How to Promote your Ebook for free and make it Work

Promote your Ebook

Yes, Amazon indeed is one of the leading platforms for selling ebooks, a gold mine for digital authors. But it is also a cemetery of forgotten ebooks, of titles that never knew a sale, victims of the ‘long tail’ perhaps, or simply because they do not interest anyone. The question is: do you want your book to be one of those?

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Writing an ebook is just one part of the digital author’s job. Unless you have the backing of a publisher or someone else does it for you, after writing the word ‘End’, another no less necessary task begins: promoting your ebook.

The problem is that many of the tips that are offered to us sometimes do not work as we expect. It may be because our book is not attractive (this post will not help you with this) and other external factors that make life-long advice obsolete. Hence the importance of being up-to-date on the changes in the digital landscape that may affect us.

Write to Promotional Websites or Blogs

As soon as you publish an ebook, it is advisable to concentrate on making it known more than on the sale itself, such as free promotions or offering discounts. Now,  the business of free ebook promotion websites is not what it used to be. Some pages have had to close, and others have to change direction to adapt to Google’s new restrictions on affiliate links and by Amazon. Google wants to remove from the results pages based exclusively on external links and that do not offer original content.

For its part, Amazon is closing in on websites promoting free ebooks by restricting its affiliate program to give paid ebooks a boost. It means that it will not be as easy to provide visibility to your ebook in this way as it was before. In any case, pages like free ebooks can help you give your book the push it needs in its first steps.

As the name suggests, these websites will not promote your ebook if it is not accessible, at least during a promotion like those Amazon allows you to do through its KDP Select program. We advise you to plan the advertising leaving enough time for the website to handle your request. It includes taking into account weekends, etc. Still, if you don’t get the expected response, don’t give up. An alternative is to contact blogs that may be interested in talking about your ebook. This strategy is also advantageous if you already have an ebook published for a long time but want to start a new free promotion to encourage sales.

Launch your Website:

Having a blog about your ebook or related to the book’s subject can give your work a lot of visibility. Think of a reader who sees the cover, interested in the plot, but does not know you. A website can give you confidence and consolidate the reputation of your publishing project. Make sure you have links to all the distribution channels of your ebook. The downside is that if you use affiliate identification codes, Internet users using Adblock on Google Chrome will not see the links.

Publish your Work on Many Platforms and Formats:

Why limit yourself to Amazon when your potential readers are also on Google play or Nookpress? The first thing is to know where our audience is and ensure that our ebook is in all possible channels. It does not mean that you always have to be everywhere. Sometimes you will be interested in being in one place. For example, Amazon offers authors its KDP Select program. They agree to sell their work exclusively on its platform and include it in a library fund in exchange for receiving money for loans made.
These are some of the leading platforms where you can sell your ebook and the main aspects to take into account:

Amazon:

You can benefit from access to a large readership through the Kindle device. The range of profits per sale is 70% if your ebook’s price is higher than $ 2.99 and 30% if it is lower. The KDP select loan program fund is a tempting option. Now, you must evaluate your ebook’s possibilities very well because registering for it requires publishing exclusively in the Amazon store for 90 days. Also, getting your book to be borrowed in the Spanish market is not as easy as in the Anglo-Saxon market because it has much less push at the moment.

Google Play:

Considering that Android, Google’s operating system, has a majority market share in tablets and smartphones, in addition to having the leading search engine as a backup, it is an excellent option to consider. The problem is that Google Play can sometimes apply a discount on ebooks (and not a small one). To prevent anyone from selling a title cheaper than them, Amazon will probably write to you to politely ask you to lower the price, which will impact your earnings on that platform. In short, being on Google Play could be detrimental to your Amazon strategy, according to some publishers’ experiences.

Smashwords:

The main advantage of this ebook distribution platform is being able to publish from the same place in several stores (Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, etc.), as well as having total control over the prices of your works with benefits of between the 60 and 85% on the price.

Nook press: Formerly called Pubit !, the Barnes & Noble ebook platform is intended as a tool for creating, publishing and distributing ebooks, where authors can write, edit and sell their works from the same place. Profits per sale are 40% for securities below $ 2.99 or above $ 9.99. Between both prices, the ‘royalties’ amount to 65%, slightly below Amazon.

Bubok:

This ‘made in Spain’ book publishing website offers publishing services to publish physical books and ebooks on demand. Although it is focused on traditional publishing, it also allows digital editions. Bubok’s commission is 20% on each sale.

Booktango:

This distribution platform offers authors ‘ royalties’ of 100% of sales. As a complement, it provides you with a series of paid editing services.

Create your Promotional ‘kit’:

Put yourself in the shoes of who will promote your book. What material do you need? Have a series of essential contents prepared, such as a photograph of yourself (that is good), a suggestive image of the book, a press release with a few quotes from the author, etc. Not only will it save you time later, but it will give you an image of professionalism.

Plan your Presence well on Social Networks and Forums:

Social networks are a great instrument to give your project visibility, and remain careful. They are not a direct sales channel. It is advisable to be online long before publishing . The book and publicize your work and professional profile, which will help generate interest later. The most important thing about networks is that they allow us to be close to our readers and interact with them. The same applies to forums. There is nothing worse than interrupting a conversation of interest in a meeting to sell our ebook.

Participants could interpret it as an intrusion, achieving the opposite effect. It remain advisable to use only the signature footer and work on the longer-term interest, for example, posting creative content like this. You can encourage your potential reader participation by previewing information about the ebook, sharing cover designs or experiences from the writing process. One of the best strategies to make living selling ebooks is to plan a multi-instalment editorial project and write at least the first two. In combination with a social media promotion plan, I  can help build buzz and a growing reader base. For example, you can use SlideShare as a means to promote your content.

Take Care of Criticism:

If you want others to promote your ebook, make sure that your part of the work is well done. Not only that the ebook is of quality, but that you attend to the criticisms of the readers and take good note of them. Some say that readers make opinions for readers. But authors can also extract valuable information. For example, if many readers talk about a problem in the book, listening to them will allow you to act quickly and correct it. Of course, there will be bad reviews, some disrespectful. Still, if the work is of quality and corrects the errors rapidly, those comments will be anecdotal among the positive opinions.

These tips will help give your project visibility, but they will not make you millions in three. The extraordinary thing about posting online is that we don’t have to measure success just by the work’s income. Whereas before publishing and distributing a paper book required a significant investment, today it is available to everyone, at least when it comes to money.

Yes, it is true that time is money and that writing a quality ebook requires dedication, but at least now we can make projects with a motivation other than economic reality. The important thing is to set your goal. Maybe you want to write an essay on a topic that interests you with no different motivation than social awareness. The only thing you propose is to generate traffic to a website where you develop more content around this topic. In this case, promoting your book for free or at a low price may be the most convenient option.

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