Selling Books, Part One: Organic Sales

Let's explore the various avenues for selling an indie book, and the realities of each. Bear in mind that so much depends on your book's genre that marketing is in no way a one size fits all enterprise. Certain genres are 🔥, such as romance and all its subcategories, fantasy, mystery, and sci fi to an extent, and if your book fits one of those genres, you'll have a much easier time generating sales.

I'll start with the basics--organic searches. Regardless of genre, a shopper browsing Amazon's shelves is going to see the book cover first. Not only does your cover image need to be eye-catching, but it needs to conform to your genre. 

I admit that I've struggled with this concept. In my genre, the popular book covers are either garish or (to my eye) juvenile. The current trend in women's fiction leans toward something like little daisies strewn across a plain background, something I would have drawn when I was eight. (There's probably some psychology involved in this trend, but it's too depressing for me to explore.) Or to huge typography over a generic palette. Even the colors are conforming; mostly blues with touches of gold; sometimes an orange streak thrown into the mix. A conforming cover signals to a reader that, yes, this is the category I like to read. 

If you're hiring a book designer, you need to be familiar with your genre's trends, because all designers aren't created equally. Some may be experts in creating fantasy covers, which isn't going to help you if you're publishing a romance. And once you hire a designer, you need to know how to steer him or her in the right direction, depending upon what their initial offering looks like. Think about how your book is going to look side-by-side with other books in your genre. Will it look lost? Miscategorized? Trust me; you don't want that. People will assume it snuck onto the list by accident and pass it by. If you read books in your genre, you already have a good idea what an ideal cover should look like. I don't read my genre, so I had to research, which was easy enough to do.

The book cover is the first and most important hurdle you have to maneuver. 

Once someone clicks on your cover, your blurb needs to be enticing. Again, I have struggled and struggled with blurbs. People say they're harder to write than the actual book, and there's a simple explanation for that--you, the author, are too close to the story. That's it; that's the reason. I've thought sometimes that I should give someone a copy of my book and ask them to write a couple paragraphs about it. (That's hypothetical, since no one knows that I write, but it's still a great idea.) I've learned that there are professionals out there who write blurbs for a living, but that seems like a last-ditch option and an unneeded expense. 

The only advice I have to offer on writing a blurb is:

1. Get to the point quickly. Back story only matters to you.
2. Don't turn it into a half-page synopsis (people won't take the time to read it)
3. Don't over-pepper it with characters.
4. Hit the main theme and hit it hard.
5. Try different approaches until you hit on one that you think works best.
6. DON'T ask AI to write your blurb. Your blurb needs the human touch.
7. Don't be afraid to revise your blurb, even if you've already published. I've changed my blurbs again and again. (Sometimes we're so anxious to publish that we don't realize until later that the blurb could be better.)

Price. I read an article this week about a new book that I'm interested in reading. As I generally do, I searched it out on Amazon to add it to my wishlist. Guess how much the publisher is asking for the Kindle edition: $25.50! That's only about a dollar less than the hardcover version. They've got to be kidding. I've since learned that publishers do this so as not to undercut sales of the hardcover, which obviously costs more to produce. But you, the indie publisher, aren't physically running your paperback (if you have one) through a printing press, so don't overprice! 

Google tells me that the sweet spot for indie books is between $2.99 and $5.99. Remember, you're not a famous author. Customers have to really be enamored by your cover and especially by your blurb to pay more. I suggest not going lower than $2.99, because, for one thing, if you do, you'll only be eligible for a 35% royalty rate. 

As with everything, there is a psychology behind book pricing as well. Would-be customers may not even be aware of their biases, but the more inexpensive the book, the less value they attach to it. This is proven out, in fact, by book giveaways. I've had wild success (relatively speaking) with FreeBooksy ads. Other indie authors will say the same. Theoretically, the purpose of giving a book away is to drive reviews. This seldom never happens. Most downloaders of free books never read them, whereas if they purchase a book at a reasonable or typical price point, they feel almost obligated to read it, or to at least start reading it.

Likewise, if you devalue your book by attaching a bargain basement price to it, potential readers will devalue it, too. I do have my novellas priced at $1.99 because they're short(er) works. But a full novel? No. It's not that a would-be customer cares how much work you put into it (believe me, they don't), but your novel is valuable and its price needs to reflect that. Respect yourself first and others will follow.

When I published Running From Herself, I set its price at $4.99. That's actually quite fair. Except later, when I signed up for various promo newsletters, many of them advised not going higher than $2.99, because their subscribers are looking for bargains. So, I lowered my price to $2.99 and just left it there after the promos ran. I've finally raised it again, to $3.99 this time. A quick scan of Amazon's pages under "literature and fiction" reveals that on the low end, $4.99 seems to be popular, and my assumption is that these are indie books for the most part, since publishers, as I noted above, want to charge outrageous prices for ebooks. I may raise mine back to its original price. 

And I don't know if it works or not, because I haven't tried one in years, but starting with a higher price point will allow you to take advantage of a Kindle Countdown Deal without essentially giving your book away (plus it'll look cool on Amazon with its original price X'd out). 

Keywords drive the algorithm. KDP allows for seven keywords, and choosing the right ones is difficult, made more so by the fact that no decent free keyword tool seems to exist. Many authors use Publisher Rocket, which purports to be an exhaustive reference; however, it costs $199.00, and I'm not going to go there. I can't afford to. I do know that it's recommended to choose long-tail keywords that match the phrases people search for. This may be more relevant to general Google searches than to Amazon book searches, but overall it's seemingly better to use two or three-word phrases instead of one. 

Bear in mind that there are keywords to avoid, which KDP spells out here. And don't waste any of your seven by repeating words or phrases that are found in your title. Based on sales, I'm obviously a bad algorithm driver, but I do my best. I did, as a matter of fact, throw my blurb (my most recent out of about 20) into AI to see what its suggestions were, and it gave me a few starting points to work from. Other than that, I focused on what I call sub-themes in my story, such as "found family" and "lost love", etc. 

The only other way to test keywords for free is to plug them into Amazon's search bar without hitting enter to see what its auto-complete shows. Those will at least be search terms that shoppers have used. 

Your book cover and your blurb, as well as keywords and pricing are the main elements in driving organic sales. You may want to take a look at your title as well. Experts advise not using a title that's more than three words long; I say, make it as catchy and memorable as you can, while still providing at least a hint to the book's primary theme. Kindlepreneur has a whole article about choosing a title. And naturally, like everything else, there is a psychology behind it. (Step #1,215: take a psychology course, apparently.)

Next time, I'll get into non-organic selling. Boy, oh boy; that'll be a downer fun trip.