Courtesy of /r/fantasywriters: I’m genuinely curious how you got started on Amazon?
When I started, I was clueless. I didn’t really start any significant groundwork until I had already published. It was slow going. Really slow. I told everyone I knew and badgered them to buy copies. This resulted in about 10 sales. I did a Goodreads giveaway (I have hard copies through Createspace), ran free days on KDP Select and used some cheap services to promote them ($5-$30 kind of stuff), and sent copies to small book bloggers (the sort who would deal with a nobody like me). Still didn’t get much of anywhere.
I think people were still finding the BookBub email in their inboxes,
finding the book was only $.99, and trying it anyway. I got a HUGE spike
in sales (I want to say I sold 500+ that day) and got up into the top 5
in Amazon’s paid chart for Epic Fantasy (in among the GRRM and
Sanderson books). That was good for a 2-month-long surge of sales.