7 STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER (AND 3 REASONS WHY I WON’T TAKE THEM)

Anyone can be an Amazon Kindle bestseller by playing the numbers, and I'll tell you how in a moment.  

First I want to explain why I would never do it.

I want people to buy my book because they want to read it. And I want people to be happy that they bought my book after they've read it because something in it moved, inspired, or entertained them. I want readers to love my books. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend a year or more carefully writing and polishing each one. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent over a decade honing my craft.

In Toren the Teller'sTale, there's a wizard who says he will not accept payment until he knows the customer is fully satisfied. That's how I feel about my books. I don't want to trick readers into buying something they don't want or need. I want them to feel that their money was well spent, that my book was worth every penny and more.

So far the reviews I’m getting are telling me that I am succeeding by my own definition of success, even if I’m not selling millions of copies or making bestseller lists. I am doing what I set out to do: I’m getting my books into the hands of people who enjoy reading them.

A lot of people would say that I'm naïve, and they may be right.

They would say that even the major publishers play the numbers to get on bestseller lists, and have been doing so for years. They would say that major publishers have huge advertising budgets, and little indie publishers have to play the numbers in order to compete. I don't know if that's true. I hope it's not. In any case, I'm not going to stoop to that level. Of course I want to win the game, but only because I’ve earned it.

Okay, now let me tell you how someone can turn almost any book into an Amazon bestseller. It has something to do with Amazon’s new program: Kindle Direct Publishing Select (KDP Select).

To understand KDP Select, you must first know what KDP is.

KDP is the Amazon program authors can use to get their e-books into Amazon's Kindle store. The regular KDP program lets publishers keep 70% of the retail price of their e-books (provided they’re priced between $2.99 and $9.99).

KDP Select, on the other hand, lets publishers make money based on the number of times Amazon Prime customers “borrow” a book for free.

Amazon Prime customers can borrow any book in the KDP Select program. To help authors encourage customers to choose their books, each author is allowed to give away his or her books for free for up to five days while that author is in the 90-day KDP Select program. The amount of money authors can make in the KDP Select program fluctuates and is based on the size of the pot every KDP Select author earns a portion of, and on the relative number of free borrows each author’s books have seen in relation to the number of free borrows other KDP Select books have seen. In other words, if 500 copies of your books are borrowed for free and everyone else in the program averages 1,000 free borrows, you’ll earn much less than everyone else. Contrary-wise, if you book is borrowed 1,000 times for free and everyone else's books are borrowed 500 times for frees, you’ll make a lot more.


The main way to draw attention to your book so people will consider borrowing it is by giving your book away for free for five days. Amazon will promote your free book at that time, and you can promote it too. You can't sell your book through BN.com, the Apple iBookstore, or any other online retailer when you're in the KDP Select program. It becomes your only way to make money. There is, therefore, a huge incentive to sell a lot of free books while you’re in the KDP Select program.

Every day, Amazon customers have the option of choosing from over 100 free books. So why would a Kindle owner choose your free book above another? What’s in it for them?

Now it’s entirely possible that what’s in it for them is a great book, but that’s not why Amazon customers trawl the freebie bestseller lists. People are willing to pay for great books--but they’re also willing to take a chance on something that may or may not be good if they don’t have to pay for it.

So what incentive are you going to give Amazon’s customers to get them to choose your book over someone else’s?  

7 EASY STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER

STEP ONE: write a book.

You don’t need to know how to write, and it doesn’t have to be a great book. Don’t even think of it as a book. Think of it as a product. Based on their reviews, many of the writers on the Amazon Kindle freebie bestseller list don’t really know how to write, and many of those who do are giving away a single short story or essay, not an entire novel or nonfiction book. You don’t have to write a masterpiece, just something you can slap a title and cover on and call an e-book.

STEP TWO: give it an enticing title and a nice cover.

You don’t really have to know anything about book design. There are places you can buy premade covers for $50 or less. Here’s one that has a clearance section with lovely book covers for just $18: http://mycoverart.wordpress.com/clearance/

STEP THREE: ask friends and relatives to post 5-star reviews for you.

I recently got into an argument with a writer on Amazon because I said her suggestion to write reviews for your own book is unethical.  She argued that it is common practice. As a former consumer columnist, I consider any attempt to mislead consumers unethical, and I think putting your words into someone else’s review is misleading consumers. However, there are apparently people who have no problem with it, and that’s the competition those who join the KDP Select program are up against. Remember, you're all getting a portion of the same pot, so if someone has better sales, it's at your expense. 

STEP FOUR: get a Twitter account.

The longer you’ve been on Twitter and the bigger following you have there the better.

STEP FIVE: sign up for KDP Select.

Mark the five days you’ll be giving your book away for free on your calendar.

STEP SIX: buy some Amazon gift cards.

You can start with just one $10 card and then build up from there. If things pan out, you might give away up to six $25 gift cards, which is one for every two weeks you’ll be in the KDP Select program.

STEP SEVEN: go on Twitter to announce you’ll be giving away a free Amazon gift card, and repeat this step over and over.

 Make the giveaway conditional. For example, you’ll give away a gift card to someone who re-tweets about the contest when you reach 1,000 borrows or 5,000 free downloads. You can even give away some of the cards when you get a certain number of Twitter or blog followers, 5-star Amazon reviews, or Facebook fans. Use the correct hashtags so that people looking for Kindle freebies or contests can find your tweet easily. Your tweet would look something like “#Win a $25 #Amazon gift card when my #Kindle #ebook reaches 2,000 #free downloads! Buy here (link) and RT to enter #giveaway”.

Notice how that tweet says nothing about the book itself? That’s because with this method, you’re not selling a book—you’re selling an opportunity to win a free Amazon gift card. You’re essentially selling free raffle tickets to get people to do what you want!

If you don’t think people are doing this, go to Twitter and see just how fast the #free or #giveaway hashtag flies there. It’s dizzying.

There are thousands of people on Twitter who are looking for free stuff, and they’ll be more than willing to download your free e-book to get it.

So writers are posting tweets like the one I wrote above, and those tweets are getting people to download their books in droves. They might download your book and never read it, but what difference does it make? Your book will be a bestseller. It’ll appear on the Amazon bestseller list along with all the other bestsellers. You can even put “Amazon bestseller” on your book jacket. And that will help you get a bigger share of the KDP Select pot, because all that attention and the bestseller status will help you get your book borrowed more times than the next guy’s book.

I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place for giveaways. They can be great if you’re trying to get Twitter or blog followers or Facebook fans. They can also be great for rewarding the fans you already have. What I am saying, though, is that if you’re using giveaways to sell books, you aren’t really selling books.

3 REASONS WHY I WON’T BE JOINING AMAZON’S KDP SELECT

NUMBER ONE: I know how to play the numbers game—and I don’t want to play it.

I want people to buy or borrow my books because they want to read my books, not because they want to win some sort of giveaway.

NUMBER TWO: I don’t want to compete with writers who are willing to play the numbers game.

I’m a writer, not a salesperson, and in the KDP Select program, salespeople have a distinct advantage over writers. That would make my book look bad, because it would be lower down in the bestseller list, and other books—many of them poorly written—would be above it. How would that look if my free book didn’t sell as well as someone else’s book an Amazon customer tried and hated?

NUMBER THREE: giving your book away for free once devalues all of your work forever.

They do say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

Someone once did a psychological study to see if people enjoyed a piece of cake more if it was served on a fancy dish. It turns out they do. They also discovered that a $100 bottle of wine actually tastes better if you know it costs $100. In fact, a $9 bottle of wine tastes better if you think it costs $150.

So what happens when you give your book away for free?

Those who are in the KDP Select program find they sell the most copies when their book is free and within the few days after those free days, which is when your book is riding the bestseller list high from all those free downloads. The sales and free borrows for that particular book often stay high for a while and then gradually drop off. 

However, the increased sales rarely carry over to the author’s other books—and a few writers have noted that some readers who picked up that one book for free have expressed that they expect to get the writer’s other books for free too. Instead of enticing readers with a free book, these writers are actually losing potential sales on their other books.

WHAT DOES THIS PROVE?

In the end, the Amazon sales rankings and bestseller lists, which both writers and readers tend to focus on, say virtually nothing--when it comes to free books, or books that were free at one time--about the quality of a book and everything about the writer’s ability and willingness to do anything to sell that book.

This isn’t to say that all the writers that sell a lot of free books play the numbers or manipulate reviews. Many of them don’t. But beware the company you keep, because many other writers on the free bestseller Amazon Kindle list do. 

And as a reader, do your best to read between the lines when it comes to the bestseller rankings and the reviews on those books. Maybe you’ll luck out and find a diamond in the rough, but don’t be surprised if it turns out to be rock salt in disguise.

So as you can see, the numbers can be played. The only question left for writers to ask themselves is if they want to play them. I don’t, so I fold. Now that I know the rules, I am sitting this game out.