Do You Want It To Be Your Customer Or Amazon's Customer?
Let’s face it – there’s no doubt that Amazon is the 800 lb. gorilla in the book marketing world. Should you be selling your book on Amazon? By and large, the answer is yes. You’ll sell more books because of the massive customer base that Amazon has. Smart marketers recognize that the real money is never in the sale of the book but in the backend products or services that you can offer the buyer of that book. And Amazon can typically get more people into your funnel if you do it right.
However, if you’re selling on Amazon and using their Fulfillment by Amazon services you need to recognize that that customer is Amazon’s customer, not yours. And Amazon wants to keep it that way. They do not share the customer information with you.
You've Got to Drive Them From Your Book to Your Website
So, it is imperative that you build into your book ways to drive the reader from the book to your website so you can capture that customer information in order to be able to market to them your other products or services. If Amazon is handling your order fulfillment you do not have the ability to include inserts such as sales flyers in your outgoing shipments so you’ve got to figure out how to do it within the book without violating any of Amazon’s Terms of Service.
While in most cases you will sell more books via Amazon recognize that you’ll make far less per book than if you had made the sale directly to the customer yourself. Amazon wants their cut and rest assured, you know they’ll get it.
If you’re an author, speaker, coach or anyone who has already built a following you’re far better off to drive traffic to your own website to make a book sale. You’ll make more per sale and the customer is yours, not Amazon’s. Doesn’t matter whether you’re driving that traffic directly from the stage at a speaking engagement or via Facebook or Google Ads. Why would you want to drive that traffic to Amazon?
We have many clients who sell their books on Amazon but focus their marketing dollars on driving traffic to their own website. Many even utilize Amazon’s KDP printing services because of their excellent printing prices. They’ll order a few cases or more of their book at a time and send them to us to handle the individual order fulfillment for the sales they make on their own site.
This gives them the ability to include things like thank you notes or letters, postcards, bookmarks, sales flyers or catalogs in their outgoing shipments.