What is the best day to upload your E-Book to Amazon or Smashwords?

If you have uploaded your EBook before, and sales tapered off, you may not want to make the mistake that I did recently.  I publish exclusively on Amazon.com.  I quickly realized that I could not join any of their promotions, unless I enrolled my books into KDP Select.

KDP Select allows you to reduce the price of your book in either a Countdown Promotion, or a Free Promotion for a selected time.  You should sign up for KDP Select when you post your book intitially, I have had serious issues trying to join KDP Select with books that I did not initially enroll, and Amazon is unable to fix this issue for me.

Now, I have also learned that the best time to upload your books is actually about 4 days before you want to begin your promotion.  This allows Amazon time to review your book, first and foremost.  It allows you time to post a 'Save the Date' to all of your Social Media outlets.  I already discussed the places your should be posting, so you need time to update all of those sites.  You should post a picture of your cover, and a small amount of information about your book to start, with a reminder that links to purchase your book will be forthcoming.

Now, the hard part starts!  You need a list of all of the places you can post your book release for free.  If your book is free, the list is endless.  Prepare a Word Document with the Book's Title, your name, a small blurb about your book, a longer statement about your book, links for all of your social media sites, links for your books, a Biography and a couple of book reviews if you have them.  Most sites ask you for this information, so it is much handier to have a document available that you can easily copy and paste from, rather than typing the same information over and over.  Also, have a folder with all of your Book Covers in it, so they are in one place.  Please note, some sites require lead time of up to 6 weeks.  Do your research, and then post so you can take advantage of sites that take longer to post.

Make sure you set up a folder in your bookmarks, and add each site you post information to in it.  This won't be your last book, so why not be ready?

That being said, you need to upload your book on a Monday or Tuesday if at all possible.  You want to do your promotion advance on those days.  You want to be ready to post your links on Thursday at the latest.  By Friday, you should be up and running.  A lot of people search for books to read over the weekend on Thursday and beyond.  Also, check to see what the advance time is for sites you want to use for promotion.  If you want promotion leading into the weekend, but it takes them a week or more to start your promotion, you need to plan ahead.

Now, I would only offer a book for free, if you have another book or books in that series to follow it.  Your sales may move up with Amazon rankings temporarily, but you have to bring in new readers consistently.

Encourage your readers to leave reviews.  Amazon ranks your books based on reviews and stars.  If your book is number 1044 in your genre, you need some reviews and stars to move it up so when people search in your genre, they see your book.  You have to get off of Mount Everest!

DO NOT run a Kindle Countdown Promotion if your book is not selling.  If you then want to turn around and offer it for free, you have to wait 90 days from the end of your last promotion.

These simple steps will help you place your book in the best position to be seen by potential buyers. Be ready by Thursday, so you can grab those weekend readers!