Have you been wondering how to make more book sales on Amazon Kindle/KDP?

Authors, beware!

Have you self published your book, but you’re struggling to get sales? 

Professional Book Publishers and Indie Authors will tell you there are four phases to self-publishing:

• Text proofreading, editing, copyediting, and critique
• Book formatting, layout, and design
• Book upload and publishing
• Book promotion

Chances are, you have gotten one or more of the above phases wrong. 

Text Proofreading, Editing, Copyediting, and Critique

First is text proofreading, editing, copyediting, and critique. Look, let’s face it, no one wants to read a text full of typos, bad sentence structure, and even punctuation. I once read somewhere that “Punctuation saves lives”, and, oh yes, it does!

Imagine: “I ate Grandma,” instead of “I ate, Grandma”. The former simply screams WRONG without the punctuation!

In addition, I have seen a lot of self published and indie authors get bad Reviews on their books because it’s full of these types of errors. An excellent story can be ruined with very bad English, bad flow, bad sentence structure, redundancy, etc.

Even if you are a Native English speaker, it’s always a good idea to have another pair of eyes go through your text. You will be amazed at the number of errors an editor is able to catch; I mean very amazed! I once wrote a text, proofread and edited it three times, only to find someone else pointing out glaring errors I missed. I got so shocked and disappointed in myself. But I really shouldn’t have as it’s a ‘thing’ that the second pair of eyes will most likely catch something that you haven’t been able to. Some authors even find more glaring errors after the book has been printed.

Bottom line is, no matter how good you think your text has been written, you need a professional proofreader and editor to go through your text and catch the error you or your writer missed.

Book Formatting, Layout, and Design

The second factor, book formatting, layout, and design, surprisingly, can be the most important of all the factors. I say this because this is how your book looks and feels, the visual appearance, whether it be a print book or an e-book. Your font, page layout, margins, design, images, headers, sub-headers, titles, etc. Furthermore, book publishing platforms like Lulu, Amazon KDP/Kindle, Smashwords, B&N Press, IngramSpark, etc. require different and more specific formats. All these details make up what an expert book formatter does.

You want not only the right format for your book but also an excellent format that ensures ease for readers.

Book Upload and Publishing

Now, let’s talk about book upload and publishing. This is simple, if you got the book formatting and layout right, this phase can be seamless. Hence, why I said Book Formatting can be the most important of all phases.

For example, Amazon Kindle requires either a KPF or ePub file format for eBook during upload. You need to get your ebook in either of these formats to have a successful upload. If you are publishing a print book, Amazon has some set guidelines for how your paper size, margins, bleed, etc. should be after you have had it formatted; this is all so your book comes out looking good and professional when printed.

The above are just examples, as other book publishing platforms have separate requirements. Let’s say you are looking to publish on as many platforms as possible; you need not worry about all these. All you need is a good print book and ebook formatter to get your book in the right shape and condition for upload and publishing.

Do you struggle to carry out uploads yourself? You can also hire Book Publishing Companies to take care of this for you.

Book Promotion

This is where actual sales of your book are made, and this is where these Digital Marketers you have always ignored come in!

There are many ways you can get an excellent and standard promotion for your book. You can either hire a Digital Marketer, or use some of the Advertising tools available in the platform you published your book. Let’s take Amazon Kindle as an example. They offer numerous promotional offers to their Authors like KDP Select or Amazon Advertising for custom Ads. Take advantage of these offers. The only disadvantage to this is the Ads will be limited to just that platform; for example, if you run an Amazon Ad, you only get visibility on Amazon. However, Digital Markers can increase your visibility on many other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc.

Keep in mind that a Digital Marketer’s main focus is getting people to see your book. Your book converting into sales will depend on how well you have carried out the first three phases as described. 

You also want to make sure your book is relevant, engaging, and even controversial. Yes, I said controversial! I give this information for free, books that bring controversy, getting people talking about it, whether positively or negatively, simply leads to more sales. You don’t want to overdo this, though, so your book publishing platform does not reject your book.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, you need professionals to carry out these phases described for you. Sure, it’s an investment, but it’s definitely an investment you want to make if you want your book to be as successful as it can be. I mentioned Julia Edits a lot because there are services on that page that cover almost all of these phases, and with over 600 positive reviews from authors, over 500 indie authors worked with to get their books successfully published, Julia Edits comes highly recommended. Click here for more details on the services and packages available for you and your book.   

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