What does it take to get a kindle book on the Bestseller list?

I've had books on the bestsellers list and there is no set timetable...it totally depends on the type of book, your category, how many other books there are that are in the same genre as yours, how you market yourself, and what kind of following you have as an author.

In terms of activities, the #1 piece of advice I can give you is to build your author brand. Create a blog and use social media to interact with your audience on a regular basis.

Create free snippets of your books to entice potential readers.

Build up a list and communicate with them on a regular basis.

Format your book correctly, choose the right cover, keywords, book title, and category that your book is listed in.

Once you publish your book(s), promote yourself in non spammy ways and work on additional books as well.

It's not that hard to get a Kindle book on a specific bestseller list for a certain niche. This doesn't mean you will make a fortune on it, but you should sell copies regularly. In a way, it's similar to what you'd do to rank a website -you come up with a popular niche and keywords.

You can look at current bestsellers and get ideas for topics. Click on all the categories and subcategories. To have a bestseller, you only have to be in the Top 100 for at least one subcategory.

I'm sure having an email list in your niche would help. You can also do free book promotions, write articles, make videos, send press releases and use social media.

Well, a good idea is to pick a category with very little competition, so at least you can say you got a #1 ranking for that category. For my best seller, I ran a 2 day free promotion through KDP Select and got almost 5000 downloads. That really spiked my book up on the Amazon radar and today it's still selling pretty well.

You need good reviews, lots of them.

Just do as you do for website to rank : social, create a blog to link to your Book , squidoo, hub web2.0 , video on YT and more video sites, give it away free for 2 days and get review , write review for other book on the same niche and insert a link to your book ( yes you can do that , just search amazon to find out ) if you have a list ask them to write review and to download the book on the 2 days free , yes a little work would do
good luck
Frank Moreno

Hhmm.. so if I understand it correctly from all the responses above, the way to get a Kindle book on the bestseller rankings is by targeting the right category/niche, and promoting it to get sales, wich will get the book in the bestseller rankings (depending on the amount of sales I need for that category to be placed in the bestseller rankings).

I'm not interested in the money from the book, just on the "Bestselling author authority" to my name, if I only need a certain amount of sales for my book to get it ranked on there, what is the best way to get those sales fast taking in account you have some money to invest in getting it ranked on the bestseller list? Paid traffic to the market seems to me like the fastest way to get it. What are your thoughts and suggestions?

Interestingly, I just spent almost 2 hours on the phone talking to one of my Mastermind members about this. Here's the facts, no matter what anyone says "bestselling" anything online comes down to 3 factors and 3 factors only:

- More traffic
- Better Conversions
-A great product

Just because it's on Amazon, doesn't make it any different. The fundamentals of business don't change. Just like whether you're in Africa, Asia, North America, South America or Europe - water consists of H20.

More practically, are you building a list of interested readers who you can "prelaunch" to? Here's an example. If you got 100 people on a mailing list, the minute you launch a book if just 5% of those people bought (and reviewed), you'd instantly get that pump you need to get traction on Amazon.

So that's traffic. The reviews no doubt will help with the conversions because of social proof (along with Likes). Finally, the product. Sometimes the market that we are in (ex. what you right about, what category your book is in, etc) - that can have a big effect.

We've seen our exclusive mastermind members get collectively 100,000+ downloads using some of the tactics described here.

Don't get distracted. Traffic (i.e. exposure to your Amazon sales page), Conversions (book reviews, likes, a good cover, a good title, etc) and a Solid product in the right market - is 99% of the battle.

Good luck!

There are certain ways to do this.

One would be to start a blog/website and build a list. If you write fiction then you could offer free short stories. The massive advantage of writing fiction here would be that these people become fans. Plus you wouldn't be sending them affiliate links, you would be giving them updates on upcoming titles as well as free stories.

This could be done for non-fiction also but would probably be more successful with fiction. (only when concerning Kindle)

You could ask then to join your list and offer a free book to do so, as they are fans they should jump at the chance. Every week you could send a newsletter that includes a short story and details of an upcoming book.

This way, on launch day, you should get a lot of sales. Besides that, these people will be fans and therefor likely to leave positive reviews.

Another option would be to write a series. First upload a book to Amazon but make sure not to upload it to KDP select. Once you have uploaded it there, upload it on another website for free. Message Amazon and let them know that it is free on another website for free. This way they will price match it and make it free.

Once that is done, you write the second book in the series. Charge a low price for this book also, 0.99c perhaps, to hook the readers in.

Then further books in the series you can charge a higher price.

The first 2 books in the series are essentially to gain fans.

If you were to both of these together, and write a kick-ass book, then you will eventually find your way to the bestsellers list.