This is a guest post by Chris Naish of NoHatDigital. Chris is a social media/SEO wizard and self-published author who likes learning new things and tinkering with stuff on interwebs. He also blogs now and again at his site ThinkClickRich.com and writes books with proper England grammar when the mood takes him.
3 Book Promotion Ideas (That Nobody Is Talking About)
I know you probably know all the basic stuff, so I want to provide you with book promotion ideas that you likely have not heard before. Here we go:
Thunderclap
Thunderclap is a service that allows you to get all of your supporters behind you on launch day. They sign up and grant Thunderclap access to post a message about your book launch the day it goes live. All of these tweets and Facebook likes to go out the same time so that you are literally everywhere on your launch day.
If you want to make sure you get even more eyes on your legion of tweets, be sure to visit Hashtagify.me and include a couple of popular ‘hashtags’ in the message that is going out.
In the image below you’ll see that with this particular thunderclap we got almost 2000 clicks to a free book. While there is no way of knowing how many of those actually downloaded the book, you can bet it was a fair few!
Finally, this is free. but only if you reach 100 supporters. This is hard work, no doubt about it, but worth your time. If you can hire somebody to do outreach to people in your industry/niche on your behalf it will, of course, make this a lot less painless.
Kindle Categories
Chris’ book. Click to view on Amazon
Nicholas has written in the past about the importance of Amazon categories. As everyone says, make sure you select the best, most relevant categories for your book.
Well, forget that!
Select EVERY relevant category for your book!
It’s a little-known secret that you can actually add your Kindle book to up to ten categories. Identify them in advance of your launch day and, as soon as the book is live, message KDP from the dashboard (the contact link is in tiny text at the bottom) and tell them to place you into the other eight categories you have identified. Use the exact category path in your request, like so:
Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Total Quality Management
Be sure to go to the deepest level possible as this will result in more eyes on your book, and a greater chance to rank highly in these deeper categories. This article will help with deep category selection.
Keywords
This is one is in beta, and something I wish I had thought of prior to publishing my last book. As far as I can see, nobody is really talking about this… at least not in public!
Now, I’m not talking about the seven keywords you get to enter in the back end of KDP here. I’m talking about getting Google to start selling your book for you. This involves doing some in-depth keyword research so be prepared to do some schoolin’ on the subject.
This may not work so well for fiction books, so the non-fiction crowd here will probably appreciate it more. The idea is to include a keyword in your title that is highly searched in both Google and the Kindle store. As an example, do this:
- Go to Google.com and type in “adult coloring books”
- Go to searchvolume.io and type in the same phrase
At position one (at time of writing) on Google, you will find this book.
At searchvolume.io you will see that there are somewhere in the range of 246,000 searches for this keyword per month.
Now check the best sellers ranking for that book on Amazon. Not bad huh?
Of course, it’s not guaranteed that you will rank first in Google just because you bang a keyword in the title. Some linking from other sites with relevant anchor text will help that book to rank for that keyword. Hmm… let me think of a good example…
OK, let’s say you write a book about online business and you think it is one of the best digital marketing books out there. You might create a link like the last one, in an effort to let Google know that is a vote for that search term.
The great thing about this is that Amazon is such a powerful and trusted website, that ranking your book for a highly relevant keyword should be much easier than on any ‘normal’ site.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you found the book promotion ideas interesting. If you have any questions then holler below and I’ll see if I can’t help you out!
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Hello, Nicholas! Thank you for this very helpful and informative post, Chris. Sharing! 😀
Thanks very much Vashti, really appreciate that, and happy you found it helpful! 🙂
Many thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you for this informative post, Chris. I have a question: is it a new thing that Amazon will allow you to list a book in 10 categories? I find this so hard to believe!!! You see, I have asked them many times in the past to put my books under certain categories and every time they asked me which ones of the existing ones I wish deleted so the ones I asked for can take their place! And we’re talking just 3-4 categories showing for the book at the time. Thanks.
Hey Effrosyni, how’s tricks? 🙂
I don’t think it is a new thing, but I could be wrong. Obviously it was around when I put out the last book.
Think it might be hit and miss with getting a rep who knows about it, but I’ve done it with both of my books and an author friend has used it also. You can also do it on Amazon UK, Germany etc.
Thank you for your response, my friend. Lucky you! And you hit it on the nail about getting the right rep. I keep getting all the wrong ones 😉
Just try them again, I’m sure you will get through to the right person. i actually had to tell the rep I was on with that it was possible and point out examples to him. haha
I’d heard of Thunderclap but not the others. Thanks for always having relevant and important info to share with us!
Thanks for reading Dot! 🙂
You’re welcome!
Aw, you! Thank you 🙂
You’re welcome!
I’m inspired! I have to start working on my book as soon as possible and when I’m through, I will return to this post
Awesome! 😀
Good luck with the book!
let us know how you got on once it’s finished. 🙂
Have a book launch coming up in the next month or so – am saving these good suggestions. Thanks a million, Nicholas!
Hope the tips get you some extra traction Noelle! 🙂
Awesome! Best of luck with launch. Let me know how I can help!
Hope that you get some extra traction from the tips. Thanks for reading! 🙂
Well, I wasn’t talking about them, but I am now!
Thanks to you and Chris for the useful information.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thank you, Pete! Any weekend plans?
Weather still gloomy here, Nicholas. Staying inside in the warm, except for walking Ollie of course. Mother’s Day here on Sunday, so cooking something nice for Julie, I expect. 🙂
A quiet weekend in sounds great, actually!
Thanks for reading Pete! 🙂