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You probably are selling your ebook through Kindle Direct Publishing, also known as Amazon KDP (and if you aren’t, then you should!). Check out these tips for making just a bit more money while selling your ebook. (Note about terminology for newbies: Amazon KDP is different from the Amazon KDP Select program.)
1. Size Down Your Ebook
Amazon charges delivery fees based off of the size of your ebook—it’s 15 cents per MB. If your ebook is big, you’re not making as much money as you could be! Try to keep your ebook under 1 MB. If your ebook is bigger than that, the culprit is usually images, such as the cover image, chapter images, scene breaks, author picture, promo images, custom fonts, and so on. Even if you have a lot of images, you can size down these images to make your ebook smaller; they don’t need to be full resolution because they are only being viewed on a smaller screen and are not being printed. Read this blog post for more information on how to size down your images.
2. Make Your Ebook Available for Sale Internationally
It doesn’t cost extra to make your ebook available on Amazon KDP’s international marketplace, and normally this will happen automatically. When you do an ebook promotion, also be sure to discount your book internationally so you can reach even more readers and make even more sales. Make sure the prices you choose are competitive in all countries, which means you may need to adjust pricing from what Amazon recommends.
3. Make the First Ebook in the Series Perma-Free
We know this sounds counterintuitive, but by making the first book in a series free, you’re attracting new readers. If you can hook them with that first book, then you can get them to buy the other books in the series. Just make sure the second book isn’t a large jump in price, or readers may not bite. More than $3.99 is probably too much, unless you’re famous or your sequel is in great demand. After the second book, you may choose to sell each subsequent book between $3.99 and $4.99.
4. Accurately Fill Out the Metadata
When creating your ebook’s Amazon listing, be sure to fill out the metadata. Pick great keywords, choose relevant categories, and try to get your ebook into a subcategory or two. This way, your book will be discoverable by new readers.
5. Proofread Your Amazon KDP Blurb
Be sure to carefully read over the blurb that will display on your ebook’s listing on Amazon. You should also have someone else look over it. Any typos or poor writing will turn away readers before they even look at your ebook. If you have a stellar blurb, more people will choose to actually buy your book. Working a few key words into your blurb (naturally, don’t stuff key words!) can also help discoverability.
These tips can equally be used on other ebook platforms. But only Amazon charges authors a delivery fee, so it’s the only place where size currently matters. Do you have any tricks for increasing your sales on Amazon KDP? We’d love to hear in the comments below.
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