Get 4,000+ Downloads of Your Kindle Book in One Day [How To]

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It’s been said that writing your book is only 10% of the battle while the remaining 90% is promoting it. If you have written a book and self published it, but don’t have a strategy to get your book noticed, then this post is specifically for you. I will be cover strategies and tactics for promoting your book on Amazon.

amazon

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select

I won’t spend much time on this part, but some may not know about the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program. The KDP Select program is Amazon’s plan for growing their lending library, so that Kindle owners, who are also Amazon Prime members can download books at no charge. If you agree to enroll in their program you will get paid a split of a pool that KDP has every month based on some fancy calculator work.

Here is where it gets good!

In exchange for giving your book away for free, you will also get 5 promotional days to sell your book on Amazon for free, every 90 days. You must agree to not sell your book anywhere else (including your website), during the contract period.

Why would I give my book away for free?

If you do well in the free promotional days, your book will rise up in the free rankings. If you do well in the free rankings, it will also rise up in the paid rankings. Therefore your book becomes more visible to people searching for books to read on Amazon. You get your name out there, and you can build your email list at the same time. I have used this strategy to sell my book, and I have almost doubled my email list.

I have not only used this strategy for myself to give away almost 10,000 copies of my book, but I have shared it with some other fairly unknown authors like Ryan Brewer. Ryan gave away 2,600 copies of his book in one day! While I can’t promise huge revenues from your book, I can tell you I have made $60 to $200 dollars per month for several months.

How To Promote Your Book

You’ll find some good nuggets in this video to get your book noticed and promote what you are doing beyond your book. There are many groups online, such as this DIY e-Publishing group, that you should check it out.

What’s your best idea for promoting a book?

Tony Elam is the best Dad in the world, voted #1 three years in a row by his two daughters. He shares online strategies to help you work in your business not on it. Connect with Tony on Twitter @findingforward.

Posted on October 4, 2012

  • http://www.selfemployedmoneymanagement.com/ Ryan Eidson

    Whoa, great tips from that video! I knew about KDP but didn’t know about those other items. I’m launching the second edition of my book in November, so this is great to incorporate into my strategy! Thanks

  • http://coachradio.tv/ Justin Lukasavige

    No kidding, Ryan. I’ll be using these tips soon as well.

  • http://findingforwardmotion.com Tony Elam

    Ryan that’s exciting!  Will you do me a favor, and let me know how you do?  Also there are a ton more like this that I keep finding. I would like to hear from others about their experiences  and with more popular subjects than mine.

  • AJ

    Nice! This is a great post and video! I will definitely use a few of these strategies and share the vid with a few author friends!

  • http://www.selfemployedmoneymanagement.com/ Ryan Eidson

    Sure, I’ll send you some results after launch. It’s a financial book, Money Management for Cross-Cultural Workers.

  • http://www.facebook.com/ryan.brewer3 Ryan Brewer

    When I first signed up for KDP, I had no idea how to really promote my book besides on facebook, twitter, etc. And I ran a free promotion for 3 days and I gave away only 281 books. At the time I thought it was pretty good. I have been talking with Tony and I have learned a lot. The next time I ran a promotion for just one day I gave away almost 2,700 and sold 10. I can’t wait to do my next promotion. I have some new stuff to try also. 

  • http://lifestoked.com Deacon Bradley

    This is awesome Tony! I know a guy who turned his mailing list giveaway book into a kindle book and mentioned something about Amazon’s restrictions during the promotional period. Basically, he ended up taking it off his website as a free giveaway. I’ve been interested in turning my pdf ebook into a Kindle book, but I still really need it for my mailing list. Does this sound right to you or did I misunderstand?

    Congrats on the book! Very cool!

  • http://findingforwardmotion.com Tony Elam

    Yeah you are not supposed to offer it anywhere else in any manner.  You are not even supposed to take previous blog posts and make a book from what I understand.  But that’s exactly what I did!  I had it in mind to blog my book ever since I had read 37 signals.  I didn’t bother to check the rules.  I have had it up almost 8 months and am just finding out this rule.  I haven’t heard anything from Amazon though.  I will tell you my final book looks quite a bit different than the blogs, but I even used a WordPress plugin to pull it in.  I might go back and take them down however from the site.  Let me know when you get it up, or if you need any help getting yours together.

  • http://www.suttonparks.com/ Sutton Parks

    Thanks for telling me about this Tony!  My  first Kindle promotion gave out 1,800 books in 5 days.  This last one gave out 6,256 just today!  I think it is because it was chosen by Pixel of Ink.  I don’t know how that happened, but after watching the video I’ve submitted it to several websites.  Thank you!

  • http://tonyelam.com/ Tony Elam

    You are welcome Sutton!!  Also for you next promotion let’s say that you do a one day promo, you will want to tell them a week before, and some are the day of.  I am not certain but I think Pixel of Ink prefers a month advance.  They must have liked your book and picked it up on thier own. Like I said from what I have read, and my own experience you are doing above average.  Great stuff!