Publishing E-Books For Dummies

No One Is Buying My E-Book

You’ve finished your manuscript, converted it into the proper formats, and displayed it in e-bookstores. Perhaps you’ve even purchased an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) — a unique identifier for your book — so that your e-book can be distributed as widely as possible. The problem: No one seems to be buying it.

If you experienced a rush of sales to begin with, selling 20 or 30 or even 100 copies on the day you launched your e-book, but you’ve sold only a handful of copies since then, chances are good that the initial buyers were people who already knew you — family and friends or your blog or e-newsletter subscribers. You were able to easily reach them with your launch message, but now you’ve exhausted your initial pool of readers.

The main reason your book isn’t selling is that no one knows about it. Hundreds of thousands of e-books are sold on Amazon, with more being published every day, so there’s a relatively small chance of someone stumbling across yours while browsing. Be proactive about marketing your e-book. You can read ways to do this in Part V.

If you’re doing lots of marketing with no upswing in sales, take a long, hard look at your e-book’s cover, description, and reviews. Does the cover look professional and eye-catching? Does the book’s description do a good job of selling the book? Do you have several ...