Jeff, after 15 years at this game, here is what I’ve learned that is most helpful. Paradoxically, free content drives up paid book sales. Putting my books on Kindle free runs, giving them away a few days out of every 90 (that’s the max under the program) results in much higher paid sales. Just getting the exposure helps a ton. When you schedule a Kindle free run, use all channels of social media starting weeks in advance to increase awareness of the free offer. There are plenty of book lovers on Free Republic who will help bump any threads you post. Sorry for the thread hijack, but I had just gone over 3K reviews and felt like tooting my horn on a book thread. It was rude, but I knew it would help sustain your thread as well, at least, I thought it would.
Next tip: making long excerpts available on your website is also a no-lose proposition, and by long excerpts I mean like the first 1/4 of your book. If somebody takes the time to read the excerpt, they are hooked, and will purchase the book. If they don’t finish the long excerpt, they would not have been a happy book buyer.
I’m not sure how much it costs you to produce a book, but the rule of thumb is that your cost to produce a book should be no more than 25% of the listed retail cover price. If you are paying more than that, I might be able to help you figure out how to lower your cost.
The fastest-growing part of the industry is audiobooks, so put your book out for auditions via the Amazon ACX audible method ASAP. If you can, narrate it yourself, this will double your audiobook royalties, since you will capture both parts of the equation as rights holder and narrator. You can learn everything you need to know about producing professional level audiobooks at Amazon ACX and by watching tutorials on Youtube.
And get your next title out as soon as you can, each book helps the others. Anybody who enjoys one of them will buy the others. It’s a beautiful synergy.
Yes, I understand the importance of reaching critical mass in readership. I spent a long time learning the craft and producing the first novel. Now I'm 10,000 words into the sequel, but that should accelerate after the New Year as I won't have all my time tied up putting food on the table.
My goal is to make every book better than the last.
Question: If you’re running free book promotions on KDP Select, how do you get away with offering large excerpts? I thought KDP had a rule against that.