Quality Content Drives Amazon Ebook Marketing

Ebook marketing and especially Amazon ebook marketing is much easier when the book’s content does most of the selling.

Consider the following all-important fact. On Amazon and other ebook sites, book buyers can look inside the ebook editions to see sample pages.

For example, anyone who is thinking about buying the Kindle version of my book, “Caribbean Cruises for 1st Timers”, can look at the cover, table of contents, first 15 content pages and the back cover.

So this “content” is more than just content. It’s also a form of advertising.

The table of contents and first 15 pages are especially important. They give buyers a chance to see the full range of topics in the book as well as get a sense of the quality of writing.

Is the content informative and interesting? Is it worth the price? How does it compare to so many other books on similar topics?

These available pages do the marketing for potential organic searchers in addition to anyone who gets there via an advertising campaign.

So the content and the presentation of the content are important factors in marketing ebooks. But the content doesn’t just sell ebooks. It also sells the paperback versions too. This assumes the paperback is exactly like or highly similar to the ebook version and that paperback pages are viewable in an on-demand environment such as Amazon.

From Ebook Marketing to Sales

A carefully crafted table of contents and high quality writing increase the probability of sales. An increase in sales will increase the ranking of the book in search results.

Higher rankings from higher sales are a given because Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online book retailers don’t push books to the top of search results if people don’t buy them. They don’t make as much money from unpopular books as they do from popular ones.

So quality = sales = higher rankings.

Unlike traditional book publishing, independent publishing in the Amazon environment offers a unique advantage for improving sales even after the book is published. That advantage is the ability to make continuous improvements in the book.

A book goes live. After a few months, sales are weak. The author can go through an analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, otherwise known as a SWOT analysis.

Weaknesses may include sloppy text, a price that is too high and not enough content to justify the price. Opportunities may include more text, more photos, a more colorful cover and better optimization of the book’s description for search engines. Threats may include other books on the same subject that offer more content or lower prices.

Nothing prevents an author from making dozens of updates to the ebook and paperback over the course of a year. It is no different than building a website and making continuous improvements. Quality content is the cornerstone of ebook marketing.