Visibility equals book sales. That’s a pretty strong statement, but it’s true. Think about it–the more people who see your books, and the more times they see your books, the higher the chance is that they’ll purchase. That’s true especially if the people who are seeing your books are your target reader.
But how do you gain that visibility and ensure that the folks who are seeing your books are the ones who are most likely to buy them? In this article, we’ll take a look at 7 tips you can use to increase your visibility and, therefore, your conversions.
Tip 1: Get an Attractive Cover
This is an important step in gaining visibility and is often glossed over. The truth is, your cover is your first touchpoint with a potential reader–and they will judge it first before reading your description or peeking at the ‘Look Inside’ of your book.
That means you should try to get your cover to:
- Match the other covers in your market. There will be a lot of bestsellers in your market and you’ll probably notice that they use similar cover designs. Take note of this and try to emulate the colors or designs so you’re as close to what your readers expect for your genre as possible.
- Entice your reader to buy by wowing them. Once you know what elements your cover needs to have, hire a professional designer or use a service like BookBrush or Canva to create one for yourself. All that matters is that the cover is on brand, to market, and draws readers in.
Just take a look at a sample selection of bestselling clean romance covers:
It’s simple to spot the trends and take advantage of them to better position your book for its intended market.
Tip 2: Write a Great Blurb/Book Description
After your book cover, the greatest selling tool at your disposal is your book description. That might not be music to your ears–most authors (myself included) have day-mares about writing up the book description for their books. How are you supposed to condense that much plot into such a small paragraph?
You’re not. The purpose of your book description is to entice rather than just delivering all the information in one big wall of text. Using power words for your genre is a great way to optimize your blurb for the market you’re trying to target.
Take a look at the top books in your genre and read their blurbs. Note down what tropes and elements they’re focusing on in their descriptions then try to implement them in your book description too.
If you’re feeling a little lost, check out How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis by Bryan Cohen. It’s a great book that will help you figure out what you’re doing wrong so you can sell more books.
Tip 3: Use the Correct Kindle Keywords
Kindle keywords are the keywords that readers type into the search bar on Amazon. These are phrases you want your book to show up for. So, if you’re writing epic fantasy, some of the keywords you want your book to rank for might be ‘epic fantasy coming of age’ or ‘epic fantasy romance’ depending on the content of your book.
Kindle keywords are one of my favorite things to talk about–they’re an amazing optimization tool. That’s why I created Publisher Rocket, a keyword research tool that helps authors find the least competitive keywords that will bring them the most return, both for their Kindle metadata and their Amazon ads.
But how do you get your book to show up for your Kindle keywords? When creating your book in your KDP dashboard, you place your well-searched, least competitive keywords in the 7 empty blocks provided. See below…
If you want to check out a more complete guide on keyword research, check out this resource–it will show you how to research keywords without using a paid tool.
Tip 4: Get More Reviews!
It might seem underrated, but getting reviews on your books provides social proof that your book is popular and worth reading.
The prospect of getting reviews often stresses authors out. It’s like the chicken-and-egg conundrum–you can’t get reviews if you don’t have a readership, and you can’t get a readership if you don’t have reviews. But that’s not necessarily true. There are great tools you can use to connect with readers and get the reviews you need, all within Amazon’s Terms of Service.
- You can use BookSprout. This is a paid tool that will connect you with ARC readers–who are all voluntarily leaving a review of your book once it’s live.
- You can build your own ARC team. This might take a little extra time as you’ll need to build your mailing list first (see Tip number 6 for more information on this) but it’s well worth the effort. You’ll never have to worry about getting reviews again. It’ll be easy to send them directly to a review link for your book.
- Write a good book. That’s how you truly get reviews–write a book that people enjoy reading so much, they want to come back and give it a review to help you out.
- Ask for them. In the back matter of your book, put a little message asking readers to leave their review (no incentive of course).
Once you’ve got reviews, sales will come a little easier, and that means more visibility and even more sales.
Tip 5: Update Your Browse Categories
This is a hot tip that a lot of authors are often surprised by–that’s why I’ve been putting the word out high and low about this.
When you initially select your categories in your KDP dashboard (while creating your book) you’re only offered a select few to choose from, and you can only place your book in two.
But what you might not know is that you can list your book in up to 10 browse categories. All you have to do is contact Amazon via Author Central about this, and tell them the categories you want to place your book in.
This will take a little research on your part–you’ll need to figure out which category strings your competitors are in, which are providing the most sales and visibility, and which are the least competitive for you. But it can be very worth your time.
Tip 6: Build Your Mailing List
In order to get more visibility for your books, you need to make every launch better than the last one. Having a mailing list of superfans to send to your book page on launch day will equal higher sales that will, in turn, push your book up the ranks in those 10 browse categories you selected above. And since your cover is perfectly aimed at the market after your research, it’s more likely to stick up there as more and more readers who are looking for a book like yours buy it.
Sounds like the dream, doesn’t it? It’s exactly what will happen when you build your mailing list.
Here’s how:
- Create a reader magnet for sign-ups. Place a sign up in the backs of your books so readers will see that they can get their free resource upon signing up to your mailing list. Make it easy for them to click right on their eReader to sign up.
- Mail your list once a week at least. Try not to be spammy by mailing them constantly, but don’t leave them by the wayside after only email when you release a book. Try to find a nice balance.
- Provide value. Give your mailing list snippets about your life or information they wouldn’t have otherwise received if they hadn’t signed up. Make being on your mailing list worth their while.
Check out Tammi Labrecque’s Newsletter Ninja for some helpful tips on better grow your list!
Tip 7: Try Ads
When all else fails (and especially when it succeeds) it’s time to check out paid options for increasing visibility for your books. Facebook and Amazon ads will help you target new readers in your genre and push your book up in the rankings as a result.
Amazon Ads might seem intimidating at first, but Sponsored Product ads rely on keyword research, just like the type you did for your Kindle keywords above. They’re pretty simple to understand and to experiment with–you can start with a budget of $5 a day when creating them and turn them off at any time.
Here are a few quick and easy resources for learning more about Amazon ads and how to use them to gain visibility:
- Dave Chesson’s free Amazon Ads course.
- Mastering Amazon Ads by Brian Meeks.
- Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ad School.
Final Thoughts
Increasing your visibility will help you reach new readers and build your author brand, as well as giving you more sales. With these 7 tips, you should have the basis for a good start. Best of luck!