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How to Organize a Successful Kindle Book Launch
Just wanted to give you a quick update for 2015. I've officially taken on a sponsor/partner for the show. Jim Kukral of the Author Marketing Institute (or you may know better the Author Marketing Club) reached out and wondered if I'd be interested in being a part of the new podcast network for authors he's setting up. To quote Jim, "We love your podcast at AMI and we want to help you promote it through our network. Authors need more great content like this."
So welcome Jim and AMI to the podcast moving forward. To learn more about Jim and the Author Marketing Institute just go to www.authormarketinginstitute.com.
Let's get to my guest.
Chandler Bolt's a young hustling entrepreneur who ran $320k in businesses by age 20. He's written 3 book best selling books and he now works with aspiring entrepreneurs, speakers & coaches to help them go from book idea to bestseller in 3 months through his online program, Self-Publishing School.
Chandler Bolt considered himself a pretty horrible writer until he got started. He wrote a book with a friend and went from book idea to Amazon bestseller in 2,5 months.
Follow a 3 step process that makes book writing process easier
- Mind map - write the book idea in the center and branch off further and further
- Outline - organize group of thoughts in chapters & sections
- Write - follow the outline and write it up
The above-mentioned process helps writing quickly but in organized way.
When you go through the mind map process you realize how much you've got to say about the topic.
Launch strategy (free to paid model)
1. Prepare in advance
Try to involve people in the launch of the book before it is released. Chandler and his friend gave early pdf copies, they had people vote for the cover. The more people get involve the higher the possibility that they will help you out during the launch. Do personal reach outs, ask for reviews, set deadlines. Thank people for feedback.
Set goals (eg. we want x reviews by xxxx).
You can also build a pre-release list. Set up a simple landing page to capture e mails and inform them when the book is released and is free.
2. Have the book for free for the first 2-3 days of the launch (the goal is to get to the top of the charts)
Free and paid charts are totally exclusive. But what you do have is a 3 hour time window, when your book switched from free to paid. That is the money time. That is the time, when your book shows on the top of the free charts but it is actually paid. It takes couple of hours for Amazon to switch your book over. So if you do your job really well and have your book high up the charts that can help your transition into paid.
3. Manually stop the free promotion in the middle of the day
What many people do is they let Amazon to automatically switch your book over to paid.That happens at the 12PM Pacific, which is at night for other US areas. We don't want that to happen in the middle of the night when no one buys books. That is why it is advised to stop it manually at more convenient time.
4. Set the price of the book after the free promo for the 99 cents
Chandler sets his book's price to 0.99 after the free period. He suggests keeping that price for about a week.
5. Set the book book price to its usual one
Biggest challenges newbie writers face
- Nailing in on what they want to write about (mind map process helps a lot with that).
- Being specific. (They get too broad and think that by being specific they will cut off big part of the audience, which is not true)
- Pushing publish (...because people get fear of rejection + don't know what to do to make their book a success)
[spp-tweet "If you do few things really well you can screw up a lot of other stuff and your book will still do well."]
Important issues
Right positioning
Pick the right category. Pick a topic that sells and be specific!
Around 60% of the book sales go to the top 3 spots
So it is crucial to get into those 3 spots. How? Choose keywords that have been searched often and that aren't very competitive. Make sure you have 5-10 reviews on the book launch day.
Focus more than only on the initial book launch week
Food For Thought
Book is not just a book. It is a key that can unlock a lot of other things.
Don's focus on the book royalties, focus on building a business off of it instead.
A book is a tool - you can leverage your book to grow your business like crazy.
A book is like a full-time salesman that you have on staff.
The biggest mistakes is try to do everything. Keep it simple. You know what you're good at, so stick to that.
Just put it out there. Just hit publish.
[spp-tweet "Don't try to perfect the product, just finish the process!"]
Useful Links
Chandler Bolt's Amazon author page
