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Amazon.com has created a new purchasing program called Kindle MatchBook. You can purchase the Kindle version of qualifying books that you purchased from Amazon.com in print.  You’ll pay between 0 and $2.99 for the matching Kindle versions.  Going forward you can buy the print book along with the Kindle version for $2.99 or less.  This means that authors make more money when Amazon.com promotes the bundle.  As an author with a book in print you have to enable your participation in the program.  For more information visit Amazon.com.

Joanna Penn has a guest on Jane Friendman’s blog about selling more books by optimizing your metadata.   Metadata is information like categories and keywords on a book sales site.  Jane recommends the book “Let’s Get Visible” by David Gaughran.  The description on the book page of Amazon.com says:

“Take your sales to the next level! The author of the award-winning, bestselling Let’s Get Digital is back with an advanced guide for more experienced self-publishers.

There are over 1.5 million books in the Kindle Store, with thousands more added every day. How do you get yours noticed? Visibility isn’t a challenge that can be bested once – it requires continual work. But there are tools and strategies to do much of the heavy lifting for you.

In Let’s Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books, you’ll discover how to:

• Leverage Amazon’s famous recommendation engine to take advantage of the various opportunities it provides for exposure
• Position your books for discoverability on other sales venues
• Minimize the time you spend promoting so you have more time to spend writing
• Promote in a cost-effective way that actually works

On October 30, 2013 Amazon.com announced that it would begin offering a digital literary journal weekly.  Their plan is to publish fiction-including work from debut authors and stories from around the world translated into English-and poetry. Day One will showcase one writer and one poet per week.  Day One will be priced at $19.99 a year and publish direct to Kindle or the Kindle app.  You can learn more about this brand new literary effort by Amazon here.

Amazon.com has started cracking down on authors who publish erotica.  This popular niche has blossomed in the past year with writers literally coming out of the woodwork to write these racy tomes.  In the past Amazon.com published any and all original erotica stories but a backlash has started.  In an effort to clean up their catalog some erotica stories are getting unpublished and blocked.

According to erotica authors there are ways to avoid having this happen.  The key is to create an inoffensive cover, title and cover.  Then add a disclaimer to the description about the book contents.  If this doesn’t work pick up the phone and call Amazon.com.  Many authors are reporting that a simple phone call can clear up many problems.

Your book listing on Amazon.com, the biggest bookseller in the world, is critical.  So long as you follow the rules you can make it as robust as you want.  Although you can no longer add pictures to your description you can add special formatting using html to make your description stand out.

In your description consider adding:

An actual one or two paragraph description of the book and characters.
Table of contents for a non-fiction book.
Editorial reviews.
Testimonials or reviews that won’t show up on Amazon.com.
Links to your social media sites.
Your biography.

This space on your Amazon.com description is like gold.  Use it wisely!

Have you ever used the Barnes & Noble Pubit self publishing system?  In order to better compete with the Kindle self publishing platform B&N have changed the way self publishers submit their books.  The new system, Nook Press, allows authors to write and edit within the system rather than uploading a Word document.   Authors that used to use the Pubit system need to create a new account in Nook Press.  To learn more visit Nook Press. Make sure you read their contract as it has some clauses in it that are new.

There are lots of places to post free books that are part of the Amazon.com KDP promotion.  One place you may not have known about is the Kindle Boards the Book Bazaar subforum.  You’ll need a free member account first and be sure to follow the rules before posting your freebie!

Today I was looking at a few books for my Kindle when I noticed that almost all of them were lacking.  Lacking what,  you ask?  They were lacking a complete description.  Most of them had one line or two that didn’t tell enough about the book to make it worth buying.  None of them had an author biography that is easy to create on the sales page itself or through Author Central on Amazon.com.

Your book is going to have hundreds if not thousands of authors competing for every dollar spent on books.  Make your book stand out by writing a complete description of at least two paragraphs.  Don’t know what to include?  Here are some ideas:

• The title of the book
• The type of book (fiction/non-ficiton)
• Category (for example… health or business)
• The intended audience
• Description of the content
• A little bit about you… the author

The more you tell people about your book the more likely they are to want to buy it.  Make sure you open an account on Author Central and write a nice biography for yourself!

In the article “As E-Book Sales Rise, Apple iPad Bests Amazon Kindle” Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos says “After five years, e-books [are] a multibillion-dollar category for us and growing fast—up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just five percent.”

This is great news for indie authors who publish only on Kindle but it looks like Amazon.com has to contend with the rapid growth of the iPad.  You can read the entire article here.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from authors is that there is no way to build relationships with people who buy your e-book from Amazon or Barnes & Noble online.  You can circumvent this issue by offering a free “bonus” available to purchasers who visit a lead capture page on your site.  For example, if you sell the cookbook “Seventy Sassy Southern Recipes” you could offer the bonus “Ten More Sassy Southern Recipes” for people who click the link in your e-book and register on your lead capture page.  Now you have a list of people who want to be notified when your next book is published and you can create a relationship with them!