If you’re a writer, you want your book to be a best-seller. Reaching that status takes a great book and a lot of work.
Fortunately, you don’t have to produce a New York Times Best-Seller to make money. There are a lot of categories for books these days. Make your books one of the top sellers in one of those categories, and you may enjoy a bump in your sales.
Here are three steps to help your book reach best-seller status, whether you write fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose.
Step 1: Publish Your Book
You can’t sell any copies of your book if you never get it off your computer. To create a book destined to become a best-seller, remember these tips along your publishing journey.
- Know your audience. Despite what you may think, your book isn’t for everyone. It’s for a very specific audience.
- Write a book they’ll love. Once you know who will read your book, write a book they’ll love. Meet reader expectations but add in your own touches to make your book unique and memorable.
- Find a good editor. The best story falls flat if the words are in the wrong order. A good editor makes your story flow well and brings clarity instead of confusion.
Step 2: Choose the Right Categories
Unless you have lots and lots of family and friends, you’ll need to sell your book to strangers to reach best-seller status. To increase the odds that strangers find your books, pick the right categories.
Obviously, reaching best-seller status is easier in categories that have less competition. This has caused some scammers to game the system. They stick their books in easy categories, regardless of their book’s content, and hit the best-seller list. Don’t do this! It’s dishonest. Besides, if you get caught, there may be repercussions.
A better option is to choose good categories that fit your book and aren’t too hard to succeed in. How do you do that?
We recommend and use Publisher Rocket. This program shows what book categories are available and how difficult it is to reach best-seller status. It also updates regularly to reflect the latest difficulty in any given category and is a great tool for choosing appropriate keywords.
Prefer to let someone else handle that? When you work Argyle Fox Publishing, we choose fitting categories to give your book the best chance at success. (Hence why many of our authors achieve best-selling status in the early days of their book’s release.)
Step 3: For a Best-Seller, You’ve Got to Sell
Whether you self-publish, work with Argyle Fox Publishing, or go through a traditional publisher, you’re largely responsible for getting the word out about your book. In other words, if you want your book to be a best-seller, you need to get out there and promote your book.
What are good ways to sell lots of books?
- Create goals for your book.
- Let readers preorder your book.
- Have a solid book launch.
- Give your book away. (Yes, it works!)
- Get creative, using Teachers Pay Teachers, social media marketing, and more.
Ready to take the first step toward creating a best-seller? Argyle Fox Publishing would love to lend a hand in getting your book off your computer and onto bookshelves. If you have a completed manuscript, submit a sample to us for consideration today.