Amazon to sell books
Amazon to sell books.
Amazon to sell books is likely the best bet to start, unless you have an existing fan or following base. The number of people you reach to sell your book is a critical factor.
Let’s look at Amazon’s numbers. According to Statista, in the December 2018 time period, Amazon had 206.1 million daily visitors. Macy’s was at 46.1 million daily. Amazon is by far the most popular retail site.
However, there is a problem with selling your book on Amazon
Since they are so big, it is not easy to be found. We have seen this with books we print for self-publishers. Some take off and sell thousands of books in the first month. They are the exception, but some of the self-publishers that we work with have been remarkably successful.
First, before you start to write, create a book, author, website, or publishing company, the goal is to start collecting email addresses so you can notify subscribers when your book is released. Build an audience by blogging frequently. Send out your new blogs via email. Each of the blog posts can be a topic to include in your book.
Set a higher retail price to sell on Amazon
Amazon will discount books to about a third less than the listed retail price. They charge around fifteen percent just to list a title. Add the “look inside” option, as it is money well spent. This feature will bring more sales because people get to look at a few inside pages. Buyers may be making their buying decision from the few pages they see, so choose the pages wisely.
A success story
We work with a self-publisher who has unique subject matter for her book. The book was released a number of years ago at the beginning of the “autoimmune” and “paleo” interest in this country. Those particular keywords and a few other similar keywords drove sales.
At one point in the first few weeks, the book was ranked 189 in all of Amazon books, and number one in several book categories. It was wonderful to follow the success of this title and do many more print runs.
Other online bookstores
You can read about on-demand book providers who start an online bookstore to augment their on-demand offerings. They would be lucky to get 1,000 or even 10,000 visitors a day to their store, let alone hundreds of millions of daily visitors. It does not matter if they offer more profit to self publishers. If the book cannot be found because their bookstore audience is too small, then you are wasting your time.
Star Print Brokers also looked at starting an online bookstore on our website. If it made sense to do so, we would start a store in a heartbeat.
