If you want to write an expert ebook that sells well on Amazon, you need to research first to find out:
- What’s already been published in your field of expertise?
- What titles are selling well?
- Where are the gaps in what’s already been published and what hasn’t yet been covered?
- What do readers seek out the most?
- What prices, what lengths, what covers are best?
I’ve been experimenting with ebook research software and I’m pretty impressed with what the developers have come up with. In particular, there’s a group of programs that can help Amazon authors get the information they need from Amazon sales: KDSuite.
This software has the ability to pull up data from ebooks in categories so you can compare sales info. It provides information on bestsellers, marketing, and keywords. There’s an additional program which creates ebook covers.
I’m not an affiliate nor an expert in these programs. I just wanted to give you a heads up because, so far, they look pretty easy to use. It certainly shows in their website videos how much value there is from using them for your ebook research, planning and strategy.
From the searches I’ve been doing online, there are a ton of experts on ebooks as well as programs. Unfortunately, many of these experts come across as trying to “game the system,” by encouraging people to publish as many books as they can, in as short of time as possible.
Some even advocate downloading bestsellers and copying their concepts, rephrasing content. This is circumnavigating the edges of plagiarism and is spawning a cottage industry of crap. Reader beware.
The KDSuites program looks relatively serious and useful. It saves time from having to look through the 100 bestsellers in a category individually. It gives you an idea of how many copies are sold each month. It provides context for understanding how Amazon ranking correlates with monthly sales, something that previously confused me.
This aspect of researching your ebook before you write a single word is important. Unless you want your book to lie dormant on Amazon’s virtual bookshelves, you need to know which keywords, titles and covers sell well. Then you can write your intelligent expertise in flowing prose and share it with the world.
That, of course, involves research as well, but of an entirely different sort. In my next post, I’ll share what I know about content research for your expert ebook.
In the mean time, what questions do you have about expert ebook research? I’d love to help you, let me know.
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