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How Australian book self-publishers can market their book on Amazon

How Australian book self-publishers can market their book on Amazon

clock - estimated reading time  Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Contents

1. Amazon Author Central
2. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
3. Kindle Unlimited
4. Amazon Advertising
5. Book Reviews and Ratings
6. Book Launch
7. Book Covers
8. Retail Book Pricing

There are over 200,000 books listed on Amazon.com.au. It is a great opportunity to self-publish your book on online. Marketing an Australian, self-published book on Amazon can be straightforward. Self-published authors can market their books on Amazon by utilizing several key features provided by the platform.

1. Amazon Author Central

This is a free tool that allows authors to create a profile, list their books, and provide information about themselves and their works. Amazon Author Central is a free platform for authors to manage their presence on Amazon.com. It allows authors to create a profile, list their books, and share information about themselves and their work with readers. Through Author Central, authors can also access sales data for their books, track their rankings, and receive notifications about customer reviews. The platform is available to any author with a book listed on Amazon.com.

2. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a self-publishing platform created by Amazon that allows authors and publishers to publish their books in digital format and make them available for sale on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and other devices. KDP offers a range of tools and resources to help authors format their books, set prices, and promote their work, as well as access to a global audience of readers. KDP is a free service, and authors can choose to make their books available for free or for a price, and will receive a percentage of the sale.

3. Kindle Unlimited

This is a subscription service that allows readers to read as many e-books as they want for a monthly fee. Self-published authors can opt-in to have their books included in this program, which can help increase visibility and sales.

 

4. Amazon Advertising

Self-published authors can use Amazon Advertising to promote their books on Amazon.com and other websites across the internet.

There are several ways to advertise your book on Amazon:

  1. Amazon Advertising: Amazon offers various advertising options, including sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads, and sponsored display ads. These ads are targeted to specific audiences and appear on various Amazon pages, such as search results and product detail pages.
  2. KDP Select: This program allows authors to offer their book for free for a limited time and also participate in the Kindle Countdown Deals program, where authors can offer their book at a discounted price for a limited time.
  3. Giveaways: Amazon allows authors to run giveaways for their book. This is a great way to generate buzz and increase visibility for your book.
  4. Product Listing Ads: These ads are targeted to specific audiences and appear on various Amazon pages, such as search results and product detail pages.
  5. Amazon Author Central: This is a free service that allows authors to claim their author page on Amazon and customise it with information about their books, author bio, and photos. This is a great way to increase visibility for your book and establish yourself as an author on Amazon.
  6. Amazon Influencer Program: This program allows authors to work with Amazon Influencers to promote their books. Influencers have a large following on social media and can help to increase visibility for your book.
  7. BookBub: This is a platform that allows authors to promote their books to a large audience of readers. BookBub sends out daily emails to its subscribers with a list of discounted and free books in various genres.

5. Book Reviews and Ratings

Reviews and ratings help to build credibility for your book and can encourage potential buyers to purchase, to leave reviews, and to respond to the reviews that you receive. Positive reviews and high ratings can greatly impact sales.

Amazon lets customers to rate books on a five-star scale, one star being the lowest. Customers can also leave written reviews with their rating. These ratings and reviews can be found on the book’s page on Amazon. They are a very helpful tool for buyers to determine if a book is worth purchasing and ultimately reading.

6. Book Launch

Planning a book launch event or a virtual event is a great way to generate buzz around your book.

When you conduct a book launch—while those attending will be eager to purchase your book in-person—you can also announce that the book will be available online (on Amazon) for ongoing referral purchases.

A book launch can be a simple format:

  • Master of Ceremonies (MC) welcomes guests and outlines what will happen, including an invite for guests to partake of refreshments, etc.
  • MC welcomes author to the stage.
  • Author thanks guests for attending and says a few words about  the book and why they wrote it.
  • Author reads a portion of  the book.
  • MC thanks author and invites guests to purchase a copy of the book.

7. Book Covers

To say that book cover design is very important is an understatement. Self-published authors might find it easy to establish a presence on Amazon, but the laws of book marketing are immutable.

Book covers, when they present on Amazon, can be the difference between a purchase and the reader moving on to something that looks more attractive to them.

Your book cover needs to be professionally designed. Even an average cover design can be fatal. Poor cover designs are usually dictated by the author—the author’s requirements are so specific that the publisher’s book designer cannot deploy their expertise. Green Hill’s lead designer has designed almost 1,000 books. She understands the requirements for a book cover that will help in marketing.

With online book retailers such as Amazon, cover design is critical because a potential reader may only be on your Amazon page for as little as 5 seconds. That 5 seconds is critical. A poor cover design might be dismissed by a potential reader in that time.

8. Retail Book Pricing

The price of your book on Amazon is critical to its success. Book retail prices are often dependant on the cost of print. As a rough rule of thumb, you should price your book on Amazon at about 300% of the printing price.

The difference between what your book will cost to print and what the retail price might be will be integral to your success if profit is one of your goals.

Amazon has a retail shop and also a print arrangement. This is a common source of confusion for self-published authors.

Amazon’s book print pricing varies depending on the book, its format, and the quantity ordered. On average, Amazon’s prices for print books are competitive with other retailers and online bookstores. They also offer discounted bulk ordering for businesses and organisations. Additionally, Amazon offers a self-publishing platform for authors to print and sell their own books at a lower cost. Overall, Amazon’s book print pricing compares favorably with other retailers and online bookstores.

Print pricing on Amazon will not always be the best option—always check with Green Hill to see if there is a lower cost option for book printing.

To set the price of your book on Amazon, you will first need to create an account with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and upload your book. Once your book is live on the Amazon store, you can log into your KDP account and navigate to the “Bookshelf” section. From there, you will see an option to “Edit Pricing.” You can then set your book’s price and choose the territories in which it will be available for purchase. Keep in mind that Amazon will take a percentage of the sale as commission, sometimes as high as 55% of the retail price, so you should factor that into your pricing strategy.

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Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

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The editing process: what to expect and how to best prepare.

The editing process: what to expect and how to best prepare.

There are some things that you can do to prepare yourself and your book for editing that will help the process go smoothly and leave both you and your editor happy.

Know that editors are on your side

It’s a common misconception that editors are red pen-wielding fiends who want to tear your manuscript apart, but this is not the case. Editors want the best for your book and you as an author; their job is to ensure your content makes sense and is conveyed in the most comprehensible way to your intended readership. Go into editing with an open mind and listen to the suggestions of your editor when their work is complete.

The costs of editing

Editing is not always a cheap service, and some authors can be caught off-guard by the size of their quote. Editors cost their projects either per word or per hour, which can make larger projects costly for an author; even if your manuscript is better put-together than another project with half your word count, you may still end up paying just as much or more.

A way to help bring down costs is to make sure that everything in your book is integral to your story. Does your book need to be as big as it is or talk about something for as long as it does? This is something that can be addressed with my next point:

Draft your work, then draft again

It’s often said that writing is rewriting, and this is very true. An integral part of writing a book is revising your manuscript multiple times to ensure that every chapter, paragraph, sentence, and word is as close to the best that you can make it and is working for your story, not against it. This will help to make the editing process run smoothly and, as mentioned, bring the overall cost down.

Check out our other post for tips on how to successfully draft your manuscript: https://greenhillpublishing.com.au/three-tips-for-drafting-your-own-work/

The different types of editing

Editing is not just limited to checking spelling and grammar. An editor looks at your manuscript through many different lenses, including if the chapters are structured correctly, checking for continuity errors, filtering for a target audience, and more.

There are three distinct types of editing: structural editing, copyediting, and proofreading.

Structural editing

The often-forgotten side to editing. It focuses on the bigger picture rather than the sentence-level details. If your book requires structural edits, this often means that something is wrong with the flow of the manuscript, or that an element (like voice or language) is inconsistent. It could even mean that the chapter placement is illogical to readers, or that the book is too long or short for its audience and purpose.

Copyediting

The nitty-gritty side, the spelling-, punctuation-, and syntax-level detail that’s expected from editing. But it’s also fact checking, ensuring that what’s written couldn’t potentially become a legal liability, making sure that characters or settings don’t appear differently from one page to the next, and more.

Proofreading

The final stage carried out once all other types of editing have been completed. It’s similar to copyediting in the way that it mostly deals with sentence-level detail, but in this instance the editor isn’t dealing with a raw manuscript, they’re double-checking a near-perfect piece for any errors that might have been missed.

Which brings me to my next point:

Multiple sets of eyes are better than one

Books published through traditional publishing houses will have a minimum of three editors working on the book one after the other, each performing a different type of editing and rechecking each other’s work. Employing just a single editor—no matter how skilled they are—will not leave you with an error-free manuscript. It’s simply impossible, which is why it’s a great idea to get at least two editors to comb through your manuscript.

If you can’t afford to employ a second editor, another useful way to pick up anything that the editor has missed is to get an impartial family member or friend who has not seen or heard anything about your manuscript before to look over it. This of course won’t be as good as getting a second professional editor, but it will definitely help your manuscript.

Get familiar with the Microsoft Word revision software

Most editors in this day-and-age use Microsoft Word revision software to edit manuscripts. This involves functions like track changes and commenting.

Track changes

Once you get your edited manuscript back, you’ll have to go through each change that your editor has made and accept or reject these changes. This can be tricky, and a lot of text mistakes at the end of the publishing process can be accredited to edits that have been accepted or rejected incorrectly, so it’s beyond integral to make sure that you’re checking each and every change afterwards.

Comments

If your editor has left comments on a certain piece of your manuscript this could mean a few things, including being unable to advise changes as they cannot decipher your intent, really enjoying something that you’ve done and wanting to point it out, and explaining a change that they believe you may be confused about. Read over each comment carefully and make sure to either implement the changes they suggest and resolve. After the comments have been resolved, go back through and double-check that each comment has been addressed, then you can go ahead and delete them.

It’s also good practise to save two versions of your edited manuscript: one with the track changes and comments still included and another with them resolved. This way you have a record of both and can revisit easily if needed.

 

Editing can be a rewarding process if you’re well prepared. After you read and take on the information within this blog, you’ll be well on your way to getting your manuscript polished and ready for your editor.

Interested in getting your book edited with our partner Bookmark Edits? Click here to find out more and get your editing assessment.

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5 keys to a successful book cover design

5 keys to a successful book cover design

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As a self-published author, book cover designs can be daunting, and there are a lot of factors to consider before committing to your final concept and design. When starting to design a book cover, you need to think about:

    • Aesthetics
    • Functionality
    • Branding
    • Audience Appeal
    • Technical Requirements
    • Professionalism

But how can you ensure that your book cover has everything that it needs to succeed? What do you need to focus on for your book to attract readers and distributors in a world of traditionally published books? Firstly, we recommend hiring a book cover designer and following the 5 key points discussed below to make sure that you are getting the most from your book cover and your book designer.

Contents

1. Trust your book designer
2. Don’t try to tell the whole story with your book cover
3. Design for book’s audience, not yourself
4. Fit your book cover within a genre
5. Be a big picture thinker

1. Trust your book designer

If nothing else, the most important thing you can do to make your book cover a success is to listen to your designer. They will make your book cover look the best it can. Your designer wants the best for your book as much as you do, and will no doubt have amazing book cover ideas that you hadn’t considered before. They are also experience professionals who have worked on a number of books in the past, so they understand the book market and know what is more likely to sell and what is more likely to not.

It is important to communicate your preferences and vision for the book in a way that can be well understood when you have the design brief with the designer. Your book designer will take cues from your brief and design a book cover that is marketable to help your book shine on the shelves and meet your expectations.

2. Don’t try to tell the whole story with your book cover

It’s important to intrigue potential readers and leave them wanting more—not leave them confused and overwhelmed. The cover should be a teaser that makes the readers want to know more and entice them to pick up your book and take it home with them. It is not necessary to try to tell the whole story of a book on its cover as it is simply a visual representation of the book meant to grab attention. If you try to include every detail that’s in your book on your cover, it will be a cluttered mess of references that are lost on potential readers.

A good cover should be visually appealing, give a sense of what genre or style the book belongs to, and accurately represent the book. Pick one to three things that best convey what your story is about and your designer will use what they can to bring your cover to life.

3. Design for your book’s audience, not yourself

When thinking about book cover design, it is important to keep the target audience in mind, rather than designing solely on your own preferences. As discussed earlier, the cover should be visually appealing and reflective of the content and genre of the book, but also designed to appeal directly to the specific audience who are most likely to read it. This may involve considering factors such as age, gender, interests, and reading habits of the target audience.

Let the book designer create the cover from the eyes of a buyer. Often what an author believes they must have on their book cover doesn’t translate well to readers and they miss what the author wanted to achieve.

Though you may read a lot in the genre you wrote your book in, remember: you are the author, not your audience.

4. Fit your book cover design within a genre

When designing a book cover, it is important to consider the genre of the book and design a cover that fits within the conventions of that genre. The buyer—whether a distributor or a reader—should be able to immediately recognise the genre of the book by the cover design. For example, a mystery novel may feature a dark and dramatic cover with a silhouette or crime scene, while a romance novel may feature a romantic image of a couple. A science fiction book cover may feature images of futuristic technology, space, or aliens. A fantasy book cover may feature images of dragons, wizards, or other mythical creatures.

This doesn’t mean that your book should be a carbon copy of another, but if the genre is not clear then the buyer will have to work harder to decipher what your book is and will be more likely to disregard it in favour for another. Gather some inspiration from within your genre and similar and pick them apart. Try to figure out which elements on those covers would work for your book and tell your designer. This will give your book designer a good starting point for your cover and let them know what you like.

5. Be a big picture thinker

When considering your book cover design, be careful not to focus on particulars, such as the exact shade of a colour, the precise positioning of an image, and the perfect font size/weight to use. While attention to detail is important in many aspects of book cover design, it is also important to keep the big picture in mind. If you give your designer a list of overly detailed instructions of what the cover must include, you’ll restrict their creative license and may end up with an unattractive book cover that just does not work.

Think about what is necessary for your book cover and what will make it attractive and successful in retail, but more importantly what is not. The goal is to create a cover that is visually appealing and accurately represents the book, rather than focusing on small details that may not have a significant impact on the overall design.

Overall, a successfully designed book cover is one that looks professional and like it belongs in the market, effectively and concisely communicates the book’s content and style, appeals to the intended audience, is visually appealing and on-par with other books in its genre, and is harmonious.

To see some of our favourite covers, check out our Instagram.

SUBMIT YOUR BOOK DETAILS
CALL US 1300 810 131

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The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.

Interested in publishing your book but unsure where to start or what is even involved? Tell us about your project and we will post you a copy of our:

 

The Little Book of
Big Publishing Tips.

 

In just a quick 8,000 words, this little book will equip you with the knowledge you need to successfully publish your book.

The Little Book of Big Publishing tips goes into the essentials of self-publishing a book, outlining the business and financial side of publishing, legal issues, design, editing, sales and marketing. There's even a section on how to identify a vanity-publishing scam.

submit your project details