Behind a Kindle book launch: Everything I did to get 700+ downloads in 3 days

Last week I emailed everyone on my list to let you know I was launching my book.

Here are the results from my kindle book launch:

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Now on the face of it, the results are not spectacular.

However, given that it was my first book on the topic, I know I will do a lot better on the next couple books.

I will be able to use the same contacts I’ve made as well as say I am already a published author of a vegan book when approaching new people.

That’s priceless!

I can’t tell you how awesome it feels to say you have a published book when you talk to your friends and family.

Moreover, this book is evergreen and will potentially be earning me income for the next year or two before it will need to be updated.

So here’s what I did right to get the results:

Launch for Free

I highly recommend that if you are a new writer that you publish your book for free.

This gets your name in front of as many people as possible and helps you build that brand thats so important.

Using the techniques I'll show below, I was able to have my book climb up all the way up to #567 out of all the free books on Amazon.

I believe if I was more aggressive with my outreach and had chosen a more general topic, I could have done even better (more on that later).

I ran a 3 day promotion as I find I get a ton of downloads on day 1 and then it starts to go down.

If I were to run it for 5 days, I would lose rank as the downloads of my book would go down.

This would hurt my sales when I decided to end the promotion.

You want to peak and then close the promotion.

Also, KDP only gives you 5 days of promotion per 90 day period – as a result, I didn’t want to burn all my promotional days at once.

Message Meetup.com Admins

The biggest bang for my buck was messaging group administrators on Meetup.com who ran Vegan events.

Here’s why using Meetup.com is so awesome:

1. Meetup.com has tons of groups in many different niches meaning you can probably find one for your product or service.
2. If the members of the group are going to events then you can be sure they are passionate fans.
3. Members TRUST the administrator so if the admin vouches for your service when sending a message to the group members, they are more likely to buy.
4. Each new group admin who gives you permission opens up your product to 300-1000 group members on one go!
5. And this is the most BIGGEST point – if the admin sends a message out to the members, it goes to the group members email address!

Here’s how I did it:

Step 1: Search for groups on my topic (10 secs)

First head over to Meetup.com and search for the niche you want to target.

Below I've selected “Vegan”, then any distance from my city and then finally selected “Group”. This will show me all groups on the topic of veganism.

Step 2: Message the admin (10 secs)

Next message the administrator.

Here's a sample of what I put together for the admins:

You can find this template in the Kindle autopilot bonus package.

Step 3: Craft a message for their group (2 mins)

Next, if you get approval from the admin then you should draft a message that they can copy and paste to send to the group.

Remember always made it dead simple for them to take action.

Step 4: Rinse & repeat

Finally for my kindle book launch, I did this about 20 times but if you really want to crush it (and you totally can) – then repeat this process 100 times.

Seriously, 100 times. It’s worth it.

Find someone to do this for you if you need but its probably the highest return on investment of all my marketing efforts.

Mention Bloggers in the Book

Next, I made sure to talk about influential bloggers, websites and stores in my book. I would include a little excerpt like the one below:

Here’s why this works:

• When you talk about a blogger they are more likely to want to help you out to get their name out there
• It’s a great way to make connections in your industry and gives you an excuse to reach out
• It gives your book more credibility especially if they are then able to vouch for it on Twitter or with a review
• It gives you an opportunity to include discounts and other bonuses that increase the value of your book

Here’s how to do it yourself:

Step 1: Get a Hit List (5 mins)

First step, you need a hit list of people that you will be reaching out to.

You don’t want to do this yourself – its monkey work.

So what I did was reach out to someone on Fiverr.com and asked them to fill out a template for me with contact information.

Step 2: Email the blogger (1 min)

The Fiverr worker should be able to get the email for you using the resources mentioned in the job template.

Simply customize the pre-made email I have given in the Kindle autopilot package with a personal message and press send.

Here’s a sample email:

Step 3: Send the book when ready (1 min)

Finally, send the book when it goes on the free promotion. In the email make it dead simple for them to take action.

I include a link to leave a review on Amazon and provide them with a button to send out a tweet.

Step 4: Rinse and repeat

As with the last method, rinse and repeat for as many bloggers as you can get your hands on.

Calls to action throughout the book

What most writers always miss out on is just including calls to action throughout the book so they can collect emails.

I’m sure you’ve heard every blogger worth their salt mention that the money is in the email list.

Well its true!

So don’t miss out on this opportunity to reach and collect emails from thousands of people.

Step 1: Identify Bonuses

Determine what you want to give away. For my book, I just gave away all the recipes so readers could print it and use it in the kitchen.

Step 2: Signup for Gumroad

Next, head over to Gumroad.com and signup.

This website lets you quickly setup a store for your information products and accept payments.

Forget setting up a landing page or a website. This is the easiest and fastest way I have found to setup a store.

Step 3: Create and upload bonuses

Put your bonuses together and upload it to Gumroad. You’ll get a link in return that you can insert into your book.

Step 4: Insert a cover image

You’ll have to create one cover image for your product page. I used Canva.com to quickly slap something together.

Step 5: Insert links to bonus in book

Finally, insert your link into the book.

Do it more than once.

I have the link included below each recipe and right at the beginning and the end. This is a total of 17 times.

Paid for a book cover

Next, I paid for a book cover. Do not do this yourself. You have better stuff to worry about. I paid $30 for the cover and 3 days later she came back with this:

Looks awesome but it could have been better.

Involved friends in the process

Onwards we go…I made a point to include friends in the process. They not only helped me edit the book but helped with reviews and getting the word out.

When the book was ready, I posted on Facebook tagging all of them.

This resulted in a few shares, tons of positivity and a viral post.

Moreover, when the book was ready and before I started sending my emails to notify bloggers, I asked my closest friends to leave reviews for me.

This gave my book immediate social proof which carried it up the Kindle rankings.

Posted on relevant Facebook groups

Although there may be few vegans in the world, they are a passionate bunch. As a result, the Facebook groups they are in are super active.

That’s the great thing about small niches.

So I simply joined a few groups and posted a message to the group. This resulted in a ton of comments and likes.

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Overall, I’m pretty happy with my strategy for launching the book. I chose the right mediums and got a lot of good feedback.

That being said, I could have absolute crushed the kindle book launch if I had done the following:

Marketing more aggressively

While I did reach out to a dozen bloggers, messaged a handful of meetup group admins and twitter profiles – I could have done 2x as much.

At that point, I had the templates to message more people and could have doubled or tripled the downloads easily.

It was simply a matter of copying and pasting again and again and again.

This process would have been even easier had I outsourced the entire process.

Pay someone to write my book details

I choose to type out the details for the books description because I think I’m a decent copywriter.

I shouldn’t have.

The truth is you can find a copywriter for $10-15 on Fiverr and have them write your description for you.

This would have freed up my time to work more on outreach – where the real money is made.

Moreover, they would have chosen an SEO friendly title and description which will later help with my rankings.

Check the bonus material for links to Fiverr jobs that can create the description for you.

Choose a more colourful cover

I broke my own rule. Have a colourful cover.

That’s the way you get your cover to stand out from the other books on the page…

Just have a look:

Now, imagine if that was a bright vibrant colour.

Choose a self-help topic

Finally, veganism is a hard topic to write about and make a great profit. Only 1% of the population is vegan and there aren’t a ton of people on the bandwagon YET.

That being said I deeply believe in the movement and chose to do it for personal reasons just as much as for the money.

I’ll continue to write Vegan books but i’ll shift some focus to the general self-help topic as people tend to buy many books on self-help at once.

Moreover, self-help books are subjective enough and don’t require technical writing so they can be outsourced as well.

What's next?

I always teach my students that launching more titles is the only way to be successful with Kindle.

Sometimes people give up when they don’t see money start rolling in on their first book.

That’s why speed to market before you get discouraged is MORE important than putting out the perfect book.


Moreover, each title in the same niche plays off of each other as people tend to buy multiple books from the same author.

So onward I go to launch more books under this pen name. I will continue to show you guys my results and hopefully you can slowly learn how its done.

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Don’t forget to download the Kindle Autopilot package.

I continue adding to it and eventually will start charging for access.

Anyone that downloads now gets grandfathered in and will get all updates for free.