Thanks to the self-publishing explosion on Amazon, it’s pretty easy for just about anybody to become an author.  Just saying you’re an author today isn’t very impressive anymore, because almost anybody can take a book, upload it online and have it available to people across the world in a single afternoon.

I want you to move one step further than just being an author.  You are going to become a bestselling author!  When you’re a bestseller, people pay more attention.

So here are the nine steps to becoming a best-selling author on Amazon.

Step 1: Write a book.   To write the book, you don’t have to escape to some mountain retreat and meditate for six months.  You don’t need to live in a tiny hut on the beach in Bali to find inspiration for your writing.  Let’s just keep writing your first book simple.  If you write for an hour a day for two weeks, you’ll be shocked at how much you’ve produced.  If you don’t waste time correcting spelling and punctuation during that time, you’ll probably produce 1000 or more words per hour.  In two weeks, you could have a 14,000-word book.  Many of the best-selling nonfiction books on Amazon are about 10-15,000 words.  If you send this rough collection of sentences to a good editor, you book will be finished in about a week longer.   You can get some reasonable editors on www.fiver.com.  The cost varies based on the number of words.

Your book doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, especially if it is your first one.  It doesn’t have to make it to the New York Times Bestsellers List, but it must do three things. It has to add value to the readers.  It must have some thoughtful insights into the subject. Finally, you should give it a really “voice,” meaning that it should reflect your unique personality.  Do those three things with your book, and you’re well on the way to the top.  Don’t waste time trying to make all your wording perfect.  Just write simple, clear sentences that show the way you communicate with the kinds of people you talk to every day.  Don’t worry about the fancy, big words!  They are a waste.  Most people just skim over them without understanding anyway.  That doesn’t add value to peoples’ lives.  I think it was Chandler Bolt who I first heard say that he isn’t a best-writing author, but he is a best-selling author.  Which would you rather be?

 Step 2: Format the book to go on Kindle.  This is easier than it sounds.  Just go to YouTube.com and search how to format a book for Kindle.   I found a good one for a Windows computer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU_871YrSFM.   Tom Corson-Knowles also gave one for the Mac at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sMzotvhGQg.    If you are lazy or just don’t want to learn how to do this, you can probably find someone online for maybe $5 on Fiverr.com to do this for you. Why not try this one to do the formatting?   For the size book we’re talking about, it will probably cost you about $20.  You can even find somebody on that site to make a decent-looking cover for your book for about the same price.  Here is a selection of cover designers.

Step 3: Publish the book on Amazon’s Kindle.   Just go to www.kdp.amazon.com, and you can sign up right there.  When you do that, be sure to enroll the book in KDP Select.  That’s crucial to making the bestseller campaign work.  The process of doing this is pretty self-explanatory once you get there.  If you get stuck on the way, just YouTube it.  Here’s one that should work for you:  upload ebook. So congratulations — at this point you have published your book.  Simple.  Easy.  Done.  Enter all the information and save, but do not publish to Amazon yet.

Step 4: Schedule the date. Select the date for your Amazon bestseller campaign in KDP Select.   You do that in your KDP Dashboard.   Schedule it to start at least two weeks out from now.  Let it start on the weekend — a Friday or a Saturday.  You want that delay time so that you can get out the word to your Twitter and Facebook community about your new book being offered for FREE on those dates.

Step 5: Find some promotional partners.  Since the book’s going to be free for that 5-day period, it’s going to be pretty easy to get people to help.  Just send a friendly email introducing yourself, telling them what your book is about and letting them know it’s going to be free.  Your friends and family may or may not be interested in your book.  However, they do care about you.  If you explain to them what you are doing, you can also ask that they forward another email you are sending at the same time to all their friends.  That email should have an image of your book cover, the dates of the free promotion, and also a link to the Amazon page where it is listed.  If you send these two emails a day or two before your promotion, it will still be fresh on people’s minds and easy to find in their inbox.

Another possibility is to offer a unique coupon code to each of your email list subscribers.  Explain to them that they should send the coupon to their friends.  The coupon would allow their friends to receive a special incentive through your website.  If ten or more people use the same coupon code, then your “marketing partner” would receive another coupon that allows them to access a high–value incentive such as a special course or coaching session.   The person who has the highest number using their unique code would receive a Kindle device or $100 (their choice).  

Step 6: Prepare press releases.  You should plan to do one before the promotion starts, one the day it goes free, and one right before it ends.   If you’ve never done this before, you can also farm this out to someone on fiverr.com, who has experience doing them.  Let me find one for you quickly.  Wait a second. Here are some to pick from on that site.   You should be prepared to supply them with an image of your book cover as well.

Step 7: Join all of the free Kindle sites, blogs, and Facebook groups. There are communities of people who just follow free Kindle books, so you’ll find all kinds of Facebook groups, all kinds of blog sites, and all kinds of forums where people share and publish when books like yours are going to be free.  You want to join those communities and let the people running them know when your book is going to be free.  They’ll promote it for you for nothing.

Step 8:   Set Day 1 of your Campaign as your official Launch Day.  On Day 1 of your campaign, when you’re ready to go and hit ‘launch’, do a post on Facebook on your personal or your business page and to as many of the Facebook groups and other links that you have available.

Step 9: Launch!  Launch that book, do the promotion and keep on promoting it.  For those five days, that should be the main thing you’re telling people about.  Let folks know.  Here’s what you’re going to see happen when you do this.  You’re going to get a whole bunch of downloads.

You may be thinking, “Why would I give my book away for free?  I worked too hard making this thing.  Why would I let people have it for free?”  Here are some reasons.  First, Amazon recognizes two types of Bestseller Lists, free and paid.   If you get near the top of the free list for your niche, you have a better chance of having Amazon promote you as a Top Rated or Bestselling book.  That would help it reach the #1 spot on the paid page.  Secondly, you can use it to gather reviews from readers.  Many promotional sites require 10 or more reviews before they will carry your book.  Third, you can send people to your own squeeze page and then redirect them to your book after you’ve gathered their email address.

If you’d like to know more about the writing and publishing parts of this process, you might want to check out my own books on the subject on Amazon.