What to do when your book isn’t selling

If your book isn’t selling, there are a number of things you can do to help boost sales. First, you need to ask yourself this question: What am I currently doing to drive traffic to my book sales pages on Amazon and other online retailers? Your strategy will depend on your answer.

If the answer is “nothing or not much,” then you need to work on driving traffic to your book sales pages (more on this below).

If, on the other hand, you’ve been driving traffic to the page through marketing or advertising, but it still isn’t selling, there are several things you can do to help with book sales (again, read on for more info).

Disclosure: There may be affiliate links in this blog post, which means that I may earn a small commission if you click on these links and make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

How to drive traffic to your book sales page

Don’t expect to publish a book on Amazon and automatically get sales. If you’re not doing anything (marketing or advertising) to drive traffic to your book sales page, then how are people going to see it? You can’t sit back and rely on people discovering your book through Amazon search.

For ideas on what to do, check out my blog post, 50+ Ways to Market Your Book. You don’t have to do everything on that list, but it’s a good idea to try a number of things until you find what works for you and your book.

You will need to do something every week to market your book. If you don’t have the time to do that, then you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you. But if you want book sales, someone has to do something.

How to Improve Your Book Sales Page Performance

If you’ve been running ads but they aren’t working, or you’ve been marketing your book and still not seeing results, there are several things you can do to help boost book sales. There are a few factors that can be affecting low performance of your product detail page (what Amazon calls your book sales page):

Book description. This can be updated at any time, so it’s one thing that’s easy to change. Again, look at the descriptions of top books on the bestseller lists of your book categories for ideas. Make notes on how the book descriptions are structured and what type of language they use.
Categories. Is your book placed in the best categories? I use Publisher Rocket to select the best categories for my books and my clients’ books. Read their article on how to choose the best categories for your books.
Keywords. Are you using the best keywords for your book? I also use Publisher Rocket to select the best keywords for my books and my clients’ books.
Price. If you’re a new or relatively unknown author or you have a small audience, you’ll probably want to set your prices lower so that your book is an easy yes for new readers. You want it to be priced so that impulse buyers don’t think twice. If you’re worried about not making enough money from your book to cover your costs, then read my blog post 35+ Ways to Make More Money from Your Nonfiction Book.
Book cover design. Does your book cover look similar to other covers on the bestseller lists of the categories you’re listed in? It should look fairly similar, in the sense that a reader who is a fan of that category or genre should recognize your book as something they might like. Remember: just because a book cover is pretty doesn’t mean that it’s a good book cover.
Reviews. The more good reviews you have, the better. Keep asking for reviews: add a page at the end of the book asking for reviews, and ask readers on social media and your email list. Reviews are important. It’s also good to have a mix of 4- and 5-star reviews so that it doesn’t look like all your reviews came from friends and family.

Ideally, change one of these things and observe the results. If you change everything at once, you won’t know what worked. As you wait to see how sales change, be sure you’re driving traffic to your sales page through marketing or advertising. Making these changes on their own won’t have magical results.

How to Improve Your Book Ads Performance

If you’ve been driving traffic to the page through marketing or advertising, and you’ve already improved all the above book details on your sales page, then it’s time to look at the ads themselves.

I’m not an expert in Amazon Advertising or in other advertising platforms. In fact, I have someone I recommend to help with ads: Mark James from Author Sales. The principle, however, is the same as above: improve each aspect of your ad and then see what results you get.

Things to consider: