How to Write & Publish a Best Selling Book Online

Have you ever thought about writing a best selling book that will sell beyond your circle of friends, family members and a few acquaintances?

Of course, this is obviously, one of the biggest dreams of most writers – to write and publish books that will affect the lives of millions of people around the world. And this is probably one of the reasons why you’re reading this.

I know you don’t just want to reach the world with your own story that is dying to be told, you want to reach out to and sell your book to millions of people around the world. Because that’s how it should be.

Now, I want you to know that whether you’re planning to sell your book online or offline, whether you’re a self published or traditionally published author, when you get your acts together, you can also come up with the next best selling book.

But, beyond wanting to make your book a best seller, you have to be very intentional about making this a reality. And to do that effectively, you need to learn about the important factors that can turn your book from an ordinary piece of writing to a best selling book.

Now the question is, are you ready?

What Makes a Book A Best Seller

Again, whether online or offline, Best Selling books are not just selling so well because they are the best books ever written out there, there are certain elements and strategies that come together to make an ordinary writer a best selling author.

Over the years, a handful of smart writers have consistently used these strategies to write books that have sold out, excellently well.

In the following sub headings, I will be sharing with you some of these strategies and how you can use them to power your book from rock bottom all the way up to the top.

These strategies will work best for you if you’re yet to actually publish your book online. You can use it as a guide to write and format your book before getting it published online in Nigeria or wherever you are.

If you’ve already written your book completely, you can still use this guide to format your book before getting it finally published online. Here are the strategies below…

Choose the Right Niche

There’s something called the right niche. And if you want to write a best selling book that sells fast, beyond having a great story, you need to target the right niche.

Now, a niche is the subset of a market in which a particular product or service is focused. In the publishing industry, a niche can be regarded as a topical area where a particular book can be categorized into.

Take for instance, a book could be written about a religious niche, educational niche, business niche etc. Most times, these niches will also have a sub niche or sub niches. All these are ways of getting to categorize books and topical areas compartmentally.

That said, over the years, one of the biggest mistakes I have noticed with a lot of self-published author is that most of the time, they publish a book because they feel they have an idea they want to share with the world.

Majority of self-published authors are not interested in researching about the niche they want to write about or getting to know whether there are a handful of potential readers with interest in topics that relates to that niche.

This is very wrong because, when it comes to books that sell online, or publishing a best seller, all niches are not the same. That is the truth most publishing gurus will never tell you.

So many times, there are a lot of over saturated niches with too many established experts out there writing about closely related topics in that niche.

As a newbie, writing a book that will hit the best seller mark in such niche can be as difficult as having a camel pass through the needle.

That is why, in order to get through this hassle and write a book that sells fast, you will have to research your targeted niche very thoroughly.

Dig out some data on the audience size, number of established authors, number and length of best-selling books in the niche and their titles.

Getting such data in place will help you to decide whether to still go ahead with the intended niche or not. And where you have to go ahead, you will have a better idea on how to make your book stand out and more compelling. These are some of the things a lot of online publishers will not inform you in time.

Understand your Target Audience

Now that you finally got around to choose the right niche, the next thing to put in place if you want to write a best selling book is to understand and target your audience in a way that makes you and your book completely irresistible.

To get to this point, there are some key questions that will give you a clear idea on how to identify and target your audience accordingly. The following are some of these questions…

Who is my target audience?

Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, you need to know your audience.

Although it is not compulsory you have a complete knowledge of your audience’s demographics, it is a good idea you have a fair knowledge about who they are, their geographic location, age range etc., if you really want to write a best selling book.

This is because having this knowledge will shape your content.

As a non fiction author for instance, knowing your audience will define your writing style to a great deal, the phrases you’ll use, shared experiences and anecdotes etc. And in the long run, it will influence your ability to connect with your audience at a deeper level.

Same thing goes for fiction authors. A deeper knowledge of your target audience will set the stage for your story. It will define everything around it as you build up your story.

What do they want?

One of the key things about knowing your audience involves knowing what they want.

With data gleaned from your research on popular platforms like Amazon, Smashowrds, Lulu and Keywords tools like Google Keyword Planner etc., you should be able to understand your audience and their preferences in terms of story and genre.

Using key word analysis you should be able to know about what matters to them. And with sales data from the publishing platforms, you should get to understand the books your audience will buy and then work on creating for your book, the kind of content that will work for your audience.

What is in the Market?

The next thing you need to understand about your audience is getting to know about what is trending in the market.

A quick search on amazon on particular topic categories for instance can give you an idea on what the majority of your audience is interested in buying.

Armed with this data, if you really want to create a best selling book that sells fast, the next thing you want to do is to find a way to design content that meets the right market needs. This is very important.

What are you bringing to the table?

Beyond having an idea about what is currently in the market, you have to find a way to provide a solution that is very unique to you… A dimension or story that offers a slightly different value and can be distinguished from other books in the market.

This is going to be your unique selling point and it’s very important you get it right if you’re ready to get into the list of best selling books online.

The reason behind this is because there are most likely, a handful of other authors in your niche.

And there’s a big possibility that most of your potential audience have read or have gotten to know about the information published on most existing books either online or elsewhere.

For a non-fiction book for example, in order to make them interested in reading your own book; you have to come out unique. You have to create a whole new perspective in the topical area and then work on expanding the conversation from that angle.

Get your Book Title Right

Getting the right title for your book is one of the biggest factors that will determine whether your book will sell or not.

According to popular reports, oftentimes, your title will pay a big role in a buyer’s decision whether to read your book or not.. So having the right title is not negotiable

In the course of working with self-published authors over the years, I have realized that most first time published authors do not attach a lot of importance to their book title.

For this reason, they can come up with any idea from anywhere and use same as a book title without finding out if the particular title will appeal to their target audience or not. This is very wrong.

Personally, I made this same mistake with my first published book. The idea for the book title was completely my idea. I didn’t do any single research or checks to find out what will work with my audience. And this decision caused me a lot, in terms of sales.

Remember that your book title is one of the first things any potential reader will see about your book. It is one of the biggest factors that will influence a reader’s decision, whether to buy your book or forget about it completely.

So, while choosing your book title, you have to put a lot of things into consideration. For instance, you have to consider the main idea about your book, the content, your audience and the message you’re trying to pass across, before settling for a title.

How to choose a book title that sells

When it comes to choosing a book title that sells, you will have to consider catchy and meaningful keywords that will capture the idea behind your book in a way that appeals to your audience’s interests.

Now, choosing a book title is not rocket science and at the same time it shouldn’t be guess work. With the research tools I mentioned earlier, you can find out keywords that matter to your audience and the search volume within your target geographic region.

Using this with some search data from Amazon, Lulu and other top online publishing platforms, you can then work on creating a catchy and unique book title that will captivate your audience.

Now, here’s something you should note…

You don’t have to wait to get the right idea. While searching up suggestions for your book title, write down the suggested book title idea as they come to you until it gets exhausted.

After this, find a way to test these ideas before settling for the one that will be best fit as your book title.

Get Subtitles that Work

Getting a subtitle is very important for books these days.

Beyond a book title, your sub titles goes ahead to explain what your book is all about in just a few words. And done well, you can use this to further compel a potential reader to read your book.

Although it is not compulsory you add a subtitle to your book, adding one can be very beneficial to you, especially when it comes to creating a compelling message that further captures the essence of your book.

It can also work for search engine optimization purposes. For these reasons, even when it is not necessarily compulsory for you, having a subtitle that works is something you want to do for your book.

Use the right Keywords

When it comes to publishing books that sells online, keywords are important tools that will help people get to find your books in the online bookstores.

With the right keywords, your book can easily show up in searches when a potential buyer looks for keywords related to your content.

For online publishing platforms like Amazon, you need to get the right keywords for your books so it can get a better visibility on the platform.

How to Choose the right Keywords for your book

Keywords are phrases used by internet users to search for things on the search engines.

Whether on Amazon or Google, usually, when potential readers are searching for books or other items they want to buy online, there are particular phrases they key into the search engine, to look up these items.

To get the right keywords for your book, start with understanding what your book is all about, the kind of audience that will be interested in reading it and the kind of phrases they will use to search for it if or whenever they make searches online.

Having a clear idea about your keyword can be tricky. But, you can start with running some keyword research on your preferred online publishing platform like Amazon for example. This will give you some idea about the likely phrases you can use as keywords.

You can also take things further by using the more general keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, Ubersuggest etc.

When this is done, you can go ahead and work on using as much of these suggested keywords within the content of your book and other key areas within the book like sub headings and then your book description.

Create valuable Content

Regardless of whether you’re publishing online or offline, to make a mark in publishing, your content has to be really good. This is non negotiable.

Content is the hallmark of good writing. And to create a best selling book, not only are you going to write great content, your content will have to be really of exceptional value to your audience otherwise you lose them.

As an author, your primary responsibility is not just to have a story, your story has to be very beneficial to your audience and you have to be able to tell it well, if you really want to write a book that stands out.

So, beyond having a story that needs to be shared, as an author, you need to find out what will benefit your audience, learn how to share your story and then take it to your audience right where they are.

Final Words

As you can see, there are so many things you can do to make your book a best seller.

But, in the midst of all of this, do not forget the place of promotion. Promotion is very important. Done well, promotion alone can get your book on the top selling charts on publishing platforms like Amazon.

After writing and publishing your book, do your best to promote the book and get the word out to your target audience.

In this guide, here you will find the key strategies you can use to promote your book.

Also, remember the competition. In the online publishing world, to make your book stand out, you have to be really good.

So, with all you’ve learned here, go ahead and give your audience one hell of a good book if you want them to choose you over the others.

That said, as you’d have known publishing a best selling book can be really tasking. To get yourself further help or mentorship on the bolts and nuts of publishing online, reach out to our team here.

Now, it’s over to you. Which of these strategies are you going to start with as you get set to write your book? Let’s have your comments.