How to Sell More Books on Amazon by Increasing Your Book's Visibility

Dana Lynn Smith, well known to most authors who spend time social networking, is guest blogging for me today. I have read her e-book on marketing online and highly recommend it. It's very complete. I follow her on Twitter, too!

By Dana Lynn Smith

A good way to sell more books on Amazon is to increase your book's visibility in the Amazon search results.

Amazon.com customers typically search for books by author, title, or keyword. Like search engines, Amazon uses several criteria in deciding which products to display on the search results page and in what order to display them. Popularity (the number of books already sold on Amazon) and how well the book matches the keywords are major factors in determining the results of keyword searches.

The more books you sell on Amazon, the more books you will sell in the future, because your book will appear higher in the search results. In addition, many customers assume that the best-selling book must be the best one on the topic.

One way to increase your book's popularity, and therefore its search results placement is to direct all of your online book orders to Amazon.com rather than offering links to several online bookstores or selling directly to consumers.

It's also important to make sure your book matches popular search terms entered by customers. If your book is not yet published, you can add important keywords to the book's title and subtitle. Some publishers use long subtitles in order to pack in as many keywords as possible.

To capitalize on keyword searches, enter important keywords or "tags" into Amazon's Search Tag feature. About halfway down your book's page on Amazon, look for "Tags Customers Associate with This Product." Add a check mark next to existing tags and add new tags by entering keywords in the little box below.

Word order matters, so create different search tags with variations on your most important keywords. You can personally submit up to ten search tags for your book. If you have additional tags to enter, ask a colleague to enter some for you.

Another way to increase your popularity on Amazon.com is do a virtual book tour or an "Amazon best-seller campaign," designed to push up your Amazon sales rank by generating a large number of orders on a single day.

There are a number of other ways to sell more books on Amazon, including getting lots of good book reviews on Amazon, writing reviews of other related books, participating in the Look Inside program, enhancing your book description, participating in Amazon forums for your book's topic, and creating Listmania lists and So You'd Like To guides.

For a more in-depth look at how to sell more books on Amazon, I recommend reading Aiming at Amazon, by Aaron Shepard.

Author Biography:

Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of the Savvy Book Marketer Guides. For more tips, follow @BookMarketer on Twitter, visit Dana's blog at www.TheSavvyBookMarketer.com, and get a copy of the Top Book Marketing Tips e-book when you sign up for her free newsletter at www.BookMarketingNewsletter.com.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

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