The Best Kindle Marketing Strategies

Hey Broderick,
Congrats on your books! And congrats on realizing that your job as a self published author does not stop with the writing of your books. Promotion is about 90% of your success in my opinion

I write books in series to get the most bang for that small price that Kindle books go for. When I first started publishing books on Kindle, I was concerned I was wasting my time because they sell for such low prices. But I was wrong.

Writing in a series and interlinking my books gives your books so much more exposure. Amazon already provides you with a massive amount of traffic, and series selling gives you the most leverage for that traffic.

Bundle selling your series for a higher price also really helps.

The first steps I take are always using what Amazon already provides authors, such as Author Central, creating Listmanias, writing So You 'd Like To Guides, spicing up my descriptions by adding images and Amazon's orange font, running free promos to gain new audiences, choosing categories that are easy to break into the top 100, and placing opt in links inside my books to build lists of buyers.

Off Amazon promotion includes building a simple blog around your author ( yourself or your pen name), or your series, gaining Twitter followers interested in your genre, and using Facebook to gather "friends" in your genre. Social media, while it may seem tedious at first, really helps your books go viral.

Hope that helps.

Here are a few things that I've done to promote both fiction and nonfiction books, beginning with the actual publishing process:

Optimize your book listing
Just as you would optimize your website, you want to optimize your book's listing page. You get 7 keywords - use this space carefully. Do not include your author name: you are already optimized for that. Instead, focus on the most descriptive keywords possible. If you aren't sure what to use spend some time on Amazon manually entering in potential keywords. As you type, if it appears in the search bar, it's being used by buyers.

Optimize Your Account
Use Author Central to its fullest potential by including a list of your top books, a link to your website or blog and to your social media accounts. Provide a good description so that readers feel connected to you. Don't be afraid to be yourself (whether that's funny, crazy, or controversial. Just do it.)

Don't Overlook Front (And Back) Matter
Your book template should always be the same so create it once and just update it as needed (make sure to change it up if you use different pen names). Add in 4-6 links to other books that you've written, a link to your blog or website on the second page of your template so that it appears in the sample provided by Amazon. It's a great way to drive traffic to your website and it's free advertising...and yes, you can use affiliate links as well.

Become Active In Your Genre
Join KindleBoards.com and other forums that focus on self publishing and go a step further and find forums & groups in your specific genre. Network - join blog hops, book bombs (great way to get on 'also bought' lists!) - and reach out to readers as much as you can. Join GoodReads.com, Shelfari.com etc

Just a few quick things off the top of my head but it's a good place to start. Quite honestly, if you put some effort into building your brand right from the get-go, you'll need to do far less later on.

$2.99 books get you 70% commission (below that only 30%) so I say at that.

Can you be more specific please. Can people submit their ebook for free here do you mean?