How to Sell Your Book, CD, or DVD on Amazon
For several years I've been producing books, CDS, and DVD in small quantities for small audiences. Micro-publishing. Or to use the apt phrase of Chris Anderson at Wired: mining the Long Tail, a place where the little that sells a lot is equaled by a lot that sells a little.
I've had numerous requests from readers for the secrets of getting their self-published material on Amazon. It's no secret, but here is what I have learned in the last few years about how to get your book, CD or DVD listed on Amazon.
First, why? I began listing self-published material on Amazon because I wanted a way to reach the wider public with my stuff but I did not want to have to deal with shipping out copies to each customer who ordered on my website. For a small-timer like me, mailing out, and keeping track of onesies and twosies is very disruptive for my day job. By having my stuff on Amazon, Amazon's mighty enterprise became my shipper (they are very good at this), so the only place I have to ship my copies to is to their warehouse.
More importantly, as popular as my website may or may not be, it doesn't compare to the traffic headed to Amazon to search for books and DVDs. By having my stuff pop up among the big publisher's offerings for "similar books" or even in reader's lists and guides, my titles gain a greater chance to be seen and ordered. In a certain way, unless your stuff is available on Amazon, it ain't available. In fact for better or worse, the only way you can purchase my books is via Amazon. As a side benefit, by focusing all my sales via Amazon, tiny advances in sales are magnified by Amazon's sales rank, which garner it more attention, more links via recommendations, which increases sales in the hoped for virtuous circle.
The cost of using Amazon is high. They take 55% of the "official" price (not the sale price but the price you originally determine). That means that even if they discount the book (good for sales), the discount is coming out of their half. But it means you are only getting 45% of your listed price. In addition you pay for shipping books there, and of course for printing them, so the math does not encourage fortune making. Most self-published books are in the "long tail" zone, selling only a few copies per month. I've done better, selling several thousand copies over a couple of years, but still: This is not a way to make money; this is a way to distribute your message.
In 8 easy steps, here is how to get your book, CD, or DVD listed on the long tail of Amazon:
1 Get an ISBN (for a book), or a UPC (for a CD or DVD). For one book it costs $125, for one CD, $55, for one DVD, $89.
2 Get a bar code based on the ISBN or UPC. Costs $10, or may be included in UPC.
3 Sign up with Amazon, $30 per year.
4 Duplicate your stuff; include the bar code on the outside.
5 Ship two copies to Amazon
6 Send cover scan
7 Track sales
8 Resgister it (optional)
-- KK (with Michele McGinnis)
The full details, with how-to tips and links to recommended sources, are as follows.
Favorite (15)
Vijayandran
Can you please tell me how to register with Amazon as I have self published a book which I would like to sell on Amazon.Thank you.
Lee Hollinugsworth
I can search amazon for my self-published book using the title and my name, but I had to pay for the "Pro Merchant" service. I have had no orders. How do I promote my book on amazon? Can I add key words so that it is more searchable? What would anyone suggest?
Kimberly
where do I get the UPC for $55.00 I have heard that they cost about $750.00.
Sandy
Vijayandran-
Amazon now requires upc barcodes for all the products that are sold through the site. The reason being more efficiency!
For your self published book, you will require upc bar codes that is scannable to an original UPC or ISBN number. You will need the upc bar codes to sell the published book on Amazon. I recommend checking out - www.upccode.net to buy official and legal upc bar codes. They are really good with their service and you can have your bar codes in minutes.
A word of caution though - Be careful of other smaller and shady sites who sell upc codes at a cheaper price! I recently purchased a bar code from one of these cheaper site only to find out that they closed down their business operations within a week!! I then connected with folks at upccode.net and they were extremely helpful in the entire process. They are a bit expensive compared to the rest of the sites out there but its worth the spend since you can be assured that they are a gunuine company out there.
Hope this helps.
~Sandy
Kim
Simply Barcodes - http://www.upccode.net
hunwilliam
What do you do for supply issues, does amazon notify a distributor of the buyers information and where to ship the book? Who tells the printing co. how many books to print and where to send them?
intron
Very helpful - thanks. Looking forward to details and answers to some questions posted above. Also, how many books must you ship to Amazon to start and how is that determined?
Tommie R uth Sweet
I have recently self-published a book. I have it listed on another site, but would like to know if listing it on Amazon.com would better serve my purpose, which is to get the message in the book out to the public. This is entirely new to me and I'm wondering if you have a Support Team that works with those desiring to use your site. Such as guiding them through the set up process.
Thank you for your help,
Tommie Ruth
Sharon - inspiring stories
Very helpful information. Thank you. We thought we had ordered a barcode along with our ISBN # but for some reason never got it.
Roman Zouev
I would recommend LightningSource print on demand publishers. You can use their distribution network (which includes Amazon). They print the book, and ship it for free to wholesalers (like Amazon).
Kevin Kelly
@Tommie: I'd go with Amazon. Sorry we don't do consultancy.
Simmi
Great comments!!! Here is some additional and very helpful information on upc barcodes for selling products on amazon.
Highly Recommended - http://www.upccode.net/amazon.php
ann marie
Hi there .my book was published with Harper Collins and was listed on Amazon .now Itis out of print and I have all the rights back.
Where would be the best place to get my books printed cheaply, I live in south East Asia ? Ihave an ISBN already and my book is still on the web site.
Is the procedure easy to get the book to them?
hopefully you can help
Ann Marie Woodall
"Secrets of A High Heeled Healer" published 2003
Andrew Darlow
Thank you for this excellent overview. The person who recommended Lightning Source is great info, especially if your book is black and white inside. You can also work directly with Amazon.com through www.createspace.com .
If you have thousands of books already printed, this may not help, but
I recommend checking out the POD group on Yahoo!Groups:
There are many helpful people there. I would browse the archives first before posting. Here is the link, or just search for "Print on Demand Yahoo! Group"
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Print-On-Demand/summary
All the best!
Andrew
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Andrew Darlow
Editor, The Imaging Buffet
http://www.imagingbuffet.com
Gretchen Sumner
Our company used http://EZUPC.info to buy 100 UPC Codes for only $499. They were fast (free rush service), easy, gave us the barcode graphics in three formats and their staff really helped us with what to do and how to put the barcodes on our products and get them printed. We researched all the popular resellers like Simply Barcodes mentioned above and found that the only difference was how much those people charge! They are just numbers, so why should we have to pay so darn much? We highly recommend EZUPC and will be going back to them for more and we agree with the philosophy of EZ UPC that those other companies (including the GS1) are just greedy. If we had to spend $1500 to get UPC numbers for Amazon we wouldn't have been able to be in business! $499 was a ton but at least it wasn't triple that and we got 100 UPCs for that, where we would have gotten about 5 with those other people! We also saw that site you were referring to that closed down in a few days. We didn't even consider them when we saw them anyway because they had nothing on their site—no address, phone, no info about how they got their numbers and what made them legal to sell them, etc. So don't be afraid of ALL resellers, just the ones that you can't verify!
Joey
Hi....
I would like to write you...but you have to excuse my syntax because I am totally deaf and know American Sign Language...which it's not exactly like English. I hope you can understand me.
I am a director of independent films for the Deaf... I am looking for company who would create DVD from my movies... can you copy my movie and sell to earn for my film business? just movies for comedy, horror, drama for the deaf.
can you do that?
Thanks!
Joey
herb Flemming
I SELFPUBLISHED MY LIFES STOREI FIRST ADITION BEING PRINTED AT PRESANT I WAS BORN IN EAST PRUSSIA - NOW RUSSIA WAS BORN IN 1933 WENT TROUGH THE HORRORS OF 2nd WW hAD TO BE IN THE HITLER YOUTHWAS REFUGE WITHMY SIBLINGS . WE ALL IMEGRATED IN 1951 . WAS DRAFTED IN TO US ARMY WE EXPIREANCED THE AMERICAN DREAM. THANK YOU HERB FLEMMUNG.
Ron
Just another suggestion. After you purchase your upc number for a cd or dvd another place to submit it for free is mx123.com. They are a source for secondary market buying and selling of used dvds and cds. Of coarse this resale activity cuts into sales but actually i believe it can be a powerful tool to help launch exposre for your cd or dvd. After i did so with them i noticed a number of other secondary market sites picked up this catalog info through them.
Cindy Koppen
Hi, I have already a few hundred music CD's printed and packaged. I would like to be able to sell them to a larger market. Our band is the "Sojourners" and the CD is called "HOLD the MOON". Thanks for any help doing this, sincerely, Cindy (Koppen)
Oliver duCille
This is great info. It's an 8 step process to what could represent a breakthrough in the lives of many an aspiring author.
What do you mean by register it (in step 8). Is that with the library of congress or some other national or international book registry?
Many, many thanks for this info.
Ron duke
Great Info..Once you start selling on Amazon..it means that you have opened millions of web store bcoz amazon affiliate too are working to sell you product.
There are many dedicated sites like http://www.amazku.com or http://www.click2eshop.com which only promote amazon product.
Joann Dunn
O.K., I have the printed books, the code and the ISBN. Now I need to know where to send the scans of the covers and where to send the book so Amazon will carry it. You say you are going to give that info above. I assume it is coming sometime in the future. Now would be good. Planter 630
Leah
Thought this might be useful on this post given the comments and discussion-
Informational Resources-
buy UPC codes for books: http://www.upccode.net/barcodes_for_books.php
buy UPC codes for cd/music: http://www.upccode.net/soundscan.php
buy UPC codes for amazon: http://www.upccode.net/amazon.php
buy EAN codes for international markets: http://www.officialeancode.com
Buy UPC Codes: http://www.upccode.net
janet mulkey
There are a lot of questions and I need a source for my book. I have a UPC code and a bar code, I am with a publisher, but retain my rights to sell the book myself also, is there any reason I would not be able to sell on your website? Thanks
Ben W
Question about a self-published audiobook- we have the ISBNs, barcodes etc- but what about the CD itself? For style reasons we want it to be completely one color. Do there need to be any words, logos (like the "CD" logo) or anything else on the physical CD itself?
Charmaine
If you are hoping to get your product into all stores and particularly large retail chains like Wal-mart or Target you should know that many of the big box chains will only allow bar codes generated through GS1US. So be sure to take this into consideration if you are hoping for mass retail distribution. Be sure to ask your bar code supplier precisely WHICH stores will accept their bar codes. Yes, its expensive but that's the cost of doing business if you want to be in the big retail chains. Don't shoot yourself in the foot if you want to get into mass distribution by settling for a barcode that may not be accepted by the stores in which you wish to have your product sold. Here's a link to the GS1US barcode web site: http://barcodes.gs1us.org/dnn_bcec/Default.aspx
They have good customer support and teleconference training and their online tools are very intuitive.
Good luck with your product!
Cheers,
Charmaine
Vern Baker
If you are spending any more than $2 per barcode for your product for Amazon, you are spending too much. I bought my barcodes from:
http://cheap-upc-barcode.com
$2
That's it.
Brie
Where do you go to sign up with Amazon? And when i signup will they give me all the information as where to send my book?
Thank you
CT Reader
I have a new book online title Educating children: A Better way . Please can you pre-order 40 books from this website to test your market.
www.croatianfantasy.com
Thank you
Devika Primic
Rita
People keep asking how to list a book on Amazon, and nobody answers. That's funny. Perhaps, the author of this article doesn't really know?
Ok, here's how you list your self-published book on Amazon: sign up with Amazon Advantage program. Here's the link: http://advantage.amazon.com/gp/vendor/public/join-advantage-books
Click the [Apply Now] button on the left.
Good luck.
jordan
I pressed my CD with Nova Disc. They offer FREE barcodes if you manufacture with them. So you don't have to pay one of those scammers...Here's the link: http:www.novadisc.net
Juanita Melenko
My book has been out for over 2 yrs and my book is [ The Girl in th Box] Rose Dog Book publishers, they made promises that they have not kept so i have been tring to find out if i can do anything on my own my first book cridic came out & the right up was great , i wrote a true story book in short story form.
People can go on line read the nack of the book & make up thier mind i need to know what to do to get this out.
officialtrash
"3 Sign up with Amazon, $30 per year."
I'm thinking this should read: $39.99 per MONTH now.