Why and how I am changing my strategy at the Kindle store

The competition in Amazon's Kindle Store has always been fierce, but as time went on, it became more and more difficult for self-publishers to compete in the market.

I have published a thriller series of seventeen volumes within the last five years and one of nine volumes. So on average, I've released a new novel about every two months. I'm talking about full-length books with over 300 pages each.

Within a series, each volume is a completed story. So they are not serial novels. But since the same characters always appear and the setting is still the same (same city, same office, etc.), I can write relatively quickly.

This publishing strategy is widespread among genre fiction writers. When you publish in Amazon's Kindle Store, new publications are given priority by Amazon's algorithms and are recommended to more potential readers than older books.

Therefore it is essential always to have a book among the new publications. If your new release sells well thanks to excellent advertising and a loyal fanbase, it will be visible to readers who haven't bought one of your books yet. Since books in a series are linked together by Amazon, the visibility of the other books in the series will also increase. This increases the sales of the whole series when you publish a new book within the series.

This mechanism has not stopped working. I still see an increase in sales of my older books when you publish a new book. But the effect is not as significant today as it used to be.

Why is the old strategy not as effective anymore as it used to be?

When we look at the product page of an ebook in the Kindle Store today, and in the past, we see that there's a significant change. In the past, the customer was shown books in a prominent place on the product page that others who bought the book purchased.

These so-called "also boughts" had a massive impact on organic sales. If your book appeared in the " also boughts " list of another book, it had higher visibility and was sold more often.

These lists still exist, but they are now usually shown further down the product page. Amazon is experimenting a lot with the placement of these lists. When I looked in the US store today, they were again at the top of the page. On other days it looks different.

In Germany, a few book recommendations are currently appearing first, which Amazon presumably derives from the customer's surfing behavior. Right below, there is a list of sponsored books.

The sponsored books are books that are advertised by authors and publishers via Amazon Ads. This list is almost always more visible than the old " also-boughts lists."

The consequence is that organic sales are pushed back in favor of sponsored sales.

So if you publish a new book in a series today, customers will no longer mainly see the other books in your series on your product page, but books by authors who specifically target your book with their advertising.

This effect has affected my previous strategy so much that it is becoming more and more difficult for me to cover my costs and make a sufficient profit.

My new strategy

If Amazon prefers books that are advertised with Amazon ads, it is logical for me to focus more on these ads in the future.

I've been using Amazon ads for quite some time now, but so far, I haven't really looked into it. All my ads so far have been relatively unsuccessful. Facebook ads have worked better for me so far.

There is a simple reason for the unsuccessfulness of my Amazon ads: I never really tried to understand them.

I am changing that now. It is well known that many authors earn a lot of money because they have taken the arduous path to get deeper into the topic of Amazon ads.

There are courses and books on the subject. The most recommended course is by Mark Dawson and costs over 800 $.

Instead of investing that much money, I borrowed two books about Kindle Unlimited and am currently reading them very carefully.

The first is "Amazon Ads Unleashed" by Robert J. Ryan, and the second is "Amazon Ads for Authors: Tips and strategies to Sell Your Books" by D. M. Potter.

At the same time, I created my first Amazon Ads to test the basic principles explained in these two books. My previous ads were almost haphazard, but now I'm going step by step, as the books recommend.

The goal is to create profitable ads and increase my sales in the long run.

Above all, I finally see a way to make my back-catalog profitable in the long run. Instead of reactivating the old books exclusively through new books, I can show them permanently to new readers in the future.

I now have a lot of work ahead of me. Optimizing Amazon Ads and making it profitable requires a lot of research and many hours of work with Excel worksheets to track the performance of individual keywords and find out what works and what doesn't.

Once again, I am an absolute beginner in a business where I have been working successfully for years.

I will report here in a few weeks whether I was successful or not. Because it is by no means certain that I will master this challenge and that things will develop the way I want them to.

But that is what life as a self-publisher is like. Nothing is certain. Never.