How A Little $3 eBook Made Thousands of Dollars When Published on Kindle

Jan. 14, 2012 - PRLog -- In an exclusive interview with A.V. Harrison Publishing’s marketing department, Emily Hill revealed what she calls the ‘secret ingredients’ of her ‘recipe’ for success.

“Some authors call it ‘The Plan’, some call it ‘The Formula’.  Every Best Selling author – Traditional or Indie – can tell you exactly what it took to catapult their books into the highest rankings of a particular sales platform,” begins this prolific author on how to ‘make’ a best seller.

“I call my method, ‘The Recipe’ – it seems to fit nicely into the ‘Smart Cookie’ theme that I’ve chosen for my publishing business, A.V. Harrison Publishing.  By following ‘The Recipe’ my seventh eBook, ‘Ghost Stories And The Unexplained’ has made thousands of dollars – selling one copy at a time, at $2.99.”  

To view Ms. Hill’s Self-Publishing Guide visit http://www.amazon.com/Self-Publishing-For-Smart-Cookies-ebook/dp/B004GXAYO4/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326560728&sr=1-2 for details.

Touting her strongest eBook performer, the author explains, “Ghost Stories And The Unexplained’ has been a Kindle/UK and Kindle/USA best seller for the past twenty weeks.”  Visit http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Unexplained-Suspense-Horror... for details.

She smiles as she explains, “I would say four ingredients allowed me to cook up a Kindle Best Seller:  Persistence, Professional design, Market/Genre selection, and Global marketing.  Let me explain the importance of not skimping on any of these ingredients, which include:

“Persistence.  Two years ago, when I was beginning my IndiePub career, there were no billboards on the information highway that pointed an author to (for instance)
•  Step-by-step instructions for embedding a live-link Table of Contents.
•  Step-by-step instructions to set up your book to open on Page One for your readers (many eBooks still open at some obscure location in an eBook text – this can be prevented).  

It took me days – and days – to find and practice these and many other tricks that I have included in my latest edition of ‘Self-Publishing for Smart Cookies’ which make my eBooks easier to navigate for my audience.  It took persistence to read blogs and discussion boards before I began to collect Self-Publishing how-to’s for Smart Cookies.

Professional design.  Look through book covers on Amazon and pick out the ‘framed’ book covers – those with square text boxes that float over clip art designs.  Now, out of that group try to find a ‘framed’ book cover that is selling well in its genre and I will feature YOU and the book cover in an upcoming blog.  

Authors! You are competing with Simon & Schuster and Hachette level publishing houses with your book title, do you really think your little power point slide book cover is going to outsell the professionals?  Don’t embarrass the IndieAuthor in you – go Pro! In design – and as importantly – in editing.  

Editing.  More and more self-published authors are being taken down a notch with one*-star reviews because of bad grammar, over-looked typos, and weak structure.  If you’re not willing to get a tough second opinion on your prose, please don’t bother clogging up the ePub bandwidth.

Market selection:  Some books sell better than others, because the subject matter of those books have wider, deeper audience potential than others.”  

A.V. Harrison asked Ms. Hill if she planned out the success of her ghost stories collection, “That my ghost stories collection has caught on is a complete – and wonderful - surprise to me.  I never knew that there were so many ghost chasers, and ghost hunters!  I was aware that the paranormal market is – and has been – hot.  I never entered that market because vampires and werewolves were out of my jargon.  To handle an intricate paranormal plot an author has to know the ins and outs of time warp, fourth dimensions, pass-through possibilities, as so forth.  I wrote ‘Ghost Stories and The Unexplained’ as an ode to my mother – it was one of those ‘write what you know’ projects.  Yes, my mother was mentally imbalanced (as alluded to in one Amazon review); she was colorful; she loved and lived next to 'The Other Side’.  I would say ‘market selection’ picked me on this one. Lucky me!”

The author comes on strong when it comes to targeting the local book store versus targeting the global market:  “Marketing, Globally (and otherwise).  What does the leading author of ‘How to Sell a Million eBooks’  have to say about ‘global marketing’ in his eBook?  Nothing.  How he can write a book entitled, “How I sold a Million” and not even mention the global market borders on fraud in my mind.  

I know more authors who are clamoring to get their books into some little, obscure book store on the corner of their little town than into Amazon.de.  It makes me want to scream!  That same persistence put into the global market could very well make a best seller – all other key ingredients being in order.

Speaking of marketing, let me ask, “Are your ‘tags’ in place on the ‘Product Description’ page of each of Amazon’s international platform?”  Because you know, don’t you, that tags do NOT come forward when an eBook is published by Amazon.  Don’t know why that is, but it is.  Go back once your book is published on Amazon and re-load the tags that you entered on your submission page.
 
Is your Author’s Central Page up to date?  Are you Tweeting and Facebooking in the time zone that will enhance your sales for an international market?  ‘Afternoon Tea’ in England is served at 3PM, when the Pacific Time Zone is at 7AM.  Composing your Tweets to twitter the appropriate message, at the right time will make the difference in turning an avid reader into a fan!”

To reach Emily Hill visit http://www.avharrison-publishing.com/?page_id=72 for details.

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A.V. Harrison Publishing features ground-breaking topics from emerging authors. Its books are distributed by Ingram, available on Amazon.com and B&N Nook. Owner, Emily Hill, invites submissions and can be contacted at info@avharrison-publishing.com.