I’m a writer and I take writing seriously. I’ve also been in marketing in the high-tech world for 20+years. Though it is a different industry, the principles are the same, so when I published my first book, I aggressively figured out how to drive more traffic to my book and get more people to buy it.

My first book has made it into the top 10 of eight of Amazon’s bestseller lists. It has even made it to the #1 spot in the UK for its niche. And more than a year after it was published, in the US the paperback version of my novella has remained in the top 20 of its category of over 83,000 books.

 

As of this writing, it is also #8 for Vietnam War in the US for Kindle out of over 5,000 other ebooks, #8 in the UK for Kindle out of 5,000 ebooks, and #9 for books out of 70,000 on Amazon’s UK site.

Everyone will tell you that after ~6 months your book will drop in the rankings. They say it is “inevitable”. Well, they are wrong.

These tips and techniques below work.

Yes, you have to write a good book, of course, but if there is no traffic to your book’s sales page, there will be no book sales, which is going to be terribly embarrassing and painful especially if you have worked hard to write a good book.

Below are my most helpful and most viewed blogs detailing some very specific ways you can ramp your sales, some of which can be done within a few hours. Though I usually mention ebooks, these tactics are all equally relevant to paperbacks, hardbacks and audio books.

Given that Amazon changes their methods from time to time, I’ll also be updating what is here on occasion. And over time, I’ll add to it as I discover more ways to drive more traffic to our books on Amazon. Happy selling!  🙂

 

#	Summary	Title (with link)
1	Optimizing the keywords for your book at Amazon is one of the single most important things you can do to ramp your sales. You can spend a ton of time (and money) trying to drive traffic to your Amazon sales page, but it is much easier to take advantage of the huge amounts of traffic already at Amazon. And these are people who already want to buy a book.  You need to make sure they see yours. I’ve also written a very detailed, step-by-step guide on how to write titles and subtitles that will pull in traffic. You can sign up to get a copy at the right.	Climbing The bestseller list by optimizing my Amazon keywords
2	Getting book reviews from Amazon’s top reviewers is a hell of a lot easier than you think it is. You just have to know how to do it. And, let’s be honest, without reviews, your book won’t sell. On the other hand, 4- and 5-star reviews from Amazon’s top 100 reviewers will ensure your book sells well for a very long time. This one takes some time and effort, but the payoff is huge.	9 Steps to great book reviews from top Amazon reviewers
3	This is another one that is crazy easy to do, and most of these things you can do in an hour. As I’ve highlighted above, my first book has made it to the top 10 of six of Amazon’s bestseller lists outside the US, including one #1 spot. Do these things. It will be an hour well spent.	10 super easy tips to ramp your international book sales
4	This is another one of those “too good to be true” deals. This is a legitimate, long-standing method to get real reviews at the rate of about one a month.	A Goodreads Group’s “Reviews Initiative”: How Indies can get legitimate reviews
5	This one is not a quick fix or easy thing to do like the ones above. However, this may be the most important one of all. I’ve been in marketing for 20 years, and if there is any one thing that makes a successful marketer it is knowing who he or she is going after, and then building a plan to get that target’s attention and ultimately, their investment. If you don’t understand this, you may sell some books here and there, but you’ll never really ramp your sales.	Targeted Marketing for authors: Be precise or go home
6	Figuring out how to improve your blog’s standings in the SERPs may not sound relevant to ramping books sales but it is in two ways. First, as an author, you need a blog (“a social media platform”) that is getting some traffic to develop followers and buyers. Second, the principles that will help you improve a blog’s standings are often the same techniques that will help you improve the standings of your Amazon sales page.	3 great guides to help you move your blog up in the SERPs