effective kindle promotion techniques?

One of the most effective techniques is building your author brand. People don't like that one as much because it takes hard work, time, and effort...but it WORKS!

There are many other big and small things you can do and there are numerous good threads on here where you can find some good information...

For starters, you can:

Publish multiple books making 1 free and the others paid
Use the KDP program
Get (legit) book reviews
Create a book trailer and post on Youtube/social media

Those are a few ideas, I am sure others will jump in to add more

Promoting Kindle e-books is similar to online promotion. Marketing tactics such as blogging, social networking, guest posting on other blogs, virtual book tours, online book reviews, videos, and joint ventures can all be used in promoting Kindle ebooks. Be sure to add a link to your Kindle e-book sales page on your network profiles, websites, email signature and other places online.

Kindle e-book promotion can also be done directly on the Amazon website.

Thanks for the responses.

I do already have 3 genuine reviews and it is signed up to KDP. I hadn't thought of the trailer so good point.

I think I am realising that promoting kindle is as much a minefield as promoting anything else - I just thought I could get rid of a lot of the guesswork/hoping for the best.

I don't write fiction and I suspect it's much harder to gain traction with until you have a fan base. For non-fiction, my most successful tool is the free promotions through KDP select. I rarely blog, tweet or otherwise. I do occasionally post book notes on my Facebook page and my main business/publishing website.

All of my books have a link to my Amazon author profile page at the end. Most of them also have links to related topic books at the end as well.

Sidenote: As an avid reader I have to admit I'm curious about the effectiveness of book trailers. I actively avoid them because movies/ images ruin my enjoyment of a fiction book. A large part of my reading pleasure comes from the images created in my own mind. I know authors think the trailers are really cool but I can't help wondering if the readers agree.

You know, I haven't done much with kindle by I imagine some sections in the classified might get you some good targeted traffic. Worth a shot for sure.

Find an active science fiction forum or two (or 10) and become a contributing member there. If your book is good and you do a good job of (occasionally) promoting yourself, people will enjoy being able to interact with an author and it will help drive sales. It's not a quick and easy way to promote your book, but you can build up a fan base this way. Just don't go into the forum tooting your own horn too much at first.

Amazon also has a Meet the Authors section in their forums. I haven't tried using it yet, but it might help to add your book. Here's a link to the Meet the Authors forum on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/forum/meet%20our%20authors

Social media can work wonders. Hang out with fans of your genre and build up a following on Twitter, etc. Also I think video marketing is super effective, so doing a book trailer is a great idea.

I don't read much science fiction but when I did a search on facebook science fiction there were some fan and community pages with lots of members. Also, you might want to make your description a little bit longer on your amazon page. Gifting it to people can also be effective as then you may have more reviews added .

Debbie

@Sandra Martinez - my book is science fiction so keyword optimisation of the title etc doesn't apply in this instance, but I do appreciate the time you took to give those links as they seem like they could be useful so thank you for that.

@GuruGazette - thanks for the response - 20XX is the start of a series so will link to my Twitter at the end of the next one.

@Nikita A Beriozkin - thanks for the response - do you mean the classified section in the Warrior Forum? i.e advertise it there for Warriors that like sci-fi?

@miklanderson2 - thanks for the response - I will try the meet the authors link

@BIG Mike - thanks for the response - how would you rate the Warrior Book Club? I don't need to know how to format a book, upload it etc it is just the promotion angle I am most interested in and at $40 I don't want to pay it to find out they just repeat the basics and not cover promotion.

@BoomBlogger - thanks for the response - I do have a Twitter following I started building and already have a few hundred followers who are authors/sci-fi fans so I can see the potential there over time.

@Yogini - thanks for the response. Yeah gifting seems like a good idea but I don't get that option either on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk so I will post on the KDP Forum and try to find out why.

@damienboyd - thanks for the response and no offence taken at all. The first guy did give it a poor rating but he is entitled to his opinion so I am going to try and get more reviews so hopefully people see the (hopefully) good/better ones first.

Try these things... Turn this into a book series ( your reviews even recommend it ) . Build a blog to market it. Create press releases and book trailers to promote both your blog and the books. Once you've created the next book in the series, make this book free as a starter. Market the second book for full price within it (2.99 or more).... There are tons of author forums that could offer you some advice on how to make a series profitable as quickly as possible. Oh and it doesn't have to be a long series.. you can do a trilogy instead.

You need to use top-rated SEO and advertising gigs at Fiverr. These guys know what they do and you will surely increase the rankings of your kindle ebook in Google for your most important keywords. You can also hire a ppc expert at Elance or Odesk.

One of the best ways to promote your book is to publish more books, as you publish more books your sales will take off.

Write and publish more than one book.

Link each book to the others - use "other books from this author" page in your book.

Check good authors in your genre and make a deal with them - you promote their books in yours, they promote yours in theirs.

thanks for the further feedback - I am currently working on the sequel to 20XX and hopefully I can improve on my writing style the more I do it.

@BIG Mike thanks for the advice - I contacted the owner of the Warrior Book Club and he advised the material is not ready for fiction in terms of promotion so I am going to wait until it is.

There is no evidence that 'Book Trailers' have any benefit to sales whatsoever, don't bother with them unless you plan on a mini-production, even then, it probably won't work. Focus on writing!