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These Amazon Category Hacks Can Boost Your Book Sales

Updated by David Gaughran 9 May 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 38 Comments.

Choosing the right Amazon categories for your book can greatly increase your visibility in the Kindle Store, making your work more likely to be discovered, purchased, and recommended.

But if you make bad decisions here – or opt to do nothing at all – you can limit your book’s success in surprising ways. Sometimes you can even nudge Amazon towards recommend your book to all the wrong people! Which invariably fails, of course, and causes Amazon to think you have written a dud. Meaning Amazon is less likely to recommend your book at all. This is something you really want to avoid.

Many authors don’t realize they should revisit their categories on a regular basis – not just to ensure they are maximizing visibility, but to check Amazon hasn’t placed them in a bad category. You need to know exactly which categories and sub-categories your book is in – Amazon doesn’t make that part easy – and then keep on top of changes to the category system as well. Read More…

Clever Tips For Using BookBub Ads

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Marketing • 1 Comment.

BookBub Ads is the platform where I’ve seen most growth in the last year, to the point where it is rivaling Facebook on some campaigns, especially when you factor in the higher conversion rates you usually see. This means that the amount of ad money I can spend effectively on BookBub — and by that I mean get an immediate return on investment — has quadrupled in the last twelve months.

This might sound incredible, in the literal sense, to anyone who hasn’t cracked BookBub Ads yet. It can be an unusual platform for those more used to Facebook or Amazon Ads, leading to an unexpected learning curve, perhaps. But I find that if you take the time to understand what works on BookBub, it’s the most responsive and consistent ad platform out there. Getting over that first hump is where many authors seem to struggle though. I know that from running an eight-part series on BookBub Ads to my mailing list earlier this year.

Well, there’s help on the way. I’ll have a book called BookBub Ads Expert coming very soon — make sure to sign up to my list to hear about that first and get an exclusive launch discount that will be offered nowhere else — and I have a wonderful guest post today to give you a headstart while you’re waiting for that. Read More…

Battle of the Distributors: Smashwords vs Draft2Digital

Updated by David Gaughran 25 February 2021. Publishing, Resources • 147 Comments.

Since I started self-publishing in 2011, Smashwords has been the overwhelming favorite for savvy self-publishers who wanted or needed a distributor to reach non-Amazon e-bookstores. However, a new competitor called Draft2Digital launched a beta version of their service earlier this year and has been gaining popularity. In July, they hit 1,000 users, 10,000 titles, and 1,000,000 books sold. I’ve been getting lots of questions about Draft2Digital, and experimenting with them myself, so I thought it was a good time for a side-by-side comparison as there are distinct pros and cons to each service. But before we get into that, let’s look at the question of whether you need to use a distributor at all. The virtues of going direct In my Read More…

Amazon’s Purchase Of Goodreads Could Be Good

Updated by David Gaughran 6 April 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 111 Comments.

The doom-mongers have been running wild on Twitter with the news that Amazon is to acquire Goodreads. Much of that nonsense is typical (i.e. hysterical) Amazon bashing, or reflexive defense of the status quo.

I’m not going to deal with the Chicken Little stuff. I have less and less patience with people who claim that Amazon has or is striving for some kind of evil monopoly that will subjugate authors and readers when all the evidence to date is that they will treat authors better than any publisher and provide readers with cheaper books, a bigger selection, and a better customer experience than any other retailer.

There are some more reasonable fears about what this purchase entails. I would like to deal with these in turn, then discuss how I think this acquisition will be beneficial to writers – particularly self-publishers. I respect the fact that this is a hot-button issue for many, and that reasonable people will disagree with my perspective. Read More…