The Only Way to Boost Your Book Sales on Amazon | Funny Writing Advice

hello good evening and welcome I'm John Lazarus with stories matter and DNA publishing Amazon a name synonymous with terrifying insects gigantic women who want to brutalize you sexually and a dystopian Mega corporation that forces workers to piss in bottles and like all of those things the Amazon Marketplace can be for a writer a harrowing experience that makes your testicles retract into your own body KDP or Kindle double penetration for short is the online platform where most unqualified writers submit their unedited and poorly thought out screeds about everything from geriatric homicide to Marine safety to wholesome family fun but most writers post a book on KDP and stop there going back to their normal life with their beautiful spouse and children as if that were worth anything they don't realize that with enough time and money and luck and time and experience and money and little bit of luck you can make the platform bring in some real cash we'll explore how to turn this Bezos brainchild from an exploiter into an exploitee on this edition of stories [Music] matter today's video is brought to you by bookshop.org this independent book seller partners with local bookstores and allows you to support your local bookstore with every purchase unlike some giant companies that have destroyed everything and made this country a complete [ __ ] hole bookshop.org supports true true artists Innovation and an America that isn't dominated by stupid [ __ ] nobody needs bookshop.org is also 100% carbon neutral which means the trees they they use to make the paper they're really old trees nobody wanted or something anyway visit bookshop.org for more information okay to succeed in the Amazon Marketplace you have to learn the ins and outs of the algorithm which decides how often and in what cont text perspective buyers see your book think of it like catfishing a lonely Widow whose husband died in a factory fire only you're relying on a stylish book cover positive reviews and enticing product description as opposed to Sharp cheekbones compliments and the Assurance of a vast knowledge of Osha guidelines let's break down ways to make the algorithm work for us step one use Amazon ads I'm not going to give the technical details on how to create an ad campaign on KDP there doesn't a video showing you how to do this on YouTube what I will tell you is this the first big mistake writers make is not devoting at least 10 grand to their marketing campaign in a future installment I'll show you ways to crowdsource and manipulate your way into ponying up this kind of cash but for the purposes of this video I'm going to assume that you already have an extra hundred Benjamins waiting around to be put to work you've got to be wise with how you advertise though Amazon ads for example don't let you use words like fck or damn or coms splattered twink and you have to make sure the ads are being shown to the right people ads are mainly based off of keywords you select which is why step two keywords are everything I want you to think of the kind of person who buys your book what else do they read what are their interests what do they look like now for me and for most of my career I knew that person to a te he liked Western and thrillers and was big into the fiction of LaMore Chandler and Elmore Leonard he was was a straight male divorced and living in a one-bedroom apartment in the suburbs of Indianapolis Indiana he was also depressed considered remembering to shave a good day and never wore a seat belt because well if he didn't have the courage to end it all he was at least going to give fate a stack deck now with this reader clearly in mind think of the terms they would use when searching for a book obviously you want genre terms like Thriller and action but also the book description should include phrases like child custody or homemade SSRI recipes besides the book description Amazon also lets you choose seven keywords to select for your book for this it's recommended you do at least one for setting for example late 500 Spain uh one for character types maybe sex positive farm girl and plot theme in this case live love laugh step three select your categories carefully this is a simple one but it's definitely one you can't overlook book by default you only get to place your book into two categories this can be tough if you're like me and write a lot of books that could be suspense Thrillers science fiction fantasy Western comedy drama Coming of Age queer steampunk erotic horror novels that also have a ton of great business advice you can actually personally contact Amazon to get six more categories because that's a normal and not stupid setup that totally makes sense still you have to ask yourself which genres normal readers will like my book best it might take some tweaking for example my courtroom drama hung jury didn't sell at all until I moved it to the queer category and redid the cover step four bring your own audience along when you launch a book on KDP you should already have a built-in audience that will be ready to buy it initial traffic from your biggest devotees will make your book appear in more searches contact fans any way you can fake social media stories about health scares will build sympathy and boost sales if you don't already have an audience create one think about reading to a local high school tell them you're a local author not worried about a background check just find one that's severely underfunded the teachers at these schools are underpaid and stressed out enough that they won't really care and even if the kids there spend most of their time doing whatever kids do these days like make memes about Israeli genocide or compl complain about how far away the abortion clinic is if you put enough cursing in your book it might just rekindle their love for literature and get you some new followers step five take advantage of Amazon giveaways it's never easy to give away something for free that's why I don't give money to charity after natural disasters and why I use special tax loopholes to write off my child support payments and normally people are skeptical of free things but books are a little different I mean look at libr and do so quickly before project 2025 turns the entire country into the handmaid's tail and closes all of them a free book giveaway can be great especially for authors who write Series this is a trick that time share salespeople and drug dealers have used a great effect for years once you get them hooked they'll pay whatever just to know the ending so long as you don't George R Martin the whole thing up you'll have a new fan for life here are five more simple steps to boosting your book sales on KDP step six fake celebrity endorsements and hire lookalikes to take photos holding a copy of your book step seven be a writer who's won a bunch of awards step eight get thousands of reviews somehow step nine with few exceptions your profile photo on your author page shouldn't show you brandishing a weapon step 10 write a book that people like that's all for today please don't forget to like and subscribe and I will leave you with this week's this day in literary history see you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Stories' Matter

Views: 271

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Id: k1gadw0i82w

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024