How to Sell More eBooks

You've read all the blog posts about price points, editing, and cover art, but do you know how to sell more books by tweaking your book's product description page?

I recently read Dollars & Sense by the writerly trio of Carolyn McCray, Amber Scott, and Rachel Thompson (hitherto called the IBC girls because they are the founders of The Indie Book Collective), and I wanted to share a portion of the book with you.

One of the sections that really grabbed me was the part about the Amazon product description page.

McCray, Scott and Thompson have discovered some excellent ideas that can help GRAB your potential reader's attention, keep it, win the sale and attract them to your other books.

As the founder of The Kindle Book Review, I see way too many book descriptions that are long-block paragraphs with too many words.

Here's an example of what NOT to do, taken from a random book I found on Amazon. 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two novellas, a screenplay and a novel fragment the last two previously unpublished showcase the range of multiple Hugo and Nebula winner Martin (the Song of Fire and Ice trilogy). Black and White and Red All Over, the first 100 or so pages of an ambitious novel, follows three journalists in New York in the early 1890s as they cover a big crime story: the murder of the prostitute known as Old Shakespeare. Meticulously researched, sprawling and based on a real murder, it stunningly evokes place and time, but its leisurely pace means all too little happens. In "Skin Trade," it's up to asthmatic  Willie and his pal Randi to find out who's killing werewolves and removing their skins, but plots within plots collide, leading to a bloody and confusing ending. In StarPort, a never-produced, laugh-out-loud funny sci-fi police procedural, stolen weapons, a dead alien dignitary and an insane alien conspire to keep the cops in a futuristic Chicago busy. The closing fantasy novella, "Blood of the Dragon," the best of the four, tells a taut and moving coming-of-age story about a young princess sold by her brother into marriage to a warlord. Although different in tone, content and genre, all the stories have in common an unerring eye for the human condition and the kind of grand scope and large-scale world-building that make for compulsive page turning.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Although none of the four pieces in this book is new or has been previously published, all are good reading, and they provide valuable insight into what Martin was doing during the years when he apparently disappeared into the black hole of Hollywood. (He emerged at length and also in triumph with the fantasy saga Song of Ice and Fire.) "Black and White and Red All Over" is a take on the Jack the Ripper theme. "Skin Trade" is a werewolf story that draws on Martin's experience as a writer for the TV show The Beauty and the Beast. "StarPort" is a candidate for the Best Unproduced SF Pilot Script Award if ever there was one. Finally, "Blood of the Dragon" is a modest introduction to Song of Ice and Fire's formidable Princess Dany. Add an introduction by Melinda Snodgrass that attributes no virtues to Martin that the stories don't prove he has in full measure, and readers will be informed as well as entertained. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

I don't know about you, but I was done at "Publisher's Weekly". This example may seem extreme, but it's not. I see this ALL the time, and I bet there are a few authors reading this who are saying "Sh••! That's what my book description looks like."

Fear not. With the help of the IBC girls, you can fix your page and start attracting more readers faster than you can say, "Make me a bestseller." 

The IBC girls suggest a layout that is ideal for securing the sale. 

• To do this, your description should start with two or three quality "blurbs".
• Followed by a brief description of your book. 
• Followed by more blurbs, mini reviews and maybe a bit more about the book, all in short, concise lines no longer than one or two sentences. 
• Finally, they recommend that you end your product description by mentioning your book and/or other indie authors that you want to support.

To see an example of what I'm talking about, and to discover the details of their concept, go to the DOLLARS & SENSE Amazon kindle page, read the product description and then buy the book. This is just one of many great ideas that are in there. Then, come back and tell me what you learned from Dollars & Sense. BOOM!