There is no formula that you can follow to create a best selling book. But, let’s assume that your book unputdownable and it’s well-written and free of typos, grammer issues and formatting errors. What can you do beyond this, beyond writing an amazing book that would give your book every chance of becoming a bestseller? The secret is that you need to do six things well. Those six things include:
Book cover: Your cover has two critical jobs: 1) it should clearly convey your book genre, 2) it should convey quality (this is often easily acheived by giving it similar look and feel to best sellers in your genre). Also, you should avoid certain things on your cover that might get your book banned from merchandising on Amazon and other sites. Things to avoid on your cover include: dead bodies, gore, blood, guns, gun sights, gun targets, hate symbols, and nudity.
Book description: Your description should seduce the reader into wanting to know more about the book. Look at the book description of best-selling books in your genre for inspiration.
Reviews: Try to get 20 five star reviews or more. If you are having trouble getting reviews, consider pricing your book at free for a few days. Typically, each 1,000 downloads leads to about 2 reviews. Never purchase reviews , incentive people to leave reviews or get involved in fishy review schemes. Such actions can both damage your reputation and get you into trouble with Amazon.
Book promotions: Promote your books in the way that works best for you. That could be blog tours, live readings, press releases, social media campaigns, book promotions, Amazon advertising, a street team, editorial reviews or other methods. Books do not sell themselves. Part of Neveryour job as an author is to create demand for your book whether your are self-published or published by a big 5 imprint.
Editorial reviews and blurbs: If you have secured solid editorial reviews or praise from other authors, be sure to include this on your books detail page.
Kindle keywords: If there are certain words that people search when looking for books like yours, then be sure to put these words in your book description and maybe even in your book title. For example is your book is a sweet romance about an Amish woman, you would want to make sure the terms sweet romance, Amish romance, clean romance and wholesome romance appear somewhere on your book’s detail page.
What best selling books have in common
Top selling ebooks tend to resonate with readers to such a degree that they can’t help but talk about these books with friends and family. Oftentimes you can’t aim to produce or manufacture this resonation. It just happens because the book touches on a defining spirit, fade or mood in culture at a given time. Aside from this resonation, there are several other things that best-selling books have in common as illustrated in the infographic below.
