Selling on Amazon versus your own website

[Laina Molaski]

I need your opinion. I have been working hard to promote my book (self published) on my own site instead of Amazon or some of the other online stores I am distributed to. However, I am wondering if people are less inclined to buy from someone they don;t know and if my time would be beter spent using Amazon etc.

Thoughts?
Laina

[Rex Lee Reynolds]

I attended a webinar a few weeks ago that I think was very good. The webinar was entitled "Think Outside The Bookstore," and offered a lot of good advice for selling your books in places in addition to the website, Amazon and other bookstores. It mentioned ideas such as arranging book-signing events at places other than bookstores. This concept really appealed to me since it's so easy for particularly a new and unknown author's book to get lost in the ocean of other books, especially when running with the crowd on Amazon and so many others. The webinar was put on by Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. She is the CEO or owner.

The webinars are sonsored by LuLu Publishing and are free to attend. If you signup for a webinar and don't make it, they send you an email with a link to the archived webinar, so you can listen to the recording of it. Penny has her company listed on Facebook as well as her own site. I would suggest the webinars to anyone trying to find good ideas for maket their books.

[Ben Atkinson]

I have written and self-published two novels. I had positive reviews on my first, although I was young at the time and that had a negative effect on the level of the writing. This book was available through Amazon and has not sold well. I think amazon is good as it takes away the packaging and endless trips to the post office that you would have to make, however it also means amazon takes a cut and in my experience that left me with very little to cover my own costs.
For my second book, Walking on Cinders I've been working with a woman who's background is publicity and event management to promote the book using social media. This has been a lot more successful and because we sell the book only from the website and by hand, we've kept track of sales and found it easier to re-coop the costs of editing and printing.
I guess there are pro's and con's to both ways!!

[Marcia Mayne]

The one drawback to selling on Amazon is that you don't know who your buyers are. You could sweeten the pot, so to speak, by offering buyers an autographed copy of your book or some other treat that they can't get on Amazon.

[Dream Books LLC]

You can also do this on Amazon.com. Use the Used section of Amazon and sell your signed copy. You can list it as brand new, have is priced the same or even lower then the books retail price and it gives your followers something one of a kind.

[Joe Kennett]

I spent a thousand dollars getting my first book published and I didn't have my investment come near breaking even. I have no regrets though, I enjoyed the experience and learned. Next time I'll go cheaper, the book companies, Amazon etc didn't help me, they keep wanting me to buy more products: email blasts, book store buy-backs, radio and press releases. It's tough unless your known or have lots of cash! I would wait and see, you can always go to Amazon later. I paid money, my listing is not visible, I am self-promoting anyway. My book "The Vicious Cycle, The JoeWaWa Story" didn't make it commercially yet, I published it in April. I'm not going to keep dumping in money. If it is meant to be, it will get noticed. What is your link? Mine is www.joewawa.com. Good luck, i'm sure it is a great book.

JoeWaWa

[Jason Coleman]

Just a thousand dollars??? How / where'd you get your book published for a thousand? And, more importantly, are you happy with the finished product? I spent more than that just on editing!!! But, I'd do it again! The $ spent on editing was by far some of the best money I've spent on this project!

~ Jason
www.youramazingmarriage.com

[Andrew Scalia]

First it will most likely be viewed more on amazon, so you could probably sell more there. And then like you said Amazon is a company you are more likely to trust then some random person with a website of their own. However there is nothing stopping you from doing both, but you should probably sell a little higher on Amazon the your own site, so that more people would be inclined to buy from you and you wouldn't have to pay amazon as much.

[Denise Glesser]

Hi Laina,

I tell all of my clients that they should direct book buyers to their web site because you get a bigger cut but Amazon is one of those necessary things. People trust Amazon because it's a name that they know. So maybe you can add your book to Amazon but offer a discount if they purchase from your site instead. That way they see it on Amazon and feel a bit better because it's listed with a site they trust.

Good Luck!
Denise
Progressive Book Marketing, LLC
Remember book publishing doesn't have to be stressful or expensive!

[Dream Books LLC]

Few things, get onto the Kindle right now. There are services that you can hire to convert your book or you can do it yourself or if your book isn't very format heavy Kindle can do it with its own tools. Remember Kindle is HTML based so as long as you know basic HTML you'll be fine. If you need help with any problem sections feel free to respond to this post and I will try to help. If you book has images make sure that the HTML code is just the root (/imagename) and then save your HTML file and all your images into one ZIP file and upload the zip file to the Kindle Publisher. The images will be apart of your Kindle.

What is the size of your book (page count, binding, page size) and what did you price it at?

Smashwords doesn't get you very far at all, it is kinda like Lulu. A great place to get your eBook made for you for free but no one really shops there.

Next link your book to amazon.com. This is what we did for our books. www.dreambooksllc.com/ourbooks/sparkling.html. We used the A Store from Amazon Associates so people do not even need to leave the site to purchase the book from Amazon. Plus it lists reviews and cross promotes if you want it to.

Next use this website. There are hundreds of bloggers on this website who love to review books. Start emailing them (Not through book blogs) and ask them to review your book. Actually go to their blog, read it, join it, if they post a review of your book, link their site to yours, don't ask for anything in return. Remember it is their site, if they want to link to yours they will. It does not hurt to ask to do a badge exchange if you have one, but do not be a spammer and get them to put your badge on their blog and not return the favor.

Lastly start promoting your book on Lulu and promote your book in general. You want people to be excited when your book comes out. Create a blog or Twitter account, or Facebook page or all three where people who want to A) learn more and B) be kept up to date on when it is going to come out can join. On the blog post short excepts from the story, create buzz, ask bloggers that review the book to link up to your blog so people who are interested can join up. Make your blog social network friendly. A good tool is Wibiya bar. It allows you to turn any site into a social network hub easily and it makes it easy for your viewers to share. In order for a book launch to be successful it needs a good two - three months of build up to create buzz and to gain ready buyers.

Next I would the next time you see the ad for a free 75.00 for Adwords, click it and get the 75.00. Create the account and wait two weeks prior to your book coming out. Create a Display Network ad using their Display Ad Builder, put the ad only on the Display Network and launch it the day before your book comes out. (Google won't let you link to Amazon which is why you should have the A-Store on your website instead). It is very important that you have the ad made and the keywords you want to use in the Google system at least two week prior to your book being launched. The Google Display Network is reviewed by humans and it can take a long time for on ad to even be approved. Find keywords that match your book but will keep your cost per click BELOW $0.20 Remember only 10% of those that click will actually buy which is why you want to use Googles free money to experiment. Once you find the ad that actually turns a profit then start spending your own money. Make sure though that the ad is driving sales. You can do this in multiple ways, best way is creating multiple pages with only slight variations in the content and each ad goes to a different page and see which page actually gets sales.

Next get onto Facebook ads. There isn't any free Facebook ad credits out there right now, however Facebook ads allow you to target people with specific interests. So if you wrote a book on King George, you can target only people who like (or dislike) him. Facebook also gives you the option to do Cost per 1,000 views (CPM). These are very cheep, and you can get 1,000 impressions for as little as 0.10. Best part is for that 0.10 you can get one click or 1,000 clicks and it only costs you 0.10. Free Facebook marketing can also be done but in order to build up a good following you need a few months. A good book to look at is Facebook Marketing An Hour A Day (or its Twitter counterpart) Make sure your Facebook ads speak directly to the person. If you are targeting people who like King George your ad text should play on that. Example: So you like King George Huh? Well so do I and thats why I wrote this book..." Also limit the number of people that see the add. Remember in sales you need to see something at least 7 times before the customer will buy it. It is all about building trust. If you are doing the 1,000 impressions, for 0.10 would your rather nitch target 1000 people who each person can see the add 7 times for only 0.70 or 10,000 people where in order for each person to see it 7 times you are spending 7.00.

It is going to take time, but just keep working at it. Your goal is not to be a national bestselling author. Your goal is to be the best selling author in a nitch.

Hope this helps.

Oh and since we are a company, I would like to point our that SEPARATE from our publishing side, we have opened up a services branch. Right now we offer Cover Design, Editing, Formatting, and Editorial Analysis. You can learn more at services.dreambooksllc.com

[Dream Books LLC]

Amazon is the ONLY place you should handle your sales through. As you book sells, Amazon will recognize those sales and will help promote your book as well. (Little by little of course). Going into Amazon and it's sales process would take forever, however it is the best place to sell your book. Most authors however think that in order for an Amazon sale to count on the Amazon system the book must be purchased on Amazon.com. This is not true - Amazon has a nifty tool called the A-Store (in Amazon Associates). Basically the A-Store is a customizable Amazon.com you can embed into your site. So you can get your followers, track your customers AND have your books sold through Amazon.com with your customer never leaving your site. Customers who are hesitant about buying books outside of Amazon are set at ease because the store is designed with key Amazon features and at the top it say "Powered By Amazon" however the store is discrete enough and customizable enough that customers who don't care where they buy the book won't even notice. Plus the best part is not only will you get a check from your Publisher for the books sold, Amazon also cuts you a check (5-10% of the profit) for every book sold as well.

[Dream Books LLC]

Typo correction - "As you book sells, Amazon will recognize those sales" you should be your.

[Rex Lee Reynolds]

This is incredibly good advice and data! The only thing I could add to it is to make sure your books on Amazon are also in Kindle format because Kindle is rapidly becoming more popular with the Kindle reader now available at only $139.00

The Kindle pricing is key. I had five titles priced at about 50% of what the print versions were priced at but no sales. Then I took the advice of someone on here and set the price for all my books on Kindle at $2.99. Sales started happening. And Amazon recently increased their Kindle author royalties from 35% to 70%.

The Amazon "Look Inside" feature is also good and can result in more sales because viewers can preview your books.

Good luck with your sales,

Rex