When most people think about writing a book they think of a long novel that encompasses hundreds and hundreds of pages. Times are changing and people live busy lives today. When was the last time you read a 500 page plus book?
Short stories are becoming increasingly popular. So much so that even sites like Amazon allows authors to publish short stories on their Kindle Platform. The great thing about the Kindle publishing platform is that you can allow visitors to download your book for free for a certain number of days per month.
While free downloads may not increase your income, they do help to get your book and your name found. It is quite common for free books to be downloaded hundreds if not thousands of times during their free days.
One way to ensure that your short story gets downloaded is by having a great book cover. Covers are so important and can make the difference between zero downloads and hundreds of downloads. If you’re not sure about creating your own ebook cover, discover why your ebook cover matters.
Also, I wrote an in-depth review on the best free ebook cover creator tool I use to generate high quality ebook covers on the fly.
Once your ecover is created and your short story written, it is time to upload it to the Kindle site. Publishing on Kindle is easy and is one of the reasons why people prefer to publish there first. Plus, Amazon receives a huge amount of traffic and visitors each day, so the chances of your book being seen are dramatically improved.
Don’t forget to try and add your book to the right categories and add keywords to help readers discover your book. The best way to find keywords is to position yourself as the buyer. What words will you type into the Amazon search bar to find your book?
If you are not sure about the categories to choose then simply look for similar books and use the categories which that author used. You can always change your categories later on. One tip is that it doesn’t hurt to place your book in a category with fewer books. If it is targeted to a particular niche then more people will actually find it. Rather be on the top of 50 listings than on the bottom of 1,000’s.
Once your short story is published you can start telling your family and friends about it. After they purchase your book as them to leave a review as this helps to increase the exposure for your book.
If you are a serious author then create a webpage, blog and Facebook page around your author name or around each book. Again, this helps your books receive more attention and gain more sales.
There is more to publishing a book than writing a long or short story. Make sure your ecover is the best possible cover you can have and remember to promote your book as much as possible.
