Are you considering writing a book?  If yes, are you going to self publish your Book online?

It’s often been said that each of us has a book inside. The good thing about writing an e-book, is that it can be only 20 pages long, so it’s worth thinking about. An e-book could be about an important skill that you have. I’m currently writing an e-book about the Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge and how professionals can use it to achieve success. Writing a good book is not easy. Promoting that good book is even harder. Most authors are not marketers, and herein lies one of the problems.

I plan to self-publish the e-book I’m writing, so I wanted to get tips on how to successfully promote it. I also have dreams of it being a runaway bestseller. Can’t blame a girl for dreaming, can you? I wanted to find good information on how to successfully self publish your book online. And I was also interested in learning how to promote your self-published book online. So, where do I start?

Do you believe in synchronicity?

Why I Decided to Read Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller by Richard McCartney

I usually don’t pay too much attention to Amazon book reviews. I like what I like. One of the things I’ve noticed, is that with the ease of leaving reviews, people can be very mean-spirited with their comments. There is a difference between an honest review and a mean spirited one. Anyway, I read an article in Amazon Book Reviews about the book, The Bestseller Code (affiliate link), that presents a formula for a bestselling novel. I was intrigued, so I clicked on the Amazon link.

I read the reviews, some of which were very thoughtful, insightful, and had some good points. I decided I wouldn’t be investing in the Bestseller Code just yet. I like to read books for myself, so I may buy The Bestseller Code down the road. But while on Amazon, I noticed Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller (affiliate link) and decided to buy it. It had several five star reviews and was much cheaper. My thinking is that if the book didn’t deliver on its big promise, I made only a small investment.

 What is “Why I Decided to Read Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller” About?

The book is about what it says in the title. It’s often been said, that you don’t know what you don’t know. And I’m glad that I decided to invest in a copy of Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller. There were many things I didn’t know that I needed to know about promoting an e-book.

I want to say up front that Richard McCartney also uses the book to promote the services he offers on his website, KindleBookPromotions.com. And that’s very smart of him to use the book as his calling card. What he did well, that many people who write books to promote their business, is to deliver on his promise of providing insider knowledge on self-publishing.

Richard McCartney did not dish up all his secrets, and that can be expected. I paid $4 for Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller, so that would be unreasonable of me to expect all his secrets for that investment of money.

One of the things that I found interesting in Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller, is that Richard McCartney highly recommends that you use a book subscription service to help you promote your book. I know about book subscription services. And in fact, I subscribe to BookBub and Digital Book Today. Each day, I download a lot of the free books, and I purchase some of the books in the email. When I read a book that’s a part of a series, and it’s well written and enjoyable, I will buy all the books in the series. I have discovered many good authors that way.

I am saying all of this because it’s important, and about reader behavior. Many readers will download a book, simply because it’s free. Of those you download an e-book for free, a large percentage won’t ever read it. Of those who actually read the book, the majority will never write a review for the book, even if they thoroughly enjoyed the book.

If you decide to write an e-book and want to use a book subscription service, what the service offers, has to align with your purpose for going that route to promote your self-published book online. And keep in mind about reader behavior. Do you want the wrong readers downloading your book? Or do you want a targeted audience? Who is your ideal reader, and which book subscription service has that audience?

Self Publish Your Book Online: Ways That Readers Find Books

Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller reports that there are six primary ways that readers find books.

1. “They search for an author or book title they are already interested in. This can be done as easily from their Kindle device as from a computer, iPad, or Smartphone while browsing in the Amazon store.

2. They browse through the Top 100 Best Sellers on Amazon; usually in the book categories they like most.

3. They look at the Hot New Releases section on Amazon.

4. They see a book in the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section.

5. They browse through the book categories they like on Amazon. So if you are a reader of Historical Romance novels, you will probably buy other books from the same genre.

6. They use the autocomplete suggestion in the Amazon search box.”

According to the author, most readers use option one when they know the name of the authors. And this is usually the case for well-known authors such as James Patterson, Stephen King, and JK Rowling. In Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller, Richard McCartney recommends that you focus on the other five categories. In other words, you’ll focus on the following:

1. The Top 100 Best Seller lists
2. The Hot New Releases
3. The “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section
4. The best eBook category for your book
5. The autocomplete search results

And in his book, he tells you how to achieve those goals, many of which will take a lot of time and effort. For the e-book that I’m writing, I wouldn’t use a subscription service because of the length of the book. It’s going to be about 20 pages. But more importantly, my book is promoting a free service, the Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge, and it doesn’t make financial sense for me to use a paid service to promote it. However, for other books, I would use a subscription book service. The point is, you have to consider your situation, then decide if such a service makes sense for you. The bottom line is that if you want readers to find your e-book, you have to get on Amazon’s radar. And how do you do that?

Self Publish Your Book Online: 3 Promotions to Run Over a 30-Day Period to Get on Different Amazon List

If you decide to do your own book promotion, follow the simple strategy below that Richard McCartney recommends.

1. A full price book promotion (targeting the Best Seller lists)
2. A discount book promotion (offering your book at $ 0.99)
3. A free book promotion (to get the maximum number of downloads)

Further Reading

Book Promotion Sites Ranked & Rated Part 1: AwesomeGang, FussyLibrarian, Ereader News Today, EBookSoda, ReadCheaply, BookBub

Promote Self-Published Book Online: eBook Marketing Quadrant

I loved the eBook Marketing Quadrant that Richard McCartney presents. You can use it to decide which book subscription service to use.

How to Make Your Book an Amazon Bestseller

There are three critical ingredients needed if you want your book to become an Amazon bestseller.

1. Sales
2. Fair number of review
3. Decent book cover

When you publish your e-book, you have to promote it to stimulate sales, and you have to get honest reviews. One of the points in the book, which is a subtle, but an important one, is to focus on reviewers. Most authors, and book promotion experts, are so focused on getting reviews, that they fail to target the right audience.

But when you shift the mindset, and target reviewers instead, they will write honest reviews because that’s what they do and enjoy. This is what traditional publishing houses and PR firms do. I know because I use to get targeted a lot. But I don’t read as many unsolicited books because of my Read the World Extreme Reading Challenge.

So how do you find reviewers for your book? There are some Facebook groups for that. And there is Amazon’s Top Customer Reviewers.

Is Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller Worth the Read?

Yes, Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller is worth the read. If you’re are someone who is interested in learning how to self publish your book online, or how to promote a self-published online, or self publishing books online, or how to promote self published e-books, you’ll find valuable information to immediately use.

There are lots of information that I have not mentioned such as making sure your e-book is in the right categories, and using the correct keywords so your book gets found. The other thing I found intriguing is interpreting how a rank on Amazon translates into sales. Richard McCartney recommends that you use the formulas cautiously, and lets you know why. The book is definitely worth the read.

5 Big Ideas from Self-Publishing: The Secret Guide to Becoming a Best Seller

1. Consider book subscription services to promote your Kindle book.
2. Find a way to get your book on Amazon’s radar (Get on Best Seller List and Hot New Releases)
3. Take care when choosing the category for your e-book.
4. Focus on getting reviewers to read and write an honest review of your book.
5. For your e-book to become a best seller, sales, fair number of reviews, and a decent cover are the most important things.