You’ve gone through all the hard work of writing your book, formatting the contents, creating a cover, writing a description, and something about you (the author), probably paid for a headshot for the back cover, and either had it printed, or published on-demand. Your book is available via the biggest bookseller on the planet, and you say, “No one is buying my book.”
Your book has been available for sale on Amazon for a week, yet no one has bought even 1 copy, not counting the one that you bought and the other that your mother purchased. Then two weeks, three weeks, and months go by and you’re still saying, no one is buying my book. Why?
You know, there could be a hundred reasons why, but in my experience with writers, the number one reason was that when they published their book, as my grandfather would say, they were too smart for their own britches.
Let’s say your book is about the cycle of abuse, and you’re offering help to those who are wondering if there’s even a chance of breaking the cycle at all. Your book proposes that there is hope, and you have some practical advice for those trying to break the cycle.
So, you’ve titled your book
Title: Shattered Lives
Subtitle: Melted Down and Turned into Something New
And the cover features a nicely done picture of broken glass with reflections of people with different facial expressions in the shards of glass.
Nicely done. Clever, but no one is ever going to find your book unless you spend a zillion dollars marketing it, or you happen to be hit by lightning while crossing the street at noon on a beautiful day.
If you really want to help people, you have to give them a chance to at least find you. Stop trying to be so ingenious about creating a snazzy title. You don’t want to out-smart your intended audience, so think about what they might be looking for, something like,
Title: Can the Cycle of Abuse Be Broken?
Subtitle: How to break the cycle of abuse once and for all.
Your book cover could be black with those words in white, or if you want to be fancy, you could have a picture of someone scared, crouching in a corner in the dark.
If you want to be found on Amazon, your best and most powerful weapons are your title and your subtitle, because your readers are going to be typing what they are looking for into Amazon’s search box. If you want your book to be on the list of results, you are sure to be on the list if your title or subtitle matches, at least somewhat, the terms being typed in by the person you want to reach or help.
Think about that, and ask yourself, “What is the person that I want to reach typing into the search box?” Whatever that is, should be in the title or the subtitle of your book.
Plus, and I’ll bet you didn’t see this one coming, when someone types the title of your book into Google, your book will show up on the first page of the search results!
FRONT PAGE OF GOOGLE
And Amazon pays for that, not you. Free first page Google results. Just for titling your book in a way that matches your book to your intended readers.
Maybe it’s time to reformat and rework your existing book, and retitle it to reach your intended audience.