new to low content publishing and still
waiting for that first sale to come in
or maybe you've had a few sales here and
there but you're hoping that you can
turn that trickle into a raging
waterfall today i'm gonna take you
through all the possible reasons why
your low content books aren't selling
and what you can do about it so you can
finally start seeing those sales start
to roll in my name is rachel harrison
sun and i help people to create and sell
journals planners notebooks and more on
the kindle direct publishing platform if
that sounds interesting to you then
please don't forget to subscribe and hit
the bell so you can be notified every
time i put out one of these videos which
is each and every monday all right first
i just want to start off by saying we
have all been there there's not a low
content publisher alive that doesn't
have a string of books behind them that
haven't sold any copy personally
i think i have several hundred books
that have never sold so don't dismay if
you've if you're brand new to this and
you've only got a couple of books out
there and none of them have sold just
yet it's completely normal but you know
if you've got several books out and you
haven't even made a single sale probably
something is going wrong with one part
of the process
now there are very
quite a few different stages to low
content publishing
and i want you to take a really
systematic approach here
to figuring out why your books aren't
selling so you're going to start want to
start at the beginning go down the
entire line of different parts of this
process and attack it all separately you
don't want to make a whole bunch of
changes in multiple areas uh to multiple
books at a same time at the same time if
you do that and you do experience some
improvements in your sales you're not
really going to know which part of the
process uh was the one that helped start
generating those sales so take a
systematic approach
make one adjustment at a time and see if
you can kick start any of those sales
and then you'll be able to really
pinpoint which
which out of all the different stages of
this process are going to be your main
areas of focus for improvement moving
forward a couple of things to consider
before we get going first ask yourself
if you've given this enough time yet um
typically for me a book will start
selling within a couple of days to maybe
up to two or three weeks so if you've
just published a book and it's only been
a couple of days or a week or even two
weeks yet that doesn't mean the book
isn't going to sell it might actually
just need a little bit more time to
start selling
so just ask yourself if you really have
given yourself enough time yet okay the
other thing to keep in mind here is to
to have realistic expectations if you're
brand new to self-publishing and you've
just published your first book or you
know your first one or two books
it's not likely that the sales are just
going to start flooding through the
gates here
this is a brand new skill you might need
to improve a little bit before the sales
start coming in like i said i think i've
got several hundred books that have
never sold a single copy
so
um if you've only got one or two out
it's completely within reason that
those books just simply might not sell
that doesn't mean you're never going to
sell a book it just means that you might
need a little bit more time to hone your
skill and
you know tweak the parts of the process
that need tweaking even when your books
do start selling you're gonna notice
that some of them simply aren't gonna
sell
some of them may only sell one to two
copies a month don't worry about that
when you've got multiple books out there
even if they are only selling a couple
copies a month that does add up and like
i've mentioned before in other videos
i have really found and i don't know any
other low content publishers out there
that i've spoken with
that don't also agree with this that the
80 20 rule applies here
most people i've talked to including
myself have found that 80 percent of the
royalties generated from the low content
books come down come from about 20
of those books so that does mean like
i've just said multiple times already
that there's going to be quite a few
books that don't sell and there's going
to be another big portion of books that
are only selling one or two copies a
month and you're really going to have a
small portion of your entire low content
book catalog they're going to make up
the vast bulk of your royalties so don't
fret we've all been there and it's
completely normal to experience
no sales especially in the beginning so
let's now go ahead and we'll take a look
at some of the reasons why those books
aren't selling and what we can do to get
the sales rolling in
okay so there are four sort of main
stages to this process which you can
assess when you're trying to figure out
why your books aren't selling that's
research design optimization and
promotion so let's go ahead right now
and look at each one of those in a
little bit more detail
okay the first stage is research and you
want to ask yourself did i validate the
idea properly and if you don't know
anything about idea validation then
please check out this video right here
where i go into detail about how to
actually validate a niche and a book
idea
using amazon
but the gist of it here is you want to
find out first is there a viable market
for your book
now i do see a lot of people that
you know they've got their own
particular interest their own idea for a
book
whatever that might be
but
nobody else is really interested in
whatever that topic is so
i see this all the time someone's
spending a whole lot of time and effort
creating a book putting it out there but
guess what no one else is interested in
this and there are just no paying
customers interested in this particular
topic so that's number one the second
thing is is it too competitive
there's a lot of competition out there
and some niches are a lot more
competitive than others
if you choose one of the more
competitive niches and you'll know this
because there are
you know most books on the first page
are really high quality they're selling
really really well but they also most of
them have like you know 20 plus five
star reviews
that is super super competitive so
obviously you're going to have a lot
less chance to start making sales if
you're going into a competitive market
like that so those are the couple of
things that you want to pay attention to
there
the third thing in your research you
want to ask yourself is
have i targeted a clear audience this i
think is one of the main mistakes that
new publishers make
they tend toward making very generic
looking books that really when i take a
look at the cover i can't tell who the
book has been created for
and
if you're trying to appeal to everyone
you're going to appeal to no one at the
end of the day you really have to be
specific about who your target audience
is and then create a book tailored
specifically
to that target audience
it's not just enough to create a you
know floral planner for women that's not
targeted enough you need to think about
who is the woman that's going to be
buying this planner what are her
interests how old is she
um you know is she educated you've got
to have a really clear picture of
exactly who this person is and then
finally you want to think about
whether or not you've chosen relevant
low competition keywords and categories
so those are the specific areas under
the umbrella of research that you can
ask yourself and kind of go through
systematically the next area is design
so
we just touched on this briefly in the
last point but
ask yourself is my design too generic so
once again
have i targeted a specific audience
appealing to everyone ends up appealing
to no one you want to ask yourself
does my design stand out against my
competitors or does it blend in because
i've just
kind of jumped on a bandwagon and
decided to copy what everyone else is
doing
you really want to think about what your
book is going to look like
as people are scrolling through amazon
is your book actually going to stand out
or is it just going to get lost in that
sea of other floral planners
so you really want to make sure that
your cover stands a chance at
standing out amongst its competitors
another question you want to ask
yourself is is it is your book formatted
correctly so
things i see a lot are things like the
type is too small or the book might be
off-center so that's something you want
to look at you want to ask yourself have
i chosen high quality fonts and graphics
so for this i always recommend creative
fabrica
and you can check out this video here
which i've done that
gives a pretty good overview and just a
review and my my thoughts on creative
fabrica they've got
really high quality
fonts and imagery that you can use for
your book so i recommend checking out
that video if you haven't heard of
creative fabrica and you want to take a
look at how that works the next stage is
optimization so
have i maximized my title information
and keyword slots with low competition
keywords so obviously your book is not
going to be discoverable at all if you
don't have low competition keywords in
the right place so very important
not only when you know when you've done
your research and you've collected those
keywords where are you putting them
in your slots and in your title
information
the next part of optimization is your
book detail page
so you want to ask yourself is my
description compelling
is it free from spelling and grammatical
errors is it poorly formatted or have
you not formatted it at all using html
these are all really important
have i used a plus content to allow
customers to see more of my book and
showcase my quality interior so you can
check out this video i did recently all
about how to use a plus content with
your low content books
this really has been a game changer a
lot of people are shopping online now
and that look inside feature which shows
the interior of your book is not
available on mobile devices so adding a
plus content to your book listing allows
customers to be able to see what's
inside your low content book which can
be
really important and it can it can
actually make or break a sale if someone
can look inside your book and see the
value that you're offering
and the quality of your interior that
can definitely tip the scales as to
whether or not someone wants to buy your
book or not the other part of
optimization have i priced my book
competitively is it too high is it too
low
so
you want to take a look at what other
books what other similar books in the
market are charging you don't have to
necessarily charge the same but you
don't want to go five or ten dollars
more expensive
personally i've had a lot of success
charging one to two dollars higher
this is just based on how i feel the
quality of my books um you know what the
quality of my books are in comparison to
some of the other books out there so i
feel like someone who's a little bit
more discerning
they're not gonna mind spending that
extra one or two dollars to get
something that's a little bit more high
quality so don't be afraid to do that
undercutting the average price can
actually work against you
that can actually look like um
your book is is of a lower quality and
less value so
don't think that you have to price your
book lower than everybody else's that
can sometimes actually hurt you okay the
last part of the puzzle here is
promotion
now if you've done your research
correctly your book should be
discoverable but of course adding
promotion
never hurts and this will you know it
will increase your sales to to put some
promotion efforts in there so
if you're using ads you want to ask
yourself are your ads optimized and are
they working for you
do they need tweaking now quick note
about ads here as i always harp on about
this ads really should be the final step
of the process ads are meant to amplify
sales not just create them out of thin
air and if you
don't have any of the prior steps or you
know if some of the prior steps that
i've just talked about are not working
for you ads aren't going to help your
books need to be discoverable they need
to be really high quality all of that
value needs to be there otherwise the
ads aren't going to work
you're just going to end up wasting
money on ads if you've gone through all
of the previous steps
and then you add ads that's just going
to create some amplification ads are
basically like a megaphone right they're
just going to amplify whatever you've
got going on
all right this next part is for people
that aren't necessarily brand new
because it's going to take a little bit
of time to get there but ask yourself if
you have created an email list for your
paying customers once you've got an
email list you can start promoting your
books to that list you can start asking
them for for reviews on your books and
that's obviously going to be very
helpful in generating further sales now
this is something that is really part of
the long game
you're not going to have an email list
right off the bat but i do recommend it
is one of the very first things you do
once you've got a few books published
start that email list it's going to take
some time to build up but it is going to
be worth it down the line remember this
is a long game the more people you have
on your list the more people you're
going to be able to promote your books
to further on more people you're going
to be able to request reviews from
further on and this is something that's
going to build up steam slowly over time
but just because it's going to take time
to get there doesn't mean that you
shouldn't start it an email list really
is going to be your most valuable tool
for promotion
so get that going as soon as you can
okay so there you have it if you haven't
made any sales yet you've at least now
got a bit of a framework that you can
use to assess where your areas for
improvement might be and you know we've
got a bit of a road map and an action
plan to be able to help you to start
generating those sales now one thing i
really want to say here is this is a
brand new skill for you it is completely
unreasonable to expect yourself to just
completely knock this out of the park
right from the word go
by the time this is all over and done
with successful or not you will have a
huge pile of failed books behind you so
keep that in mind just accept this as
part of the learning process and you'll
be just fine
if you are truly passionate about low
content publishing there is no reason
whatsoever why you can't pick up the
skills that you will need in whatever
area it is that you currently require
improvement and start generating sales
so please give yourself a little bit of
grace and some time to be able to
work on and improve this brand new skill
all right if you haven't already please
do download my free guide which i've
left a link to down in the description
below three steps to publishing your
first low content book in less than a
day and also if you haven't already
please join me in my free facebook group
low content profits thanks again
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thanks so much for watching and we'll
see you next time