These are my notes from an online presentation provided by Bryan Cohen. Any misinformation is the fault of the note taker. Check out his website to see which services he provides.
– Make sure browsers know that the book is for them
– Other people bought your book and liked it (social proof)
– Make sure the readers the books sounds good. Cover design etc.
How to pull off
– A recognize and general appropriate cover. It needs to be recognizable
– Need tile and subtitles that resonates with your audience
– Need 10-100 reviews from like-minded readers?
– Need captivating book descriptions
– When you optimize your sale page
– Higher traffic
– All future marketing dollars will be better spent
– And social media appearance will result in strong sales
– When do things right and make more sales, Amazon will more likely promote your book
The cover
– Minimum viable cover> what you can get away with on the cheap
– Self-publishing has been going for about 8 yrs.
– There is an expected quality for your cover.
– Search Amazon top 100 on google. Look at covers. Which are self-publish (kindle unlimited tells you its self-published). Which are selling well and what coves you like. Email the author and ask who their author is. Then hired the designer who did their covers.
– Listen to readers and see which of your books were read.
– If you can’t afford a designer you need, save up.
– Get strong cover on the first book of your series. And if sell better use the royalties to redo other covers.
How reader judge a book:
– Cover is important
– Research on a heat map of where readers spend most of their time on a page.
– A glance at the cover (viewer probably has seen your cover before)
– The next place they look is the title and customer reviews.
Nail your title:
– Look for words used in your genre. (Love, soldier, faerie, etc.)
– Nonfiction: your book solves their problem.
– Look at best sellers in your general amazon top 100. Brainstorm your title 15-20 tiles
– What does your book boil down to its essence?
– What problem does your book solve for your ideal reader (nonfiction?)
– What distinguishes your book from other books? How is it different? Use title and subtitle it solves their problem
– For a series, a subtitle is book one of the xx series
– They are short titles.
– Titles identify the bad guys.
– When getting opinions from people who will give you their real feelings.
Social proof:
– Give your book away free to your current subscribers to get reviews.
– Personal reviews do not show up as verified.
– You may seem like you’ll lose money but think of the long game.
Long term book success:
– Need to get readers to buy your book
– If you don’t have social proof strangers will not buy your book.
– Street team: people of whom you give your book away for free. If you have an email list, give them free books in return for reviews. Give them advance reviews copies of your book.
– Email at least reminder and also on the day it comes out.
– Review hacks: Acknowledge yourself as an author. Marking reviewer grabber. Amazon has 20K list of book reviewers
– Use service like book reviewer 22
– Book sweeps or author platform rockets to get email lists.
Book description:
– 5x readers seal the deal, of readers buying a book.
– Headline/ hook
– Expertise (NF only)
– Synopsis
– Transformation benefits (NF only)
– Selling paragraph
– Call to action
Hooks:
– Many hooks might be around 3 sentences. Give the stakes.
– Nonfiction often has a question and your book is the answer to that question.
– Have a character, a crazy worlds, and stakes of what will happen if the hero fails on a fantasy.
– Nonfiction may ask a few questions to catch the reader. Identify yourself as an author. Some will start each sentence/questions negative and end in the positive.
– Each paragraph of fiction needs to end with a cliffhanger.
– You have a selling paragraph.

Want to add to the list? Please do so in the comment section of this blog.