Simple SEO Tactics Increased My Ranking!
Want to sell more books? Launch a New Book Series.
Sure, you hear this all the time, right? I tell people to launch new books to all the time. Write another book. But sometimes it takes hearing it from someone in the right way at the right time to realize this means you. Now.
Last night I was reading Chris Fox’s Launch to Market, which is a great read if you’re just getting into today’s book marketing scene and want to know how it all works. He pushes the same mantra I swear by, which is to consistently work on your marketing (more on this later).
What you need to do when book marketing efforts have reached their settling point is launch a new book series.”
Chris Fox’s take also made me realize my marketing efforts (facebook ads, amazon ads, mailing list pushes, and review requests) for my boxed set are going stale because the book has reached its settling point. And it’s a decent settling point, at approximately 100,000 amazon ranking, which will certainly get boosts from new releases, but this means marketing efforts here are a waste—for now.
What you need to do when the marketing efforts have reached their settling point is launch a new book series. And so, today, that’s what I’m focusing on.
Use a freebie as a series start.
There is little disagreement on this point: freebies get people started on a series so they can’t help but click to buy number two. You can even hook them with a teaser excerpt, which I certainly plan to do—the complete first chapter.
KDP Select Free Days aren’t the only way to go free. You can price free permanently if you price match with other platforms.
And speaking of KDP Select Free Days, an aside here: from my light SEO improvements in blog writing, I’m now ranked number 19 on Google (with no paid traffic) for KDP Select Free Days, according to SEMRUSH. And I also rank in the top 100 for a few other Google search terms.
I began these SEO targeted blog edits end of January, and those are some encouraging results. If you’d like to read more about what I did, click here. If you’d like to see how I’m going to use this to increase eyeballs on my new releases, stay tuned.
Launch books simultaneously or close together.
I’m going to launch the first two books in my psychological thriller series out at once, then a month later, get the third out. People consume books the way they do Netflix series now. If you don’t have the next one ready for them to buy, they’ll be disappointed and buy something else.
Why miss out on that sale? In fact, why not get the first chapter in the back of your kindle book so you’re all set for them to get hooked and then effortlessly click and buy to finish what they started? It goes without saying that you’ll have to make it good. For more on the efficacy of this tactic, check out the Bookbub report on excerpts increasing sales via the Sell More Books Show.
Have the book proofread at least twice.
I had errors in my boxed set after the proofer, and I was devastated. I am always so careful with this stuff. But I admit, the number of times you have to check now, after all the different file type transfers for kindle and the other platforms, I’m getting reading fatigue.
In trad pub you’ve got to read manuscripts lots of times, too, but you have quick deadlines for these passes, and this seems to make a difference. You also know you’ve got other people going through it (though this hadn’t ever amounted to an error-free manuscript in my experience), which, in theory, spreads a bit of the burden.
With the boxed set, I gave it a once over afterward, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Never again. Though I had all the errors corrected immediately, and current downloads are clean of them, this seriously hurt my chances of the book staying at the top of amazon, because the negative reviews emerged when the book was getting tons of eyeballs.
Chris Fox had some reassuring words about this too—“move on.” Yes. This is what I’m doing. I’m going to get it right this time. Here are some proofreaders that have been recommended to me via the Self Publishing Formula Facebook Group:
Bottom line: Will not make that mistake again. Takeaway: Sometimes your best marketing is getting your head down and working on your books.
Hi Daniella,
thanks for your series of marketing info for self-published books. I’m a self-publishing author from Europe and am curious to find out what works here 😉
When I publish a new book, I look up similar books and contact reviewers of these, providing them with a review copy. I recently started a service that helps authors connecting with reviewers this way, you might want to give it a try. http://www.100reviewers.com
All the best,
Daniel
PS: I really like your first name 😉
Sounds interesting, Daniel. I will check it out.