve talked about what makes a great non-fiction book title here.
But one thing we didn’t cover there is the importance of your subtitle. Ideally your subtitle includes one or two of your keywords and hooks your readers by answering this simple question:
What’s in it for me?
Always be thinking about how will your reader benefit. Will your book make them more beautiful? Richer? Fitter? More successful? And bonus points if you tell them how long it will take to alleviate their biggest concerns en route to the thing they want.
A couple of my favorite subtitles:
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape nine to five, live anywhere and join the new rich.
- The Perennial Seller: The art of making and marketing work that lasts.
- The Dip: a little book that teaches you when to quit and when to stick.
Those are great titles with fantastic subtitles
Number two is your cover.
Think in thumbnails. Of course you want a cover that looks good in print, but the most important thing for selling your book is a cover that creates visual curiosity in a small image. You also need to be able to read the title when it’s in the thumbnail version too.
It’s the number one reason templates for book covers are a terrible idea. You must stand out. To do that, you can’t look like other people’s books. We are visual creatures so a colorful, explosive, and in your face cover is a perfect way to capture your reader’s visual curiosity.
Number three, make your book available in more than one format.
In an informal survey on my Facebook page I asked whether people felt a hard cover book was more professional than a soft cover book.
The answer was interesting. Many people said that it was the number of formats, not hard cover vs soft cover that mattered.
When people see a book is available in an eBook, a softcover, a hardcover and an audiobook, it looks professional produced.
This is a really important thing if you’re self-publishing. You want it to look professional. And if it’s only available in Kindle, you could be losing readers because they will not think it’s professional.
Number four, keywords.
What do your competitor’s books have for keywords? What keywords do you know people are using to search for solutions you help solve? Figure out which keywords are important for your book and write a fantastic description that will utilize those keywords. Amazon does give you some good guidance on keywords in its catalog.
What’s in its catalog is all it’s going to search for. And it’s going to personalize that to each person. So the best way to get seen is by keeping your words generic and broad, but specific to your book category.
Number five, description.
Your book description has one job … to sell your book.Kick the description off with your hook. Entice the reader with what is in it for them. Include proof of what you’re saying and why you were the only one who could write this book. This is a great opportunity to use those keywords again, by the way.
Number six, endorsements and reviews.
They’re not the same thing, but they’re equally important. Endorsements are those quotes from well-known people, media and other authors. Those should be in your book description area.
Then you need reviews for your book. The most important thing is the stars, then the content. If you can get video reviews that is awesome because those will show up at the top. The most liked review and most recent will be the most important because those will be shown first. So make sure you have recent reviews and that the average overall stars is four to five or better. If they aren’t, take a look at what reviewers are criticizing and see if you can fix it.
Number seven, categories.
This is a big subject. First, you only have a little bit of control over this, but the strategy is to start in the smallest category possible, and then have Amazon keep moving you up within that overall category. You get moved up by selling well. But here’s the thing that many authors may not realize. Canadian categories aren’t the same as American categories. Amazon print categories are not equal to Kindle. So it takes research and setting yourself up in different categories for different accounts.
Ugh, right? It is a lot of work! That’s what Book Launchers is for. We do a lot of that hard ground work for you. If you want to find out how we help, you can visit this page. If you want to set up a time to speak with us about your book, tell us more about your book idea here.
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