I made around $28,000 through self-publishing books in 2022. The majority chunk came from Amazon KDP.
And the rest were from:
- IngramSpark $3,000
- Gumroad $648.78
- Smashwords $565
- Leanpub $339
Here are some things I think contributed to my self-publishing journey on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform in 2023:
- Write a great, simple, concise book that over-delivers on content.
I receive mails regularly that speak like this:
Most technical books are thick, clunky and boring. I try to do the opposite. I write simple, thin and real-world application books.
2. Use in-demand and low competition keywords in your book title and description
Look for keywords in Amazon that show people are buying books in that niche (one way is to look at their best sellers rank < 200,000).
Also, have a feel of the competition, see if you have relative confidence to outdo existing books in terms of ratings, reviews, pricing, covers, content etc.
This will help your book show up in search results when people are looking for books in your genre.
3. Create nice covers
Prior to 2022, I use PPT to design my book covers. (Ugh!)
I’ve never been a design guy. But with Canva, they make book cover designs so accessible!
I’ve put up new covers for some of my books and sales have increased since. Here are some egs.
4. Get Reviews by utilizing the KDP Select program
This program allows you to offer your book for free for a limited time, which can help increase visibility and reviews.
Reviews are crucial for increasing visibility, sales on KDP and kickstart the whole Amazon flywheel effect.
Ask beta readers from your social media followers or email list to leave reviews.
Be careful about asking friends and family for reviews though, Amazon has a highly intelligent algorithm that somehow can tell if a reader is related to the author and might remove reviews from them.
5. Keep your book updated
My books are around tech topics, so naturally, they get outdated. I used to do updating myself, but it can be difficult. So, I outsource that now.
But keeping your book updated with new information, retains readers and attract new ones.
My Android book used to be getting low sales, but when I updated it, sales improved.
6. Build up a readers’ email list along the way so you can do step 4 (see above).
You can do so by:
- Offer a incentive such as freebies or exclusive content in exchange for signing up.
- Make it easy to sign up by just asking them to send an email
7. Use Amazon auto ads to drive more visibility to your book.
Though they make only a small chunk of my sales, the free impressions that the ads give make my book more visible.
And that’s a wrap.
If you want to learn more about how I made more than $200,000 self-publishing books Amazon KDP on various platforms, follow me on Twitter.
