What’s Your Author IQ?
There are two types of first-time authors. Which type are YOU?
Type 1: You felt inspired to write your book. You wrote it. You published it. You saw zero sales and started researching book marketing because of that.
Hey, no need to feel ashamed, that’s how I started back in 2010 (except for the zero sales part).
Type 2: You’re aware that with over 6 million books available on Amazon you can’t expect to add to the list and become a number 1 best-seller… so you study book marketing before you hit publish.
I used to assume that most first-time authors belonged to the first group but I have been pleasantly surprised by the increasing numbers of aspiring authors joining my programs.
These writers are not just aspiring to become authors, they’re aspiring to become #1 Amazon Best-Selling Authors, like Simonne Holm.
How Simonne Became a #1 Amazon Best-Seller
Simonne came to me prepared. She knew what self publishing a book was about and she had already done a coaching session with a fellow author-coach. But she wasn’t feeling ready to launch.
So what did we do together? Two things.
Keywords and Categories.
1) Keywords: Simonne had already done her homework. She had already researched her keywords and she knew which ones would bring her at the top of Amazon’s search results.
So, together we completely rephrased her title to include those keywords in it. We also added them to her subtitle and description.
She declared her love for me immediately after 🙂
2) Categories: What we focused on here was to choose one narrow category in which Simonne would be able to become a #1 best-seller.
This did take some time and some clicking around but eventually we found that we had a chance in “Skin Ailments”.
We found that category was not available on Simonne’s KDP dashboard so we simply chose the category “unclassifiable” and contacted Amazon asking them to put her book under the category “Skin Ailments”.
Then it was a matter of driving traffic and getting reviews (both subjects for another post).
How You Can Became a #1 Amazon Best-Seller
Most authors I work with know the theory. You just saw it above. But reading about getting things done and actually doing them can prove to be two entirely different concepts.
If you want to have Simone’s success, You CAN. I will guide you through it.
I fit into type two and am so happy I found you Alinka because I have learned so much from you. There is always more to learn and I read with interest about the categories. While doing my research I had noticed there is a small category in which there is not a lot of competition. Having read the above article and your guide shown below, I now know what to do when I am ready to publish. I agree with your last comment re reading about things and doing them is two different concepts…with you as their mentor/coach every author has a better chance for success. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. Sheer genius!
Thank you, Lynda. Way to go finding one category where you can easily become #1! I recommend the second category to be a broader one that gets more searches – if you can be on the first page of that one (in the top 20) – that would be phenomenal!
Thanks Alinka for that advice. I will do that and – as they say – watch this space. 🙂 Lynda