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Internet Marketers Attempting to Destroy Kindle Bookstore

Kindle Bookstore New Target for Internet Marketers

Although I have published three books, like most of you, I wear a number of different hats in addition to my author’s fedora. My full-time job is as a consultant to small businesses assisting them with their online marketing needs. I have been doing this since my partners and I launched one of the first ISPs in the country way back in 1993.

As an internet marketer I try to stay abreast of all the Google algorithm updates, marketing tactics and trends happening in the online world. As many of you know, such things are always fluid and changing every day. After twenty years in the business I have a fairly good idea of what is important (from a marketing perspective) and what is a tactic that could get your website banned by Google.

A walk down memory lane

It wasn’t that long ago (2-3 years) that online marketers had almost destroyed Google’s search results by gaming the system to display results that were mostly garbage. They did this because they figured out that Google would rank results based on certain criteria (such as the number of links pointing to a website) and then they would focus on those ranking methods to push a garbage site to the top of SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages).

Google fortunately began cracking down on such tricks and launched a number of algorithm updates intended to separate the quality sites from the crap sites by focusing on more realistic ranking criteria. Quality content and unique information sites began to appear at the top of the search results and most of the garbage sites were shoved to the bottom of the list results or even delisted by Google.

Kindle Books Under Attack

The vast majority of Internet Marketers are people who do nothing but sell other people’s information. Typically they have not created a product or service of their own; they just serve as an affiliate of other marketers. What’s even more ironic is that most of the information products they sell are programs that teach others how to sell online.

Kindle books have been discovered by the Internet marketing community. Once it became known that a few authors were making five or six figures per month selling Kindle books, the marketing “gurus” set their sights on Kindle. For the past year Kindle programs have become the “opportunity de jour” and are being pedaled by dozens of the recognized “gurus” of online marketing fame. In just the past month alone, I have seen at least 10 different programs being hyped.

What does the Kindle hype mean to legitimate authors?

Just as it was with the old methods of Internet marketing, the new Kindle tactics don’t have anything to do with actually writing a book. The idea is to collect readily available information, repackage it, paste it into something that resembles a book, add a keyword-rich title, an eye-catching cover and upload it to the Kindle bookstore.

Once the “new” book is listed on Amazon the standard marketing tactics are employed and the race begins. The idea being promoted by these marketing types is to have dozens (or hundreds) of such books listed on Kindle in hopes of leveraging Amazon’s (and Google’s) extraordinary search traffic.   As an example, if millions of people are searching for “weight loss” information, the odds are that enough of them will stumble upon your Kindle book and download it. And yes, some marketers are making substantial incomes using this method.

The problem for legitimate authors and the Kindle bookstore is that this crowded list of titles is starting to resemble the old Google’s search results.  The books that are rising to the top of the lists are oftentimes garbage books being driven there by bogus reviews, likes and sales. Amazon is now facing the same challenges that Google fights to overcome every day.

How do you compete with this onslaught of spurious books?

First and foremost, produce a quality product. An interesting and well-written book will always gain a following regardless of the competition. Amazon is struggling to address this and is starting to clamp down on these bogus books and even removing those that they discover. When the dust settles, the books that remain will be those that have good reviews, likes and a sales history.

Secondly, employ the proven tactics I outline in my book, “Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit”.  My marketing strategy and the blueprint I lay out for you is based on my years of online marketing experience and having written three books over the past decade.  I understand the challenges we authors face and I know what it takes to get traction online selling any product.

Help Amazon Take Out the Garbage

We authors tend to buy a lot of books. If you are like me, you most likely buy other books in your genre to see how other authors treat your topic and to get new ideas for future books. When you download a book that is obviously junk or appears to be a “cut & paste” compilation, give it the review it deserves and take the time to return the book to Amazon. Collectively we can help take out the garbage and preserve this marketplace for those who have something original to say.

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Kindle Readers & Books – The Demand Continues

Kindle News

Demand for Kindle books is not abating. If anything that demand for new books will continue to expand for a number of reasons. Not only is public awareness increasing and new publications are published by the minute, but new Kindle readers and tablets will fuel this ever-increasing market. In a past blog post I mentioned that “eBook sales now beat hardcover books” and that trend continues.

Kindle to have backlight?

Soon, one of the last remaining objections to the Kindle may be history. It is rumored that the Kindle will soon be receiving a lighted display. See more about this “Front-Lit Screen” here.

Learn more about all the Amazon Kindle Devices

Kindle Readers & Books – The Demand Continues to Grow

The good news is that the demand for new books remains strong and new advancements in Kindle Readers will continue to fan the fires of growth. As an eBook publisher this is nothing if not great news. Publishing a book to an ever-increasing audience almost guarantees success, but that success can only be achieved if you do the right things to get people’s attention. The eBook marketplace is crowded; your job is to get above the noise and capture the attention of those searching for your genre.

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Author has been “on the money” for 20 years!

Did you see this book review?

When we launch our book, most of us will ask a few associates to help things get started by reviewing our book and hopefully they will like what they read and offer a positive review on Amazon. Ron is an old friend and business associate of twenty plus years. I asked him to review my latest book and was overwhelmed with his comments. The thing about Ron is that if he didn’t like what he read, he would have declined my offer or worse…not been so flattering. Here is what he wrote…

Almost twenty years ago Tom Heatherington was on the radio in Dallas, TX talking about this new thing called the Internet explaining how important it would become for businesses. I remember that interview quite vividly because I was the guy on the other side of the microphone. I was a radio talk show host at the time and Tom was being interviewed because someone at the station scheduled him and it was my job to try and ask intelligent questions.

I had not met Tom prior to that show and I had never heard of the Internet, and frankly I wasn’t overly excited that I drew the short straw and had to do that interview. All that changed immediately as we began to talk. Tom has a way of making people understand technology and he was energized as he explained how this global communication network had the potential to change our world. The more he spoke, the more excited I got as I was being introduced to a whole new world of possibilities.

A lifelong friendship was begun that day and Tom and I have collaborated on different Internet projects over the years even though we live 2,000 miles away from each other. I bought his last two books and must have shared them with a dozen of my business associates. When Tom told me he was writing this book to help people navigate through the self-publishing maze, I got excited again because I have been playing with a book idea for a while, and his timing was spot-on again. I remember him saying that writing a book was the easy part, the real work is the promotion piece that comes after the book is finished.

Most of us are not technology experts. Sure, we may use Facebook and watch YouTube videos, but few of us know what is needed to use those resources as promotional tools. Tom’s explanation of the marketing piece is what’s missing from most of the other how-to books or author websites I’ve seen. The advice he shares about YouTube alone is worth the cost of hiring Tom at his normal consulting fees. At $3.99 this book is a steal and I predict will be the salvation of many new authors.

An honest book critique

Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit - New eBookIf you appreciate Ron’s impression of what he learned from my book, I hope you will consider buying it and add your opinion to Amazon’s reviews.

I am very pleased that (so far) every review my book has received has been quite positive and all have 4 or 5 stars. As an author, this is encouraging and rewarding in that others see the value in your work and have learned something from your effort.

I am looking forward to hearing what you think about “Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit”.  Thanks!

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eBook Revenues Beat Hardcovers in 2012

Can you believe that headline?

Since digital books appeared on the scene, this is the first time that eBook revenues have surpassed hardcovers. The Association of American Publishers released a report that says:

“ebooks have beaten hardcover revenues for the first time. Ebook revenues topped out at $282.3 million YTD while hardcovers hit $229.6. Almost exactly a year ago the tables were turned with ebooks hitting $220 million and hardcovers brushing past $335 million.” Read the full report here…

This is a phenomenal milestone and possibly the most important announcement ever for authors of eBooks. For years those of us who self-published have been much maligned and looked down upon because we didn’t have a “real” agent or publisher. The tide has turned. Not only do we see digital authors earning seven-figure royalties today, but the barriers have been destroyed and anyone who had the desire can now publish their book. The marketplace alone will soon determine what becomes a bestseller.

You can publish your eBook!

Ask anybody and most will admit to having a book inside them.  I believe that desire is as basic as our need to talk to people and share our experiences, feelings, hopes and fears; communicating with others is part of who we are. The obstacle blocking our path until recently has been that publishers don’t want to talk to us.  They screen their accessibility using agents and clerks trained in protecting the sanctity of the publishing house.  Today, we no longer need to play their game or seek their approval.

Amazon’s Kindle publishing process and the proliferation of eBook readers of all types, Tablet PCs and smartphones make it possible for anyone to publish their book and have it accessible to any person with Internet access. The age of digital publishing may have arrived a few years ago, but acceptance by the marketplace has now been achieved.

Selling eBooks

The one constant that has not changed and probably never will is that to become a successful author, people must buy your book. To find those book buyers your must market and promote your book; that is the only way to create awareness. Reaching those buyers is what my book is all about.

“Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit” provides a marketing blueprint for online promotion. You will learn how to position your book to increase your rank in search results using resources that deliver results. Getting Oprah to review your book on television may be the only shortcut to book marketing, but making that happen isn’t likely.

The time is right, the obstacles have been removed and you can now publish your book. The process is straightforward, but you will need some help promoting your book and getting traction online. Invest $3.99 in my book and see if it doesn’t contain the best marketing advice you’ve ever read. Hey, don’t take my word for it, read the reviews on my Amazon page and get an idea of how this might help you to sell more eBooks. Learn how to sell more eBooks using the Amazon Kindle bookstore.

Days of print books are numbered.

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The Kindle reviews are coming in…

They like it!

In the past week, eight people have taken the time to add their review to Kindle – How to Publish, Promote & Profit. You can read the entire text of their reviews, but here are a few highlights. Oh, BTW did I say how pleased I am that others see the value in this new book.

Customer Reviews Kindle Book

  • At $3.99 this book is a steal and I predict will be the salvation of many new authors.
  • I have purchased a few of these Kindle marketing books and nothing I have read approaches the breadth and depth of knowledge and insight that this book offered.
  • A knack for being one of the first to market with helpful and insightful books that truly help the reader.
  • This was surprisingly well-written and full of truly useful information. I will be going back to this book again as a reference!
  • If you have written a book (not just Kindle) and are struggling to get sales, this is the book that will take your publishing program to the next level.
  • Tom Heatherington’s new book is not only an eye opener to the possibilities of publishing on Kindle but, dare I say it, will become the go to resource for all prospective Kindle publishers.
  • I was very impressed with this book. Not just the quality of the writing, but the depth of what was covered.
  • I’m a budding author of ebooks and this has been tremendously helpful to me.

As authors, we all hope to sell a truckload of books, but aside from the royalty checks, everyone wants to see positive reviews and know that others are enthusiastic about our book.  It isn’t just an ego thing, it is vindication that our effort is appreciated by people who spent their money hoping to learn something, or in the case of a fiction book, that they enjoyed the story.

If you have not yet downloaded Kindle – How to Publish, Promote & Profit, I invite you to read it and see if this is a book that belongs in your marketing library.  Thank you.

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How to Promote Your Kindle Book for Maximum Sales

The publishing industry today is experiencing what the buggy whip manufacturers at the turn of the last century must have endured.  Their industry was changing overnight and demand for their products was disintegrating before their eyes. Those newfangled machines from Henry Ford and the Dodge brothers were destroying their business and there was nothing they could do to salvage it

The publishing business has been going through a consolidation and suffering major upheavals for the past ten to fifteen years. Companies have been acquiring other companies, merging with competitors or closing their doors. It’s not that the size of the pie is shrinking, it’s that the market has been migrating from print to digital.  The newspaper industry, magazines and even the Yellow Pages have seen their empires crumble as their customers choose electronic solutions to  meet their thirst for information and knowledge.

It used to be that to become a published author, one needed to sign with a book agent who (hopefully) had access to major publishing houses and could convince someone to review a manuscript. It could be a long and painful process with no guarantees of acquiring a publishing deal.  Today, the only requirements necessary to publish a book is that one have access to the Internet and a free account with Amazon.  Bingo! You’re a published author.

Fueling the growth for digital books, or eBooks as they are more commonly known, is the influx of inexpensive book readers like Amazon’s Kindle or Barnes & Noble’s Nook.  To put this in perspective, Amazon is the largest print book retailer in the universe, and they sell far more digital books than they do print.  We’re talking really big numbers here. No one knows the exact number because Amazon does not release their sales figures. Add to this that Amazon sells millions of products from apples to xylophones, yet their best selling product is the Kindle reader.

Kindle Authors, Learn How To Promote Your eBooks

As a result, people have become empowered and the dream of becoming a published author is easily available to anyone with a story to tell.  The meteoric growth of Kindle books has been breathtaking and people new to the publishing game are becoming millionaires. Recently, two self-published authors, John Locke and Amanda Hocking, each sold more than one million Kindle books.  Ms. Hocking, at 26-years-old, sold over 450,000 copies of her ebooks in January alone.

Clearly, John Locke and Amanda Hocking are not the typical self-published author; they got lucky.  The vast majority of authors are fortunate if they sell a handful of books every month.  The reason is simple, there is a ton of competition and every product whether it be a book or a Buick, needs a marketing effort behind it before it can gain critical mass.  Authors are story tellers, not Madison Avenue marketing experts.

How Kindle Authors Can Promote Their eBooks for Maximum Sales
Kindle Promotion To Increase Book Sales

The good news is that there is help available in this area and it comes in the form of a new Kindle book titled, “Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit”.  Although this is my third book, I will be the first to admit that I don’t consider myself an author.  Dan Brown, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling and company; those people are authors, I am more of a teacher.  I’m a marketing guy who happens to have spent the past twenty years in the Internet business, and my three books are all “How-To” Internet business books.

My latest book evolved as a result of my experience publishing a previous book on Kindle.  The mistakes I made cost me time and money. Helping other authors avoid those pitfalls and offering tips along the way will make their publishing experiences easier and more rewarding.

I have corresponded and personally met with numerous other Kindle authors and discovered that literally all of them share the same problem.  Once their book was listed in the Kindle book store…now what? How do they create awareness for their books, how do they promote them and where should they devote their time to help generate traction online?

My book serves two primary functions.  One, it is focused on helping authors prepare and format their manuscript for the Kindle and walking them through Amazon’s “Kindle Direct Publishing” (KDP) process. The second and most important focus is showing them how to create awareness for their book and how to promote it effectively to increase sales.  Readers will learn how to make enough noise online so that their book gets the attention of search engines and the people (prospective buyers) looking for information related to their book’s topic.

I am a marketing guy with a twenty year record of Internet promotional expertise and I have a great understanding of this technology. I am also pretty good at implementing this knowledge and teaching others how to use it and adapt it to solve their marketing problems.

“Kindle, How To Publish, Promote & Profit” is a step-by-step blueprint that will teach you everything you need to know about publishing your book on Kindle and what to do to promote it to maximize sales.  Get your copy in Kindle format today!

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Kindle Promotion ~ The Devil is in the Details

What this book is about ~ and what it is not!

As this is the first blog post about my book, I thought it would be a good idea to provide an overview of what my book is about, what you will learn from it, and also… what it is not.

When we set out on our journey to publish our first book, most of us have that fantasy of seeing our book become a best seller and earning us a boat load of money. We are not quite sure how that magic will happen, or what we might need to do to hasten the process, but the vision is there and it looks very real.

Somewhere along the road we realize that there are hundreds of thousands of authors with books in the Kindle store, and most of them are not getting rich from book royalties. If you’ve done your research, you’ve learned that the ‘average’ author is lucky to be selling a couple of books every month.  Consequently, there must be a whole lot more to selling books than just writing a great story.  You will need to get serious traction online. While I was writing and editing this book, I started putting the foundation in place to market my book out of the gate.

To get traction online means that we need to make a lot of noise.  Not noise in the sense of screaming fans, or interviews on Oprah (although that would be ideal), but the kind of noise that attracts the invisible Google spider.  The vast majority of people that will enjoy or benefit from your book will be searching for ideas and solutions using a search engine like Google or Bing. They may not even be searching for a book, which means they will not be browsing Amazon’s bookstore, so you must have a presence outside the realm of Amazon.

Attracting the attention of search engines will be your #1 priority. I will show you step-by-step what you need to do to make noise, get traction and curry the favor of Google and Bing and how to leverage other free online marketing resources.

What this book is about

As the title suggests, this is a ‘how-to’ book about Kindle publishing, but most importantly the primary focus is about promoting your Kindle book for maximum effectiveness and profits.  Online marketing is online marketing whether you are selling a book, a boat or a bulldozer, and I know a little something about online marketing.

Getting Google’s attention and leveraging social media is the key to selling your book. This is what I will show you how to maximize in my book. I am an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and social media marketing expert. As a full-time consultant, I help companies sell things online and I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years.

What my book can do for you

As I mentioned, before my book had its final edits completed or was uploaded to the Kindle bookstore, I had a framework in place to maximize exposure with minimal expense. I had launched branded accounts seeded with content on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumbler, YouTube and other online resources in addition to having this website fully operational. This post that you are reading now was published BEFORE my book was listed for sale in the Kindle bookstore (today is 5/14/2012).

What this book is not

This is NOT a book about how to write a book!  I will not be discussing dialogue, grammar, sentence structure, conflict resolution, protagonists, antagonist or any of the countless topics related to the creative writing process.  I am NOT the guy to teach you how to create a spellbinding plot or develop captivating characters. That’s what you bring to the table.

The truth is I don’t even consider myself an author in the truest sense of the word. When I think of authors, people like James A. Michener, David G. McCullough, Ken Follett, David Baldacci and others come to mind. Trust me; I am not an author in that meaning of the term.

I am a marketing guy with a twenty year record of Internet promotional expertise and I have a great understanding of technology. I am also good at implementing this knowledge and teaching others how to use it and adapt it to solve their marketing problems. Your number one problem will be attracting targeted traffic to your website or Amazon book page.  Showing you how to create awareness for your book and drive ready-to-buy prospects to your website or book is what my book is all about.

Aren’t there enough Kindle marketing books?

Unquestionably, there are numerous other books on this topic.  Some are outstanding, some are tolerable, but most do not address the critical pieces you need to know and understand. Also, I’ve yet to discover one that drills down to the levels you will discover in my book.

How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, by John LockeAs an example, one of the best marketing strategy books I have found is How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, by John Locke, and I highly recommend that you have this book in your library. I do not know Mr. Locke, and this is the only book of his that I have read; mostly he writes fiction.

In his book, John outlines how he structures his marketing strategy when he launches a new book. His ideas are spot on and his success as an author is a testament to their effectiveness. The big difference in what he advises and what I painstakingly explain are the details…and the devil’s in the details.

One very important detail is that John provides excellent advice when he instructs you to include a YouTube trailer in your marketing mix. What he does not explain is how to tactically optimize your video so that it becomes search engine friendly and by itself will attract the Googlebot (spider) and drive traffic to your website or Kindle sales page.

YouTube is one of the most powerful marketing tools ever invented, but if you do not optimize your video’s title, description, tags and insert your hyperlink correctly, you will lose 90% of the benefit of having a custom YouTube Channel.

My book covers the critical details

In my book, I explain why something is important and then I show you how to execute.  Short of you hiring someone like me as a full-time consultant for a few months, there is no one book from any author that will teach you everything you need to know to leverage every marketing resource. If you are trying to market a Kindle book you need an arsenal that includes great books like John’s and THIS book.

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