A Complete Guide on How To Self Publish a Book

Preparing the Ground for Self-Publishing Your First E-book

What you will learn in this section:

• • The benefits of having a mentor
  • The importance of finding a niche market for your E-book
  • Deciding what to write about
  • Staying motivated and passionate

Get a Mentor

First things first, get yourself a mentor. Have you heard about the phenomenon of deliberate practice? If not, I highly recommend listening to Freakonomics’ podcast on How To Become Great at Just About Anything.

This phenomenon is related to the need to put in 10,000 hours of practice to learn a skill, but according to scientific research, the quality of your practice matters as much as the quantity. Ever wondered why Olympic records keep constantly falling? Top athletes are trained by top athletes who themselves were trained by top athletes, and so on. A mentor knows the best methods from experience and provides almost instant feedback, which shortens the learning curve, according to Anders Ericsson’s book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise.

Getting ongoing good feedback to focus on specific techniques leads to real improvements. Deliberate practice needs well-defined specific goals, and it needs to stretch out of the comfort zone. Knowing this, select your mentor wisely to receive proven Ebook writing tips and follow this guide’s advice to get the most out of your mentor:

• Establish goals for the new mentor-mentee relationship
• Define communication methods and frequency of contact right from the beginning of the relationship
• Express gratitude and learn actively

“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself and helps it out of you.” -Bob Proctor

Define Your Niche Market

According to Google, more than 130 million books exist in the world, and each year around 2 million books are published all around the planet. Competition is fierce, but don’t worry; your book will be a success if you find your niche and write an E-book for it.

In the overcrowded world of books, it is fundamental to write for a highly focused niche. The book business demands heavy marketing efforts; defining your niche market properly will ease marketing your E-book and will pay off your investment. The truth is a smaller niche is a bigger business.

It is good to add that you shouldn’t start writing for the wrong reason, yes, money. What really reaches individuals is passion and constant effort. I recommend watching Simon Sinek’s TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” where he emphasizes that “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it” and that “The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have.

The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe”. His talk has inspired entrepreneurs, authors, leaders, writers, and CEOs – watch it and get inspired.

“My ambition comes from my passion: finding what I love and then expanding on that.” -Miranda Kerr

Budgeting For Your E-book

First-time writers encounter problems calculating the amount of money they will need to start writing their ebooks. Consider the self-publishing task as a long-term investment since the average writer starts making real money after a year at the earliest. There are “hidden” costs authors fail to foresee and prepare for. Hopefully, you’ll already have money saved up and set apart just for your E-book publishing expenses.

🔥​ Save on your book promotion by using realistic book images to promote!

Follow the next advice to make sure you have enough money to publish your E-book:

• Before starting to write, make a list of the costs of editing, designing, formatting, publishing, promoting, etc.
• Have an action plan to cover the costs of E-book publishing.
• Remember that you get what you pay for. It is easy to ask in Reddit or Facebook groups for free advice and criticism about your progress, but if you pay for a professional service, you will most likely receive better counseling.
• Spend wisely; consider inexpensive services like Placeit to create mockups for promoting your E-book.
• Consider crowdfunding your project. Start by asking your close friends and family and then go and try a crowdfunding platform.
• Don’t put all your eggs in a single basket; diversify. Find alternate sources of income to have cash available to support the long hours spent writing.
• Eat healthy even if it seems more expensive. Your brain doesn’t like unhealthy food, and you need a healthy brain to keep on writing.

Do You Have True Grit?

Grit the magic combination of passion and long-term perseverance. Along with your self-publishing journey, you will inevitably get distracted by the zillion distractions of today’s modern life. Find a consistent time each day, or several times a week, to work on your E-book.

You might want to try the Pomodoro technique (25 minutes of writing, 5-minute break) to use your time effectively during writing sessions. Anyone can write for just 25 minutes, don’t you agree? Make writing a habit.

Joining a book club will also help you stay motivated. Remember that reading is to authors what exercising is to athletes. Surrounding yourself with fellow writers, self-publishers, and bookworms will provide you helpful insight. Ali Luke also suggests “…to plan your Ebook before you start writing.

This means having a clear outline that has, at the very least, a title for each chapter. Yes, that might seem a bit boring, but it will make the writing stage far easier (and more fun). Try freeform brainstorming or mind maps or index cards as creative alternatives to help get your ideas flowing.”

In a nutshell:

• Unplug the internet cord, say goodbye to distractions, and enter focus mode.
• Get motivated, and surround yourself with the best to be the best.
• Establish daily/weekly goals, e.g., “x” words written, “y” chapters completed in “z” time, etc.
• Remember, improvement comes only with practice!

“A determined mind and a strong will bear endless possibilities.” -Anonymous

Hands-On – Starting Your First E-Book

What you will learn in this section:

• • Tools to ease self-publishing tasks
  • Importance of Social Media
  • How to make good use of Social Media
  • How to build a community for your E-book

Handy Tools to Consider

The secret to getting ahead is using the best writing tools available. As Vita Sackville-West once said, “A man and his tools make a man and his trade.” There are a plethora of tools available for the modern writer, be sure to use the ones that suit you best and you feel comfortable using.

Most of the following tools have a user-friendly interface for users of all ages, so don’t hesitate to give them a try. Choose a determined app depending on what platform you plan to publish your E-book on.

How to Write a Book with the Help of Tools

• A Book Cover Maker to Design Your Cover Online

Create your book cover design! You don’t need any design skills or download any software since it’s all done from your browser.

💡Get inspired with some great Book Cover Ideas for your next project

• Scrivener

is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft. A favorite of many.

• Ulysses

Is a tool that provides a pleasant, focused writing experience combined with effective document management, fast syncing, and flexible export. With Ulysses, you can transform your texts into beautiful PDFs, Word documents, and Ebooks, properly formatted and styled. It also lets you export to HTML, ready to be used anywhere on the web.

• Google Docs

Access, create, and edit your documents wherever you go — from your phone, tablet, or computer — even when there’s no connection.

• Hemingway App

A free web app that helps to improve your writing skills by highlighting words and phrases you should reconsider for bold, clear writing.

• iBooks Author

An amazing app that allows anyone to create beautiful iBooks Textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad and Mac.

• WordPress

Lets you create beautiful and powerful websites,  landing pages, or blogs.

• The Good Old Pen & Paper

It’s not always possible to carry a laptop around (or have more than 10% battery in your smartphone), so as a last helpful tip, I suggest you carry a small notebook around (and a pen) with you at all times. We never know when or where the creative juices will flow, so better be prepared.

How to Set Up Your Digital Properties

Evan LePage masterfully wrote about How to Set up Facebook, Twitter, and Every o Twitter and Other Major Social Media Profile for Hootsuite’s Blog:

Your social media profile is a window into your personality, your job, your interests—sure, but if done correctly, it can be so much more than that.

It can drive people to your website or other online assets; it can promote some of your best content, and it can lead to new clients and sales.

When you reach out to a new contact or prospect, the first thing they’re going to do is look you up online. Your profile needs to be both impressive and discoverable. With so much potential value in each social media profile,

it’s worth investing the time and effort required to set them up properly. (Or, if you’ve neglected yours for an extended period of time, it can be just as important to give it a complete overhaul).

Why is your bio so important? In addition to sharing basic information about yourself, adding your website and email address turns any social network bio into a potential source of referral traffic. Especially on company pages, the opportunity to describe your products and link out to an external website makes bios a powerful marketing and sales tool.

Plus, including your Twitter handle or Google+ page in the personal information section of another social network is a simple form of cross-promotion that could help grow your social following across the board.”

Online Presence Best Practice:

• Claim your name (before somebody else does) on the social media platforms you want to appear on and have consistent handles.
• Create appropriately sized imagery for each network you plan to have a presence on.
• Check how successful writers have their social media properties set up and imitate their style.
• Engage with your audience, be active, and don’t disappear for long periods of time.
• The 80/20 rule also applies in Social Media; follow it. 80% of your posts should be interesting, shareable content, and 20% of your posts should be persuasive Call-to-Actions.

Take a look at the digital properties of our favorite authors:

J.K. Rowling’s Facebook

Veronica Roth’s Google+

James Patterson’s Twitter

George R.R. Martin’s Goodreads:

Kristin Hanna’s Website

Building Your Community & Networking

It’s no secret that community building is an important factor in an E-book’s success. Hop onto the bandwagon of social media and connect with your audience. Having an online presence is as important as having real human interaction.

Attend relevant conferences, cultural events, and concurred cafés like the Crémerie-Restaurant Polidor, which is said to have been a favorite of André Gide, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Antonin Artaud, Paul Valéry, Boris Vian, Julio Cortázar, Jack Kerouac, and Henry Miller. Most cities have bohemian locations where you can mingle with fellow literature enthusiasts.

Jennifer McCartney suggests hitting the road and attending book conferences to find inspiration and network. She writes, “Writers’ conferences, book fairs, and festivals are an important tool for indie authors looking to market their work to a wider audience. Attending these events allows authors to network with agents, publishers, and other authors, as well as to meet fans and learn more about the industry in general.

How to Build Buzz:

– Share your goals. Let people know you are writing and share important milestones along your self-publishing journey. There are 5 reasons to make goals public, verifiable, and open: accountability, clarity, progress measurement, motivation, and connection.

– Embrace the power of the #Hashtag. Create a hashtag that resonates with your followers and relates to your book’s theme. You can use Hashtags to easily track the ongoing conversations your followers are having on social media.

– Identify and create a list of your top influencers. Influencer marketing effectiveness has increased thanks to the widespread use of social media. If influential people write, tweet, or post about your E-book, then your E-book will reach and convince more readers.

– Use the AIDA model. AIDA is an acronym used in marketing and advertising that describes a common list of events that may occur when a consumer engages in an advertisement.

A – attention (awareness): attract the attention of the customer/reader.
I – interest of the customer.
D – desire: convince customers that they want and desire your book and that it will satisfy their needs.
A – action: lead customers/readers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.” ―Dan Simmons

Building Buzz – Pre-Launch E-book Promotion

What you will learn in this section:

• • Pre-launch checklist
  • How to price your Ebook
  • Launching an email marketing campaign
  • Everything you need to know about E-book metadata

The Devil Is In the Details

A book’s success is determined by multiple factors, and one of them is its title, use the book title checker and see if your book name is original. Since we judge books by their covers and around 40% of a book’s cover is the title, you must invest time and energy in finding the best possible title for your E-book.

Book success is not guaranteed merely because of a good title, but a bad title can definitely doom it. In a nutshell, your book title should possess all of these attributes:

• Attention Grabbing
• Memorable
• Informative (gives the idea of what the book is about)
• Easy to say
• Not embarrassing or problematic for someone to say aloud to their friends

Chairman and co-founder of a book in a Box, Tucker Max, writes a comprehensive guide on how to pick the perfect book title that you should check out.

Format your E-book manuscript properly. Set up your page size, choose a font, choose a font size, justify your text, number your pages, set up your margins and chapter headings, insert illustrations, and prepare both your front and back matter.

Once you have all these aspects covered, read your manuscript out loud one more time and make corrections. Next step, hire an expert editor to proofread your book. Be open to early criticism, the feedback you will get from professionals and peers is important, and you will still be in time to make corrections both in form and substance.

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.” ―Michael Crichton

Book aesthetics truly matter. The same story as with the book title, Ebook cover design must not be taken lightly. Your E-book cover art must be enticing and must stand out from the rest.

Go ahead and try Placeit’s book cover maker; it is the easiest way to have an awesome-looking Ebook cover art for your book done in seconds. See how easy it is to create your own book cover art.

How to Make an E-book Cover

1. Head to Placeit.net by Envato and click on the Designs tab in the upper left corner, then select apparel & print, and finally, book covers.

2. Then select your favorite book cover design. You can filter by using the tags on your left screen. Once on the editing screen of a book cover, make as many customizations as you need to ensure an original design.

3. Once you are done, simply click on the download button, and in no time, you will receive your file ready to be shared or printed!

📚 Luckily, you can find all sorts of book styles to create your design. From Romance Book Covers, Recipe Book Covers, to Children’s Book Covers.

Once you have a couple possible designs, split-test them with peers and on the internet. You can also use Facebook reactions to ask questions to your followers or to create a poll to help you decide. Check which one performs better and go for that one. Here’s an example of how a post could look:

Once you have a well-designed and peer-reviewed Kindle cover design, you should create a 3D ebook cover mockup template to showcase your E-book to potential readers in a professional manner.

Thanks to E-book cover maker tools, you can share your work in a context that relates to your audience. Find below how easy it is to create E-book covers for promotional marketing campaigns. We actually wrote a guide on how to promote your E-book online and off; you should check it out. And if you need some inspiration, here are a bunch of great premade book cover examples to get you started.

Your E-book’s Price

Congratulations, chances are that by now, you are almost ready to publish or print your E-book. According to Millcitypress, $3.99 is the most popular price to sell your E-book for. This magic price doesn’t apply to every self-publisher Ebook out there, and setting this price for your E-book is just a recommendation.

🔥​ The Best Book Print-On-Demand Services

Price psychology is an interesting subject, and I recommend you to get informed about it. Only you know how valuable your work is and how much you’ve spent on it, so do not necessarily go with price best practices. Also, consider that you make a royalty out of the E-book’s retail price, so make sure that you are satisfied with the final amount that you will be receiving.

Let’s suppose you sell 100 Ebooks. Here’s what your approximate royalty would be. (All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.)

[You can find this table on the Millcitypress blog]

Pre-Launch E-book Promotion

Strategically Plan Your E-Book Launch

Deliberately plan your E-book launch date, what you want the media to say about your book, who you want to talk to about your E-book, and how you can turn your E-book launch into something worth talking about, maybe even making it viral.

Make Noise or Your E-Book Launch

Start working with the media in advance of your E-book launch. Even if you don’t have great success in the beginning, it will give you something to build on.

Take Pre-Orders of Your E-Book

Have a way for prospects to sign up for updates. Then make sure those updates offer a link to pre-order as soon as it’s possible. Try Campaign Monitor to build your E-book’s marketing campaign.

Building an email list to inform your users about your E-book release date is important. Setting up an email marketing campaign is not as complicated as some people think. Software like Campaign Monitor or Mailchimp is perfect for this, and it is inexpensive and easy to use.

It is important to have clearly defined goals for your email marketing campaign. You may want to get recipients to visit your blog, download a preview of your E-book, purchase your E-book, or write a review on a specific website. You may already have several emails in your contact list with which you can start your email marketing campaign, but that should only be the beginning.

Check Campaign Monitor’s advice to build an extensive email list and follow their instructions to get started with email marketing.

1. Create simple subscription opportunities (website, your social channels, Twitter lead generation cards, email signature, etc.)
2. Offer a valuable incentive (early access, discounts, offers, etc.)

E-book Metadata Is More Important Than Ever

In a few words, Metadata is extra information that a file (like an EPUB) contains that allows it to be categorized by genre, author, title, etc. It makes your E-book easier to find. You should include keywords and data in your E-book’s Metadata that you think could help a reader find your E-book in the vast ocean of e-books.

The most important information (Metadata) an E-book file must have are both the copyright and what the E-book is about. You should allocate enough time to fill up every piece of metadata information that a platform requires from you. Even if it seems like filling up all the required information will take a lot of time, believe me, it is worth the burden.

There’s core metadata and enhanced metadata. If you don’t want your book to have a chance of succeeding, just fill up its core metadata. If you want it to have great success, keep on reading. Core metadata is the very basic information every professional Ebook must contain, like its title, where it can be sold, in what language it is written, etc.

Enhanced Metadata’s purpose is to enhance both computers’ and humans’ experiences. It can include information about the author, reviews, images, and any other information that makes an E-book unique and thus worth reading. Find more information in the following links.

Further reading on Metadata: Kindle Metadata Guidelines for Books & Why Metadata Matters for the Future of Ebooks

Self-Publishing Your E-Book

What you will learn in this section:

• How to publish your E-book on different platforms

“Publishing is the final step in making a book; if I was afraid to publish one, I wouldn’t write in the first place.” -Charles Stross

E-book Self-Publishing Services

Books on Amazon

Today self-publishers have to choose between a multitude of options that a few years back were unavailable. Some authors prefer to publish on popular platforms, and others prefer to publish on less popular platforms because there is less competition. What’s true is that each platform has its own loyal customer base, but if a reader doesn’t find a specific title in a platform, then the reader will look for it in the next popular platform.

Invariably, there are always pros and cons for authors. I strongly recommend that you look into all of the available options and follow with what works better for you.

Here are the instructions on how to publish your E-book on five different Ebook platforms:

What To Do After Publishing Your First E-book

What you will learn in this section:

• How to promote your E-book on social media
• How to promote your E-book on KDP and Bookbub
• The importance of getting reviews

Free Advertising for Your E-book

With new technologies, self-publishing your book shouldn’t take years or be super expensive. In fact, there are plenty of free book publishers’ resources you can use to get the work done.

1. A 3D Book Cover Generator to Promote Your Latest Book

When it comes to E-book marketing, you can really never have enough tools to aid you. Of course, after putting all our effort into writing our next book, it’s only reasonable we put the same effort into creating eye-catching, compelling visual content to promote the title in the most attractive and accurate way possible.

Did you know that you can now also create Book Video Mockups with Placeit!? Have a look!

By following the same simple steps of dragging and dropping a JPEG image file to your screen, you can create eye-catching E-book Videos that look as if you’ve invested hundreds of dollars in them. Don’t believe it? Click on the button below to create yours!

2. Free Social Media Templates & Graphic Design Tools

3. A Step-by-Step Guide on how to set up your Facebook Ads for Authors 

The importance of Facebook Marketing for the success of a business grows as more and more people join Facebook. This is why we made these Facebook ads for the authors’ guide! With 3.03 billion monthly active users reported in 2023, Facebook stands stronger than ever in its mission to connect the world.

4. This eBook Profit Margin Calculator

With so many ebook publishers available, it’s not always easy to figure out exactly which publisher is best for your ebooks. Use this ebook profit margin calculator to help you quickly get an idea of which eBook publishers provide the best royalties for authors.

5. All Author Promotion Plan

Try their basic promotional plan for free; you get a basic author page, you get listed on Author Directory, you’ll be able to add up to 4 books, and a Tweet scheduler (max. up to 100).

If by now, you probably are a published E-book author. Hopefully, your book is a great success and it is doing well. Nevertheless, a little help never hurts. Here are 5 tips to expand the reach of your E-book without spending much:

USB Sticks: You shouldn’t stop attending writer’s events after publishing your E-book. Actually, you should attend to more of them after publishing your E-book. Buy bulk cheap USB sticks and place a copy of your E-book in them.

Next time you attend an important writers’ event (or family/friends gathering), give away USB sticks to people you meet who could be interested in your book. With some luck, they will read your E-book and review it; if they like it, they will also buy it.

Run a Facebook/Twitter Contest: Use an E-book cover maker to get people’s attention and simply publish a post on your page with an image of your E-book mockup.

• • Something as simple as: “LIKE this post to win a FREE copy of my E-book.”
  • Or perhaps you want people to like & comment: “Want a FREE copy of my E-book? Like this post & COMMENT about why you should win. We’ll pick a random winner.”
  • You can even require contestants to post photos: “In the comments below, post your best picture of you reading my E-book. One lucky commenter will win $80!”
  • Make people answer a trivia question to enter your contest, and only those who answer correctly qualify to win: “How did Tom & Jerry first meet? Correct answers have a chance to win a FREE copy of my E-book!”
  • Get creative and make use of the new Facebook reactions to create a fun contest.

Outreach via email: Craft a great email copy and outreach to bloggers, editors, writers, and authors who could promote your E-book (for free if possible) in their blogs or social media accounts.

Reddit: Here’s a short list of subreddits where writers and authors gather. Feel free to participate and follow each subreddit’s rules.

• • https://www.reddit.com/r/ebooks/ (On the right side, you can find more E-book Sources)
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/BookPromotion/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Bookselling/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/Publishing/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfPublishing/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/

Facebook Groups: Facebook Groups is another excellent place to promote Ebooks and mingle with authors going through the same situation as you. Join these communities, follow their rules, and promote your E-book politely. You will want to use a cover creator to make your posts stand out from the rest.

• • https://www.facebook.com/groups/selfpublishingandbookmarketing/
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/821811664605563/ (Authority Self-Publishing)
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmazonSelfPublishing/
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/976086735798716/ (Marketing Tools for Authors)
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/YAauthoralliance/
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/IndieBookPromo/
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/509197505915958/ (Selling for Authors)
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/selfpubsupportgroup/
  • https://www.facebook.com/groups/145324212487752/ (Writers Unite!)

“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing, but nobody else does.” – Stuart H. Britt

Paid Advertising for Your E-book

Facebook Advertising

Best Practices for Book Sales

Using Facebook Ads will help you to reach your audience driving more sales. We have recently released E-book Facebook Ad Images you can use when advertising on Facebook. Have a look!

See the Facebook Book Ads Gallery Here

Here are 8 best practice tips to help you optimize your ads.

• Include a call to action within the first 90 characters and tell your customers what you want them to do. For example, tell them to subscribe to your email list or to download your E-book.
• Use high-quality, attractive lifestyle photos, bright product imagery, or videos to grab the attention of potential customers. Create a visual representation of the words in your ad or post.
• Always refresh your ad creative every 1 to 2 weeks for the best performance; in other words, combat Ad fatigue. When everyone in your target audience has already seen your ad many times, it becomes more expensive to achieve desirable results.
• Include the most important content in your post in the first 90 characters. If you want visitors to your website, link to it upfront.
• Identify your target audience. Think about your best current customers and use Facebook’s targeting options to reach a similar audience. For example, if you do not think French-speaking customers will be interested in your E-book, only target English-speaking countries.
• Organizing and promoting an event gives you an opportunity to attract new customers and bring previous customers back. Use Page Post ads to increase reservations or attendance to an event.
• Boosting posts will ensure your most important messages are seen by your fans and their friends. Boost posts about sales during the holidays to get in the news feeds of current customers and use targeting to expand your reach to new ones.
• Facebook Offers allows you to promote special discounts to Facebook fans and non-fans in your specified area.

[Find out more about Facebook Advertising Best Practices]

Twitter Advertising

1. Select a campaign objective:
   • Send people to your site, (to purchase, signup, etc.)
   • Grow your follower community on Twitter
   • Collect emails from interested people
   • Reach more people and drive a conversation
   • Find out more about Twitter Advertising.
2. Decide on a landing page
3. Create a hashtag for your book
4. Use a URL shortener
5. Identify a series of “tweetable” quotes from the book
6. Automate the delivery of your tweets.

Advertising for KDP Select

Amazon Marketing Services

Create your ad in 5 easy steps:

1. Choose which book you’d like to promote
2. Choose your campaign type

• Sponsored Product ads: keyword-targeted ads that appear below search results and on detail pages.
• Product Display ads: readers and genre-targeted ads on detail pages.

3. Select your targeting to reach the right customers.
4. Set your bid and budget: Cost-Per-Click (CPC) Bid or Campaign Budget

5. Set your campaign dates

[For more details: advertising with KDP Select]

Recommended KDP Select reading:

• How To Setup Your First Amazon KDP Select Ads Campaign
• 9 Amazon Book Promotion Programs That Can Help You Sell More Books Every Day

BookBub

BookBub is allegedly one of the best E-book promoting services. It is a free service that helps millions of readers discover great deals on acclaimed Ebooks while providing publishers and authors with a way to drive sales and find new fans. Its members receive a personalized daily email alerting them to the best free and deeply discounted titles matching their interests as selected by the editorial team.

BookBub works with all major Ebook retailers and devices and is the industry’s leading Ebook price promotion service. Find out more about becoming a BookBub partner here.

“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” – David Ogilvy

Aim for the 5 Stars: Great Reviews

Getting reviews is of the maximum importance for your E-book’s success. Readers get a book recommended by a friend; they add it to their “To-Read” list and forget about it for a while. Then, when they are looking for their next read, they find your book on their list.

They go online and either do a Google search or look for your book directly on Amazon, Goodreads, or whatever. This is the moment of truth! Does the book have 1 or 2 reviews, or maybe none? Does the book have 2 or 3 stars or maybe one?

Chances are he/she will not get your book and instead will consider another book from their list.

Now let’s picture a different scenario; the book has 50 reviews, maybe >100 reviews. The reader will then read the reviews and short description because so many people before they found it interesting; therefore, they will very likely get the E-Book. This is how most readers behave and is also one of the many reasons to get positive and organic reviews for your E-book. Getting reviews in the first days weeks of your book release is important to plan your outreach efforts with time.

Now let’s picture a different scenario; the book has 50 reviews, maybe >100 reviews. The reader will then read the reviews and short description because so many people before they found it interesting; therefore, they will very likely get the E-book. This is how most readers behave and is also one of the many reasons to get positive and organic reviews for your E-book. Getting reviews in the first days weeks of your book release is important to plan your outreach efforts with time.

Why getting Ebook reviews is important:

• Consumers/readers read online reviews before buying/reading.
• Consumers/readers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• Positive reviews build trust.

Here are some tips on how to get E-book reviews:

• Do some research and build a list with the Top Reviewers of books of a similar genre or plot story as your E-book and get their emails.
• Craft a short email to reach out to these power readers, and kindly request them to read and review your book.
• If necessary, give away your E-book for free. Follow up if no answer is received, and also be thankful when you receive a review.
• Another approach is to remind every person you know who is reading or has finished reading your book to post a review; tell them it will just take 2 minutes, no more.
• Include at the end of your book a call to action. This might be the easiest and most effective way of getting reviews. If a reader sees this last page, it means the reader has put the effort to finish your E-book, so why not rate it and review it if it’s as easy as clicking the links?

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