The Fiction And Non Fiction Authors That Have Sold Over 1k/Month in Ebooks Show Us The Best Selling Ebook Platform 

What would be the best selling ebook platform?

Now search online and you get so many. And, there are so many companies stringing up that you can be overrun with choice.

But there are other factors to consider when searching for an ebook selling platform:

• The ease of set up
• Costs involved
• Their help with sales, marketing, processing of sales
• Do they offer you access to contact details
• Are they trustworthy in themselves
• Do they handle complaints or refunds?

Some platforms handle all of the above, others only handle a few of the factors. So, as an author it is up to you to figure out which ones that you need and live without.

But, if a platform has everything that you need apart from one thing, then sometimes it can be bypassed.

For example. Amazon KDP doesn't allow you to contact buyers of your ebook. So you either:

• Allow people to come through your website/ landing page, ask them to signup for a newsletter/ join a group/ subscribe to a channel. Then when a new ebook comes up then you tell those people about it
• You can place contact details, website links within your ebook. This is less effective because you are requiring readers to click away from the ebook and to go somewhere else. But it is better than nothing.

As a hint, most of the successful authors have some way of connecting t their audience. Not one doesnt.

Zero To Sold

Zero To Sold is an ebook that has reached 1000 sales within 7 days. What did they do and what was the best ebook selling platform?

First off, their Twitter (X) followers were contacted. By building an audience before launch (started in November and launched in February) was the key. Interacting with the audience and sharing content seems to have built Zero To Sold audience to 5k

Zero To Sold achieved a total revenue of $8443.26

Amazon paperback was OK but Kindle lead the pack. Reviews seem to be the main generator of sales

Gumroad was second. And like Jasonera, the author found that:

Gumroad is hard to advertise for, as it is a very specific platform, and unlike Amazon, is not the go-to source for books. But it worked super well as an alternative to Amazon, particularly for privacy-minded readers and those who needed a PDF or ePub version.

So it seems that Gumroad works on spikes, but unlike Amazon, doesnt have a logarithm that promotes sales continuously.

Draft2Digital was third. Only a few sales through this an was ebook only. However, it was noted that Draft2Digital also (as we know) distributes to all of the other main book retailers like Kobo and Apple.

Affiliate. This was last and was Amazon affiliate linked. 2 sales.

Zero To Sold Other Traffic Methods

Due to followers they were able to get onto ProductHunt which then boosted sales even more. The traffic went straght through to the main website (a blog).

Traffic was also shown a newsletter to try an capture visitor contact details. It was found that most of the newsletter subscribers didn't buy initially but when reminded of the book, did. This also increased Amazon sales.

Because of the traffic directing to Amazon and the volume of traffic that actually did buy caused the book to go into the Best Seller category which...added more sales.

The Emperors Edge...a novel

We did a non fiction, now we are going to look at a fiction ebook. What did this author do? And again, you may see a theme here. Pre-selling or building an audience before launch is usually a good bet.

So they created a blog and talked to other indi authors on what they did, their process etc. So as a non-fiction author they interviewed non-fiction authors in the same genre. This allowed audience to follow the known author and that rubbed off onto the Emperors Edge author. What was also interesting was the known author spoke about Emperors Edge on their own blogs- this gave a boost in sales and a nice bit of SEO.

The author found success when they gave away a small short story featuring the characters of the main book and gave that away for free within an ebook.  A snippet of the main novel was within the free ebook plus links. This was done through Smashwords/ Draft2Digital.

This led to my first sales on Smashwords, and, when the story appeared in Barnes & Noble, I started selling 10-15 ebooks a day there

The author goes onto explain trying to increase sales through paid ads. And they found this:

If you have an ebook that will appeal to a wide audience, buying an ad on Kindle Nation Daily or another popular general-readership site might pay off. If you’ve written something niche, such as fantasy or science fiction, you probably won’t break even on those types of sites

They did find some success using Goodreads Ads.

How did they get more sales eventually?

They made more books. More books generated more interest in past titles and increases the sales of those. I just published my third novel, and I’ve also done a novella and a couple of short story collections. With each new release, my sales have increased

The results are in for the best selling ebook platform

We suppose the main points of this is that it depends upon which best selling ebook platform you choose.

They all sell for you

But.

They all need traffic generation to actually get those sales in the first place.

Obvious right?

Once traffic has been removed though, most fall by the way side. Amazon, with its internal ranking system, keeps on generating sales. 

Sure go for Gumroad, Draft2Digital but you need sales to be generated consistently and have a process in place for that to occur. Draft2Digital sends your ebook to other online stores which use star ratings and reviews so you can get more sales.

Ads are very tricky because you need:

1. The process to be worth it. Spending $10 on ads for a $1.99 ebook is not worth it
2. You need a process. That $10 in ad spend (which is minimal by the way) needs to work for its money. Can you generate enough money in that flow to justify the spend? Most people would say no.
3. If you can target your ebook and increase sales up a ranking system with a bit of money which then kicks starts the system. The system autogenerates sales like Amazon. Then it might be OK 

Want more ebook selling articles and tips, check out here.

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