How To Sell More Ebooks

Okay....did the title grab you?

Most of the emails I get from other writers are asking me the same thing: What do you do to sell so many books?

My answer:  there is NO guaranteed one thing that will help sell your ebook.
But there are things that will help contribute to selling your ebook.

1) Have a good cover!

No matter how much you hate the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover," well, we do! You have to have a great, professional cover. If you are making your cover and have zero graphic art background, please I beg you, invest in a cover artist OR make the cover super simple.

2) Edit, edit, edit!

Your mom, aunt, grandmother, sister, neighbor etc....love your book and helped you edit it. Do you want to sell ebooks or not? Did I hear you say yes? Then invest in a real-to-goodness editor! Take your career seriously and invest in it!

3) Format

There is nothing more annoying than a poorly formatted book. Just a year ago, most place you could upload an ebook had a different format requirement and I learned to do epub since it is a universal format, today it is much easier and most of them take a word document. BUT keep everything the same format in the doc. If you center the chapter heading, make sure you center ALL of them!

You can always hire someone to format for you.

4) Think rollercoaster

What? Yes, hands in the air!!! Unfortunately, sales fluctuate. That is something you can't control. You just have to ride it out. There are some months that I have found to expect not so many sales...like August when kids are going back to school, AND May/June when people are getting out of school and going on vacation.

Don't be discouraged. You have to remember that even though you might have to reformat your novels as the technology gets better, your ebooks are forever!

5) Number of books

I swear this is a big one if you do numbers 1-3 above!! I can proudly say that LAST MONTH, for the first time, my books made more money than my day job as a child therapist! I've been self-published for over a year and a half, in June I published my ELEVENTH book!!! I've always heard that it takes at least five novels to really start selling...it took me ELEVEN!!!

6) BE EVERYWHERE!

The KDP select thing has taken off, but I still believe that it's not a great idea to have all your eggs in one basket. Of course I would take a deal with Amazon like my friends, Jessica Park and Nancy Naigle, just did, but across the board I think you should have your books everywhere so everyone can find you.

With all six of these, I'm NOT guaranteeing you success! Still. . .if you want to have success, you have to put the time and energy into what you want successful. Being an author is NOT an over night successful career. It takes time, great writing, and chipping away at what might/might not work.

Do you have anything to add?