Writing and completing a book is no easy feat. Unfortunately, it’s only half the battle. Making your book sell involves knowing how to publish and market it. Ebooks remain the most popular medium because you don’t have to pay for printing or go to the effort of physically shipping books. That said, there is still work to be done once you’ve uploaded your eBook online. This post outlines 7 tips for selling your eBook.
Design a professional book cover
Cover art is still important – even when selling an eBook. Many eBook publishing platforms won’t let you publish your book through them unless you have cover art. Enticing cover art meanwhile will help to attract new readers while scrolling through titles. You can pay designers online to produce a cover for you. Choose a cover that reflects the contents of your book while making sure it stands out from other similar books.
Set up a website
It’s useful to have a website where you can sell your ebook directly to potential readers. Having a website can also help you to build up some search engine presence for your book. You can pay a website developer to create a site for you, or you can build your own site using a custom website builder like WordPress or Wix.
Automate sales with software
By using eBook DRM and sales software such as Edition Guard, you can automate eBook fulfilment and limit who can read it (and on which devices). Such software can be linked up to your website. Make sure that you have such software downloaded.
Use eBook publishing platforms
There are many eBook publishing platforms that you can sell your eBook though. Some of the most popular options include Smashwords, Amazon, Lulu, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple iBooks and Google Play Books. Publishing platforms can help your book to get noticed, however they do take a cut of each sale. This cut depends on the publishing platform, the price of your book and its popularity.
Promote your book on social media
Social media is one of the best places to promote your book. On top of using your personal social media channels, consider creating social media pages for your book. Interact with other social media users and post engaging content that isn’t necessarily promotional (such as tips, news or opinions) to help further generate attention.
Send your book to bloggers/vloggers to review
There are many blogs and vlogs dedicated to reviewing books. Not only can earning reviews help you earn press quotes to use alongside the promotion of your book, but it can help expose your book to new audiences. There are literary PR companies that can help send your book to various bloggers and vloggers to review. Alternatively, you can look for bloggers and vloggers yourself to send your eBook to.
Give your book away for free for a limited time
Giving your book away for free may not seem like a good business strategy, but it can pay off. Reading fanatics love free books and will often go out of their way to search for them. Exposing your book to lots of readers could help you to get your book recognised. Readers may recommend it to people and from there you could start to organically attract readers. At this point, you could consider putting your price on your book and can start making money off the demand.
