Our Anthology Broke the Top 1,500 of All Free Kindle Books. Here’s How.
The first time I used Amazon KDP Select, back in February 2019, I had 257 people download my short story, “The Husked Heart,” in 5 days.
Granted, those were all free downloads, courtesy of Amazon KDP Select’s five-day free promotion. Still, that was over 250 people who downloaded my work. It was an incredibly humbling experience.
It was also a somewhat disappointing experience, since after that initial flurry of free downloads, I’ve only been able to sell 23 ninety-nine cent copies in the last five months.
So, why did this happen?
Because on Amazon, reviews are king. Reviews determine whether a book lives or dies. And you really have to have about twenty-five for your book to really take off.
It doesn’t matter that “The Husked Heart” once broke the top 2,000 in free books, or that it was the third bestseller in a niche category.
It doesn’t matter that the short story has 19 reviews, a 4.9/5 star rating, and no reviews under four stars. It simply didn’t meet the minimum required number of reviews to take off in the paid world.
The story went from the top #2,000 in the free category to where it is today: a paltry ranking of #1,284,357.
Fast-forward to today, when my writing group, Active Alumni Writers, has released an anthology.
“Once Upon a Story: Stories to Inspire and Intrigue You” has had 31 free downloads in its first day and currently holds a ranking of #2,733 out of all free Kindle books (of which there are millions).
“Once Upon a Story” is also currently sitting in 5th place in the free category of fiction anthologies. At least in the short term, we’ve beaten out James Joyce, Dostoevsky, and Jane Austen.
So, what does all of this mean?
It means that while I still haven’t figured out how to get reviews, I have still figured out half the process. So, here are the three steps I used:
- I used Amazon KDP Select.
With KDP Select, you give all of the digital rights to your book to Amazon. While that may sound extreme, consider this: when was the last time you bought a book from Kobo or Nook or from any other source besides Amazon?
Kindle absolutely dominates the market, and the benefits of enrolling in KDP Select far outweigh the disadvantages.
One of these benefits is the aforementioned 5-day free promotion. You can run one of these every 90 days, and you can use all 5 days at once (which I’d recommend) or space them out.
If your book is priced at $2.99 or more, you can also run a Kindle Countdown promotion, where your book can be discounted for up to 7 days in a 90-day period.
The benefit of having time-restricted discount/free deals is that people feel compelled to buy. If your book is always free, there’s no rush, but if they only have five days, they know they have to get on top of it.
2. I messaged my Facebook friends one at a time to let them know my book was out.
This is a simple — and annoying — but necessary step. If your friends don’t know your book is out, they can’t help support you. Facebook’s algorithms are rather screwy, so this is the only way to ensure that all of your Facebook friends know your work is out there.
You can copy-paste the same message, but make sure you do it at a semi-slow pace, or you’ll get locked out of your Facebook account for spamming.
The message I chose to use was:
Hey, I’m letting all of my friends know that I’m in an anthology that will be free for five days starting tomorrow (6/14).
I understand if you don’t have time to read it, but it would really help with Amazon sales rankings if you could pick up a free copy. It’s at bit.ly/AAWstories.
Thank you so much in advance!
Note that I used Bitly to create a customized short link. That makes it easier to copy-paste.
3. I let Twitter know about my release.
Now, I’m fairly new to Twitter. I only really got active on March 18th (about three months ago as of this writing). I have nearly 12,000 followers, but I have no idea how to effectively use them.
Part of that is because I don’t seek to use them. I consider Twitter my family, and rather than market to them, I choose to engage with them. (More on that in my article on Twitter Engagement).
Part of it is probably that I’m not using the right hashtags. While there is the #WritingCommunity hashtag, there are also a number of reader hashtags, such as:
#readingcommunity #reading #amreading #goodreads #booklovers #lovebooks #bookchat #bibliophile #bookaddict #amreading #betareader #FridayReads #BookBoost #IndieAuthors #Author #SelfPub #BestSeller #BookReviews #AuthorPromo #BestBooks #BookPromo #BookPromotion.
If you use too many hashtags, you’ll start to look like a robot, and people just don’t like feeling like they’re being marketed to, so choose your weapons wisely.
Basically, what it all comes down to is talking to your friends and telling them about your book. If you’re in an anthology, there’s more people you can tell, but it’s also going to be far harder to get reviews. If and when I figure out how to get reviews consistently, I’ll let you know.
What successes have you had? Got any tips on reviews? Let me know in the comments!
