In the full post we detailed the precise process that you need to take to successfully publish to Kindle. There was an awful lot to take on board there though, so just to refresh your memory and to walk you through the process once you’re ready, this cheat sheet provides all that information in a condensed and actionable format!
The Niche
Choosing your niche is one of the single most important steps to ensuring your eventual success. What’s important here is that you pick something that is popular and has a wide audience but not something that is highly over saturated or that means you’re going up against competition with massive budgets and massive resources.
So ‘fitness’ may be too broad, and ‘curling’ may be too niche. But choosing a part of fitness (fitness for older men) or something like a specific industry or career can be a great option.
Routes to Market
The best niche will be one that gives you a ‘route to market’. In other words, you want to find a topic that will appeal to a very specific type of person and then you want to ensure that you find a way to communicate with those specific type of people so you can offer them your eBook.
SEO
SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. This is normally what websites use in order to try and get to the top of Google so that more people can find them. But Amazon/the Kindle Store is also a search engine of sorts and it has similar mechanisms.
The basics of SEO involve finding a ‘key phrase’ that people will search for and then using that in your title potentially and certainly in your description – in a subtle manner though that won’t look like spam.
For eBooks though, things like sales and reviews also play a big role – so make sure to focus on those things a lot.
Creating Your Book
There are many ways to create an eBook. The most obvious way is just to write the book yourself and like they say: everyone has a book in them!
But while this is one viable option, a lot of people won’t be able to write a whole book or won’t know how. In that case, you may want to outsource the process or even look for content you already own or that has a creative commons license.
Cover
Also very important for ensuring the success of your eBook is the cover. Make sure this is eye catching and particularly that it works in black and white. That means high contrast will win the day!
Marketing
Now try to market your book by getting coverage on relevant blogs and websites. You should also try and accelerate your sales where possible – with special offers being a great strategy.
Scaling
From here you can simply rinse and repeat this process and try to spread into as many niches as possible. You may possibly even be able to recycle content.
Note as well that you can also try and get your book onto other platforms or even self-publish it as a hard copy using Amazon’s self-publishing tool or an alternative option like LuLu.
