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Write the Damn Book Already
Writing and publishing a phenomenal book doesn’t have to be ridiculously complicated or mind-numbingly overwhelming. From myths and misconceptions to practical tips and sound strategies, Elizabeth Lyons (author, book writing coach, book editor, and founder of Finn-Phyllis Press), helps writers feel more in control of and comfortable with the business of book publishing. Her interviews with fellow authors discussing their writing processes and publishing journeys aim to help you untangle YOUR process so you can finally get your story into the world.
Write the Damn Book Already
Ep 113: Amazon Book Sales: What’s Working (and What’s Not) with Dave Chesson
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Keywords: they either fascinate you or they're the bane of your existence.
For me, it's the second.
Which is why I'm so excited to bring you this episode of the Write the Damn Book Already podcast with guest Dave Chesson, founder of Kindlepreneur, where we do an in-depth exploration of the significance of keywords and categories when it comes to a book's success on Amazon.
We discuss strategies for choosing keywords that maximize book discoverability and allow you to run effective Amazon ads, as well as best practices for connecting with your ideal readers.
TOPICS INCLUDE:
• Understanding the profound role of keywords in discoverability
• Strategies for optimizing Amazon ads based on keyword effectiveness
• Common misconceptions surrounding keywords
• The necessity of consistent sales patterns for enhanced visibility
• Insights on crafting compelling book descriptions for better conversion rates
CLICK HERE FOR THE SPECIAL DEAL ON PUBLISHER ROCKET ($30 off when you purchase, plus get Dave's Keywords and Categories course (normally $50) absolutely free. This is a t
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Elizabeth Lyons. I'm an author and book editor and I help people write and publish thought-provoking, wildly entertaining books without any more overthinking, second-guessing or overwhelm than absolutely necessary, because, let's face it, some overthinking, second-guessing and overwhelm is gonna come with the territory, if you're anything like me. In short, I love books and I believe that story and shared perspective are two of the most impactful ways we connect with one another. A few things I don't believe in gimmicks, magic bullets and swoon-worthy results without context, as in. Be sure to reveal that a result took eight years or required a $30,000 investment in ads, because those details are just as important. What I believe in most as an author, the long game is the shortcut For more book writing and publishing. Tips and solutions. Visit publishaprofitablebookcom or visit me over on Instagram at Elizabeth Lyons Author. Oh my gosh, hi everybody. Okay, this just hold on to your seat like get somewhere comfortable, get out a pen and paper your notes app something.
Speaker 1:This episode is amazing. Last week or it might've been two weeks ago I did an episode on keywords and how incredibly important they are when you are loading your book up to Amazon and then further, should you so choose to run ads, but especially in the area, even if you never run an Amazon ad how important it is to get these seven keywords right and when I say right, there are air quotes, because there's no perfection here and you can change them over time. But one of the biggest mistakes that I see authors make and I was one of them once is to just throw keywords up there and think they don't really matter. And I promise they absolutely matter and they can make all the difference between getting your book seen by the readers who really will love it and enjoy it and want to read more and recommend it and buy all the other books you've ever written. If you're an author of multiple books and not, and if you think about the fact that if you walk into look, I love a physical bookstore, and if I walk into a physical bookstore, I'm going to a specific section and within that section I'm usually looking for a specific thing. And even if I'm just browsing the whole store, I'm likely to overlook things. And because of that, it's so incredibly important that the kinds of books I want to read are properly placed in a bookstore. Multiply that by about a million I don't know if that's statistically accurate, but a whole lot when it comes to Amazon, because, with more than 42 million titles in the Amazon bookstore, you have got to get really clear on exactly what your ideal readers are searching for when they're looking for a book like yours, if they don't know that, they're looking for your book when they go to Amazon. So I said in that episode a couple of weeks ago gosh, I would love to get Dave Chesson from Kindlepreneur on to talk about keywords. I have been following Kindlepreneur. They've been around since 2011,. He confirmed at the beginning of this episode. I've been following them since their inception.
Speaker 1:I've had what is now Publisher Rocket. It used to be called KDP Rocket. I've had that since its inception. I didn't always know exactly how to use it, but I had a sense that it was going to become very valuable, and very valuable it has become.
Speaker 1:I cannot imagine there are a few things in this world that can't leave. I'm not a high maintenance person, but if the girl who does my hair ever disappears, I'm going wherever she goes. And if Publisher Rocket ever goes anywhere, I don't know what I'm going to do, because I use it constantly to double check and hone and refine my own keywords and to help the authors I work with identify what the best keywords are for them and get their descriptions proper like the whole thing, the whole shebang. So this is a packed episode and if you already have Publisher Rocket, I don't recommend a lot of stuff, because if I recommend it, I want it to be something that I personally couldn't live without and, as I've mentioned, publisher Rocket is one of those things.
Speaker 1:So, from today, which today is February 20th of 2025 until February 23rd, so it's just five days Dave and his team has been gracious enough to offer Write the Damn Book Already listeners a great opportunity to get lifetime access to Publisher Rocket for $30 off and get his keywords and category course for free. That helps really eliminate trust me when I say this, it helps eliminate the overwhelm when it comes to how to identify keywords and categories. Regardless, I encourage you and I'll have all the links to all of this in the episode notes but I encourage you to check out Kindlepreneurcom, no matter what, because they've got so many great free resources. They do such an incredible job of staying on top of what's working at Amazon, what isn't working at Amazon, what isn't working at Amazon, and they really do have an overall goal of helping indie authors especially get seen. They are invaluable in the book publishing space, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:So we are going to dive into everything keywords, categories, amazon ads, myths, misconceptions, best practices and you're even going to find out what toaster romance is. I learned for the first time. I mean, we learn something new every day, so let's just stop introducing it and get right into the conversation. So last week I did an episode on keywords.
Speaker 2:I nice.
Speaker 1:I got to see if Dave will come talk about this, because and I asked my you know, seven followers like what questions do you have and whatnot, and they kind of came rolling in because everyone's got all the same stuff. So here we go All right, sounds good, let's just dive in Now.
Speaker 1:What I'd love to do is I'm going to share all the resources in the episode notes, because you have so many walkthroughs of how to choose the best keywords, how to choose the best categories, why they matter, and I don't want you to repeat that, have to repeat that here. So I would love to ask some questions that maybe like either aren't there or a little more hidden or a little newer, or something like that, and some of them may be selfish on my part, because I am. We've got to figure this out.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you chat for just a minute about what is, in your mind, the most important aspect of keywords? Is it well, I'm going to lead you a little bit. Is it discoverability? And and Amazon, knowing where the heck to place your book? Is it ads Like what? Is it all of the above? Is it none of the above? Is there something I haven't even thought of?
Speaker 2:Well, I tell you what one of the things I think will really help with answering that question is. Let me give an analogy, okay, so instead of getting like super techie and talking about the algorithm and all these things, let's imagine that there is a large bookstore, okay, and you have your book. Now you get the opportunity to walk up to the store manager, the person who gets to decide if books even show up, where in their store they show up, et cetera, and you get just a couple of things to say to them to help them figure out where to put the book. That's the best way. I like to always think about keywords and categories, um, in in that particular case.
Speaker 2:Now imagine that the person who walks up to that store manager comes up and says, uh well, it's, um, a book on cats that solve mysteries, and be like oh so, it's um, all right, and that's all they say, that's it. They leave it at that. Well, okay, I guess that's fantasy, maybe it's paranormal, like what's up with the cat? Was the cat? You know? Like mystical, you know like, was it a trap spirit, like?
Speaker 1:is there anything more about the children's book? Like what's it? Is it?
Speaker 2:a children's book. Right now, the point is is that the person dropped the book off and they walked. They walked away. The store manager has no idea. So here's what's going to happen it's just going to thrown in the dumpster, all right, and basically nobody's going to find it, because the store manager doesn't want to put, uh, a, you know, psychological thriller, you know mystery, in a children's section right, they don't want to cover?
Speaker 2:they don't. So what ends up happening is they don't know what to do. Now, let's say, somebody comes in and they're like oh well, this is actually a children's book, ages you know four to eight, about a cat. You know that that used to be a trap. You know this sounds terrible, this right off the cuff, but, like you know, this is an orphan that died and then they inhabited the spirit of a cat and they're helping owners find, you know they're missing pets, you know so that they could be brought together. Now, all of a sudden, the store manager knows exactly where to put it.
Speaker 2:Right, they also maybe through that, are like oh, my goodness, you know what. I know that there's a bunch of kids that were looking for cat mystery books. I should actually put this in the front entryway so that when those shoppers come in they're going to see it. Or I should put it in the centerpiece of the children's section in my store, because I know that that's the kind of book people are wanting.
Speaker 2:So, with this in mind, this is exactly how we approach keywords and categories. Is that you have that opportunity to have, like, a quick conversation with the store manager, aka Amazon's algorithm, and the more you make them feel like they understand your book and where it should go and who it should be in front of, the more they're going to actively put it in a spot that will get in front of the right people. And even more so is is that, if you are, if you're telling that store manager, uh like, hey, clearly you know the Renaissance Festival is coming in and this is a Renaissance book. You know, and they know these things, they're going to take actions to show it more, put it in the forefront. So, with that analogy in mind, let's take that question again. Can you repeat the question then?
Speaker 1:Yeah, is it more important or most important for discoverability by readers, placeability by Amazon, knowing where to put it and then, as a sort of a side piece to that, like when you're running ads, knowing if you choose to run ads on Amazon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so discoverability is always important. But here's where I put discoverability. Every author, no matter whether they're brand new or they're, you know, well-known, wants more discoverability. Okay, uh, regardless of it. Now here's what I tell people is is that, uh, if, say, you've selected something like you know, orphan cat mystery, and, uh, there are people searching for that, the fact is, is that if you get the placement in front of them, they're discovering you. Okay, they're discovering that you're writing the kind of book that they want. And that is where the discoverability and the placement really play together.
Speaker 2:Now, a lot of authors will choose a bunch of keywords or phrases and either A, they guessed, right, they just threw something up there, and you'll get placement for those phrases, all right, if those phrases are real phrases, okay, uh, but you will not get discoverability because nobody's looking for that Right. Another thing to keep in mind, too, is that you might say to yourself well, I've done all this research and I found that this one word is like 200 searches per month, or this word over here is, you know, like 150. And that's. That doesn't seem like a lot, yes, but here's the thing there might not be a large crowd that is looking specifically for orphan cat mystery thriller or, and, by the way, I know that I haven't done my research on that.
Speaker 1:Are you resenting hitting hitching your post to that?
Speaker 2:Right, right, exactly. I have not done the research, no, but let's pretend that there are some people that people have searched for it, but it's not a lot.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing, though when you get in front of that hungry market, you will make sales conversions. Now the manager of the store is seeing that. Wow, hey, there's this book's kind of doing well, yes, huh, people are coming in and they're buying it. You know what? Maybe I should do more. Maybe I should put it on the table for our editor's picks of children four to nine, or maybe I should put it in the entryway of the children's section, or maybe I should. And all of a sudden they'll start testing it and they'll start putting it in these spots. And now kids that wouldn't have come in looking for that kind of book they're seeing it and they're like oh, that's cool.
Speaker 1:I never would have thought to look at it. It's an even easier sale.
Speaker 2:Bingo.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly what Amazon does. Once you get it in front of the right group, that group starts to prove that the book is good and that customers like it. Amazon then starts putting your book in front of even more keywords and better placements for other keywords that you didn't even select, and they're testing to see how it does, and then, when they see that it's doing well, they start doing more and more and more. So you could sit there and say well, I, these keywords don't have a lot of searches. But you know what, though, though You're getting in front of that right market, and if you've done a good job in putting a book together that really fits that market, all of a sudden sales will come in. Amazon will think man, let's show this more. There's more discoverability.
Speaker 1:And they know to show it too.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They're more confident in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I have seen it's been. You know, I've had. My first book was in 2004. So I've been watching sort of how the I mean it was before Amazon, I think it was before Amazon, not before Amazon, but before you know it was easier to get. Like, I remember the days when I was shipping books to Amazon. They didn't have it on demand, none of that stuff. So, yeah, yeah, way back then, let back then. Let's not do it now.
Speaker 1:But in all these years, one of the biggest mistakes and I certainly made it, I've made it a handful of times because I have six books out there so I've tried it and tried it again and realized this doesn't work is sort of trying to game the system.
Speaker 1:Number one game the system which doesn't work. Number two is not paying attention when I load, like not really doing my due diligence to discover or identify what are the and I'm putting the air quotes here, but the best keywords to utilize. And I think, lots of times, especially when indie authors you know, when you're with a traditional publishing house, you're not part of any of this, but when you're an indie author and either you or your hybrid house or self-publishing service, whatever you're using, it's just saying, hey, we'll load you up to Amazon. Something people don't really realize is that a big component of doing that again air quotes successfully is not just grabbing if you've written a book about I don't know personal growth, not just putting self-help as one keyword just putting self-help as one keyword, right or growth or and a lot of people just do it quickly because they don't realize how much of an opportunity they have to put their book in the right.
Speaker 1:It might not be in the right aisle of the metaphorical bookstore, but it's the right section.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you know you get that right aisle and next thing, you know the right people are finding you, and that's that's what's key. Um, what's interesting is and I've had a lot of people tell me this it's like hey, you know you talk about keywords like, so you must be a keyword master. First off, I hate the word or dislike immensely the word master or anything like that. And here's what I tell people too If, if somebody was in, let's say, a steamy romance genre and they're like dave, please help me get keywords like I would be horrible at it, I'd be terrible. And and here's the here's the reason for that I don't understand the genre like and and that's not knocking anybody who likes it. That's not me being the leaders for saying, you know, litter pg is the greatest of all genres. I'm not saying that, okay, um, but here's the thing, though I.
Speaker 2:I understand that genre, I understand science fiction, I understand, um, you know, a whole like a bunch of genres I do understand and I understand enough to uh get this. Can I, can I give a an example of something where, uh, I don't like to be saucy, but this one really illustrates kind of the lack of knowledge.
Speaker 1:If you be, yes, this is the saucy place, yeah okay.
Speaker 2:So my team and I were actually analyzing some of the most popular trendy um keywords that were like selling, okay I can't, I can only imagine well.
Speaker 2:So we kept, and we kept getting this data and I'm like there's something wrong with the data. There's something wrong with the data. There's something wrong with the data. There's no way that this is a book term, apparently toaster romance. I'm like, hold on, we're a book company. Why are toasters showing up in our you know, or toasters, or toaster stories or any of these things? I'm like, yeah, and so before I was like we need to clean that data because that's that's, I don't know what's coming in. You know this was coming in and publish a rocket. Then, all of a sudden, we're like wait a sec, hold on, and we, we actually asked somebody like oh, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:And for those who don't know, it's a thing what toaster and I might get this wrong because I gotta explain it was explained to me is that it's a romance where, uh, a woman is convinced, a lesbian woman is trying to convince another woman to warming her up to that.
Speaker 2:So here's the thing. I never would have understood that. But when I was talking to somebody who was in that genre, that particular person was like oh, no, yeah, no, no, that's a big description. I'm like wait. So if you would, all that to say is, I'm not making brevity or levity, excuse me of the genre, please don't take any of my thing.
Speaker 2:But if say, for example, somebody hired me to do the keywords, I would have skipped that, and apparently that's a wonderful term. If your book has that element in it and you're not using that, you're missing out on a very voracious, hungry market that is buying stuff like crazy. So I tell authors when you're having a service, do this. I'm not a big fan of services because there's no way they would understand these things and what you're going to get is a very efficient way for them to produce some phrases that kind of look okay and move it through, and what that ends up doing is you have a very broad description and the store manager does not understand where to put the book or what to do with the book, and so it gets lost.
Speaker 2:That's why I tell authors really, you know your genre or you know your subject matter. You understand the nuances between terms. You know your genre or you know your subject matter. You understand the nuances between terms. You know for the fantasy writers, you understand the difference between a necromancer and a mage and a magician. Right, we know this inherently.
Speaker 1:What is a mage? Don't tell me, I don't even want to know.
Speaker 2:No, it's, it's, it's a flavor of a wizard a wizard, but it's more in line with a certain type of fantasy, whereas a magician on the earth-.
Speaker 1:When you break out the genres of, whether it's fantasy or romance or romanacy, it's gotten to the point where it's about 70 deep now.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, one of the. By the way, if we're going to talk a little bit, one of my high recommendations for people doing, uh, keywords is every keyword phrase should have some kind of tone of genre, uh, deciphering word in it. What I mean by that is that it is incredibly important for readers of romance that they get their right kind of romance book. So, case in point, you got, way on the left here, wholesome christian romance. On the way on the right, you've got, well, some very exotic, you know. Uh, it's really important to the person who reads wholesome Christian romance to get a wholesome Christian romance book. They're not going to just type in romance, they're not going to just type in something. They want to make sure that they don't get something that is, uh, you know, a little too saucy or the other way around.
Speaker 2:I don't want wholesome, I want something else. They absolutely put that in fiction and again, that's really important to the store because the store manager wants to make sure that they don't put a saucy erotica in a wholesome Christian aisle and they want to sell books, I mean that's the whole thing is you want to sell books, and if you can sell books it means that you're satisfying the customer.
Speaker 1:So maybe in more ways than one if we're talking about romance books. But the thing that's so funny about the romance analogy or story that you gave, the saucy thing I have an author I work with. Her name is Mary Bell, and she's written two novels that are romance and she calls them steamy. But they're not smutty, they're not spicy, okay, because these are all different things. They're steamy and they're set in Italy, and so we've been working to kind of figure this out, because I can't remember and it'll come to me later but she said to me last week what about? And she gave me a term and I'd never heard of it before. And it turns out, like you said, with the toaster it's a thing Like it's a thing that people are searching, and so we made that a keyword and when I was doing I was using. You'll never have to advertise Publisher Rocket when you're, because I will never stop talking about it. One of the most incredible new features of Publisher Rocket is the reverse ASIN feature.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was going to talk about that. So what's beautiful about this feature right, is that using it, I'm discovering words and phrases I never would have thought of. And so, for anyone listening, all you have to do is take the ASIN number, right, or it's equivalent to the ISBN number, but ASIN is Amazon's ISBN. You put that number into Rocket and then Rocket will actually tell you all the keyword phrases that that book has shown up for in Amazon.
Speaker 2:Now, this is more important than, say, getting the seven Kindle keywords the person entered, because remember how I told you in the beginning that when you go to the store manager and you may describe all these things, and if the store manager feels really confident about your book, they might actually know where to put it. It might not be the thing you said, but they know that this is what they mean. Let me put over here. So when Amazon does that, all of a sudden there's all these phrases, and these are phrases they think will work best for the book. And, by the way, those are the phrases that are bringing people to the book. That's making sales. That's that is even more powerful. And what's really cool about this is you can put any book in there and you can see what is helping it to be successful from your put, your competitors put, uh, you know, like books, similar books, et cetera, and all of a sudden and I was going to get to that.
Speaker 2:But if you, you look at what's happening for them, you just start saying to yourself wait, what the heck is that? Hold on, that's interesting. Oh, let me write that down. Like wait, why are these books showing up for Toaster? I don't get it. Well, do a little bit of Google search and you'll figure out the Toaster thing, apparently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, and so the other thing too is what I love is I love to put my own book in there, because you be like a doctor.
Speaker 2:Okay, when you put your book in there, all right, you might say to yourself hold on, why is Amazon putting me for this? I didn't say anything like that, but, like a doctor, you then start looking at the symptoms. You're like oh, my goodness, now I know why Amazon got confused, like when you see the phrases they show your book for and it doesn't look like anything that you think represents your book. It means something inside of your book, your book details, okay, whether it's book description, your keywords, your categories those things could have thrown Amazon off. And that's what that is with that feature. It's literally like walking back into the store finding out where the manager put your book. And now you have the opportunity to come back to the manager and be like hey, manager, hold on, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I forgot to tell you it was a children's book. Let's go ahead and show it to the right kids, you know, or vice versa.
Speaker 2:Hey, you put it in the children's book.
Speaker 1:This is I should have told you it was saucy. Okay, well, right, and so here's a question I have about that, though, because one thing I've noticed in using almost religiously that reverse ASIN feature since it came out, which it's only been out a couple months, right, yeah, I mean time has no meaning to me anymore. So I say a couple months and you might be like, no, it's been out for three years, but when I use it, how long does it take, is it? What I can assess is that a book either has to have been on the market for a long time or be selling really well in order for Rocket to be able to have the keywords show up. So in some cases, you go look at a book and there's only maybe five keywords, and then you can look at some bestsellers and there are 20 pages of keywords.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So is that true what I'm assessing there?
Speaker 2:Generally. So the ways that affect it. All right is that if your book was showing up on the front page of Amazon for a very popular term, then absolutely it's going to pick up on it. Okay, so that's big. The longer it's on there, the more terms Rocket will pick up over time as well, as well as Amazon, for that matter. So those things really affect it. So let's say, for example, you have a book in a super niche. You know, like no joke. There actually is the thing. For what is it? Fry ovens? No, what's that? It's a nonfiction, is what I'm going with.
Speaker 1:I have no idea.
Speaker 2:Air fryers, air fryers on RVs that actually is a thing, by the way, go figure, and there were a couple of books that were written on how to use the air fryer in an rv, um, and at the time of doing the research, like, they sold like a couple of books a month, you know, which is super niche, okay, uh, but there's not a lot of people. I think what it was was. There were not a lot of people searching for that book per se, and it's not exactly a book where it would show up well, in like recipe books or air fryer books as a whole, or air fryer recipe books, or anything like that, because it was super niche. That being said, though, is that those books, because they were on there for a long time, they actually had a lot of keywords, and here's why and again, this goes to illustrate some of our points earlier the person put it up for air fryers for RVs, and at the time, they were the only book, and when they did that, amazon kept seeing that people, like you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 people, like a month, were typing it in, because it was the only book it was selling, so people would purchase it. So then Amazon would be like oh okay, well, let's show up for RV books, you know so, like you know any books on RVs, coffee table RVs or anything like that. So all of a sudden, it started shooting off over there, and that's OK, because that's really what it is is Amazon's experimenting. It probably didn't last long, but maybe it did.
Speaker 2:Maybe people who are looking for RV books were like oh my god, the fryers. I never thought about that. Oh my goodness, there's a book on how to cook using air fryer and RV, and then it might have made some sales. They have. There's other things that they use inside of the data, like maybe you were talking about you know electrical, like you know, like how do you uh the battery systems and making sure that the air fryer works. So you had some power converters, blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden, it starts showing up in electrical books, you know, and electricity and yada, yadas, you know.
Speaker 2:My point, though, is is that it can grow because, over time, it was a very successful super niche thing that Amazon explored on and tested, and it was like ah no, that's not working.
Speaker 2:So you might run into that scenario where somebody who is super niche actually shows a lot of really crazy terms, but that would also come over time. Then there's times where you put it in it where nobody's actually searching for it Okay yeah, and quite frankly, the book really might only show up for a couple of phrases for a couple of weeks, and then after that the only way you'll find it is typing in the title and the author name or something like that, and that's it. So there's a lot of variables that can run into it. But generally speaking, is that if you have done a good job in selecting your keywords and that there really are people searching for it, the store feels comfortable or with their understanding of your book, you're going to show up a lot faster and a lot more in good placements, and then you're going to see this kind of smorgasbord. Or maybe you didn't do as great of a job, but it's been a long time and so there's been more data collected. I think that's a really good way to look at it.
Speaker 1:So is there something to be said for when you look at your one of the things and this is sort of switching into ads, if that's okay, because that's one of the other areas where I found Publisher Rocket specifically to be so helpful, because back many years ago the recommendation was look, you need to have like 300 keywords that you're running ads against.
Speaker 1:At least back then, at least Back then, right, it was like that was the minimum, dave, I thought I was going to lose my mind because there was no way that I could identify to track that data. So no one was happier on the planet than I was when the recommendation changed for those numbers to shorten. That being said, what I'm finding is that there's no doubt that running ads on Amazon is putting my book in front. It's selling more books period. Amazon ads dashboard is not consistent in sales numbers with what's actually selling, so it's very challenging in my experience to identify well which keywords are actually working, because you can see what's getting a click, so we can narrow the playing field to the keywords that are getting a click. But it might say that it's getting eight. I'm making this up eight clicks but no purchases. But I've got 37 purchases. So is that just kind of a glitch still in the system?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a way to look at that. So I always tell people when I get that kind of question, I always answer it's like, honestly, you know, if Amazon hired me as a consultant, I would make them tens of millions of dollars by fixing stuff like that. I do not like their system, um like everybody's like.
Speaker 1:These aren't working.
Speaker 2:And yet and I, every time somebody says they're not working, the first thing I'll say is can you tell me that your work, you know your revenue, hasn't gone up? Okay, um, because.
Speaker 2:And then people were like well yeah, but I did this like you know, promotional blast, and I'm like, okay, and then they stopped the Amazon ads and you know, but they say a lot of times, so there's a couple of things that play into it. I wrote this article about Amazon popularity. I think it's a really good one, that kind of. So anybody wants a little bit more background context, check that out. But here's what happens. Like I said, right, the store owner is looking for popularity. Okay, they're looking for popularity. They're looking for the fact that this book that was about orphan cat mystery murderers and they're seeing that, hey, wow, the sales have really gone up on this. It seems to be doing good.
Speaker 2:Now, what's funny about the Amazon store man just to keep Amazon and the store person is that the store person doesn't even know how the sales happen, even though it turns out that they had one of their store clerks holding the book, you know, and they forget that. It's like, oh wait, we had a store clerk that was pushing this. Now, their memory is not there. What they see is your Amazon ads are making sales. That, you, they see that, but they forget it's Amazon ads. They see your book making sales. They see that book's popularity has gone up, and then they make that decision.
Speaker 2:Like I said with a store manager, I've seen huh, this book's doing kind of well, let's go ahead and show up more, let's put in more keywords, like for free not even the paid ones and so there's a lot of tertiary sales that happen because your book was doing well. So, honestly, what they're reporting okay is they're saying that, okay, there might've been eight clicks but nobody bought, but the eight clicks are registered in the system and, seeing that people have engaged with your book more so than before, and so maybe they put you in new keywords free keywords, by the way and people bought it. Uh, that popularity affects it. The other thing, too, is is that, um, I don't think that the reporting system has as good as it should too? Is that I don't think that the reporting system is as good as it should? I don't think that they're trying to hose us out of money. I think that they have issues per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know why they would try to. If we sell books, they make money and, granted, it's a loss leader for them, but nevertheless, how many people go into Amazon to buy a book and then end up buying a toaster, an actual toaster?
Speaker 2:An actual toaster.
Speaker 1:Well, they went there for the romance book and they left with an actual toaster Might as well get this and let's buy an RV while we're at it, right, but I mean, that is reportedly allegedly anecdotally what happens, and so I know for me. I've been running ads on and off, but mostly on Amazon, since 2018. And every time I turn the ads off, the sales dip.
Speaker 2:Sales drop Exactly.
Speaker 1:So, whether or not I'm talking about it on other platforms, you know, my latest book I rarely talk about in the last, I'd say, six months. I've rarely talked about it on the socials, I've rarely talked about it via email. The only difference is I started running the ads again and I went from zero sales in one month to 84. I don't know how anyone could convince me that it's anything other than some right, but what happens and what I see all the time is people are like well, they're not working, because I'm looking at the reporting and it's not working. And so I think Amazon, without realizing it, or maybe they're. I don't know if they realize it or not, but they're doing themselves a disservice because so many authors just quit.
Speaker 2:So what? What I would do is if I was consultant and again, this is everybody listening to this has to understand that when I say a paid consultant to Amazon, that I'm trying to do the best for Amazon. So this answer at least sheds light on how they could fix it, but it doesn't mean it's altruistic. What I would do is I would tell Amazon first off, we need to get the programming team to make it as crystal clear as possible. Everything is accounted for. We should absolutely make sure that those clear as possible.
Speaker 2:Okay, Uh, everything is accounted for. Uh, we would. We should absolutely make sure that those sales are shown. Okay, and, by the way, a couple of things I'd fix. Number one is that I would make sure that any KU payout is associated with the earnings from the, from the ad, because what people don't know is that Amazon, Amazon ads does not account for any of your KU pages. Read so you did an advertisement and somebody selected your KU book. They will not mark that as an oh yeah, no, all that money was from, you know, from this app.
Speaker 1:I just heard that the other day. But then, dave, this begs the question. I know I know I can think of three people right now who are going to ask this question, so I'm going to do it for them. Why is it even in the reporting structure, then?
Speaker 1:That's I don't know, Because you look at it and you just see a straight line across and you say, well, no one's read any pages from my ad and I'm like they have to like. One of my authors has gone from 3,000 pages to 27,000 pages read in one month.
Speaker 2:Like I said, pay the consultant.
Speaker 1:I would say fix that Right right, okay, so we'll start a campaign for that.
Speaker 2:And if for some reason okay, some reason our system cannot figure that out, I would then re, I would change the column there to say estimated KU increase and I would look at the difference on your KU from when you started the ad to not and I would start to kind of at least show that. So that's one thing. The second thing, too, is is that they do a poor job on reporting any other tertiary sales. So let's say, somebody came to your one book and they're like oh, wow, okay, but then they saw another book of yours. They didn't choose the book, but they bought another book. I'd be reporting that. Okay, I'd have that in there that says other sales that came from your ads. Another thing, too, is your audible books. Again, there's all these things they fail to report. There's a lot of sales that are happening that they just don't report. So I'd fix that.
Speaker 2:But here's where the unaltruistic thing would come into play. I believe that Amazon should then really say, okay, well, if you spend $1,000 a month with us on ads, we'll start to opening up the reporting and actually showing you the keyword phrases that you're doing well in that you didn't even pay for. I would start to tell people. Okay, hey, this phrase made this much money. This phrase made that much money. Hey, do you want to protect that? Go ahead and bid on those. Oh, but you know, again that feature opens up if you're spending like a thousand dollars a month and ask right, sorry, that's the unaltruistic, but that would be the thing where I feel like the gamification for the people to see that, okay, if I really dig into it, I can finally get the data I need.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I just had to put that on. Listen, you're, you're spot on, because the gamification in any industry, I mean it's what keeps us going Like it's just I don't know. Understand this, like I'm not a scientist, as I've said many, many times, but there's no denying that that's, and I see it with my authors. But, like you know, my friend, my, the authors I work with, I see it with their books. They start out, especially when they have a series or when they are a genre, like a romance or a thriller, and they have other. They have a backlist when they run an ad just to one book. All that, everything follows. It's undeniable in my experience, and I I'm not saying I have the biggest data set to you know, to call upon, but it's, it's undeniable. Now, do you, in your experience, how do you guide people when it comes to running Amazon ads and meta ads simultaneously and trying to decide, okay, which one of those is?
Speaker 2:I'm not going to lie, I'm terrible at meta ads and I'll be the first person to tell you. I mean, you know, having run Kindlepreneur for years, so I'm really a bad social media person and, by the way, let people either hear that as kind of like well, I you know. Okay, I guess I shouldn't take advice from the guy. No, I'll be the first to admit when I'm not good at something and I don't really like social media. I never have.
Speaker 2:I have a Facebook page personally and the only reason why there's even things there is because when I was in the military, I could at least just post what me and the family were doing around the world, and then I didn't have to call my muzzy or my aunt, you know, to let them know hey, this is what. They just go to my Facebook page, that's it. Um, you know, I don't do, I don't, I don't think I've ever seen TikTok.
Speaker 1:to tell the truth, so not to be like a, um, I love that. I love that so much Cause I think more I'm like this. I mean, yeah, there are, you know.
Speaker 2:And and so that's, that's one thing. One one thing I'll say to the listeners here is uh, what I recommend to people and my number one recommendation to authors, okay, is that there's a million different ways you can market a book. Don't feel like you have to do everything that everybody else is doing, okay, uh, matter of fact, I highly recommend you don't try to dabble. When authors get into this mindset of like, okay, there's TikTok, there's X, there's this, there's that, there's this, there's this, there's this, and then they try to do all of it, what they do is they end up spinning their wheels and they get no traction and they get burnout. Because I did all these things and nothing worked. I tell people hey, especially if you're new, pick one, maybe two per book, launch. Okay, really, dig in, master that thing, you will get so much more out of it. And here's the other thing too when you go to launch book two, you do those one or two things and then you learn a third one and all of a sudden you're actually growing skill and you're you're being intentional with your time Right, and when you're intentional with your time, you have a much better ROI.
Speaker 2:One of the best things that I was reading this book about like fatherhood, and they said that there were so many times that a father can be in the room with his kids for hours and it mean nothing, but just five minutes of intentional time can be worth. Three hours is just sitting there, and so you know. It was really about intentionality, and I would say that's the same thing about marketing, like, if you're just trying to throw some things up on on TikTok because you heard about it, that's not being intentional. Okay, if you're trying to do Amazon ads, cause you selected a couple and you threw it up there and it didn't work, that's not being intentional. Um, so just kind of jumping back on that one.
Speaker 2:So, about Meta, I can't answer the question because I've never been intentional with it and I've never been good at it, to tell you the truth, when I've tried. That being said, though, is with Amazon ads, one of the things that I do like about Amazon ads better than Facebook, and maybe it's just one of the more natural things for me is, with Facebook ads or Meta, you have to do a really good job of taking somebody from a platform they're currently on that they're like. You know, I didn't. People don't go to Facebook or Instagram to go find a book. They went there to go see cat pictures.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get them off of that platform. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:I'm there for ice hockey video clips. Okay, that's my favorite. Okay, clearly, they got me down. I'm flipping through the goal. I'm a. I'm a goalie in ice hockey. I'm flipping through the goal. I'm a.
Speaker 1:I'm a goalie in ice hockey. I'm there for the miniature, the baby. Highland house cows, just in case anyone was wondering.
Speaker 2:See, there you go.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:And also I love, I love the Facebook short stories on on. You know like what it's like to be a husband you know, that now I'm constantly sending to my wife. But that being said, though, is that you've got to convince me that. Oh wait, dave, you came here for ice hockey. Goalie clips. You got to leave and go buy a book that I've always struggled with.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of you're paying for impressions, whereas one of the things I've always loved about the KDP ads is you don't pay unless they click. It's hard for me to get Katie. It's hard for me to spend money there. Like I usually start go ahead.
Speaker 2:Well, and here's the thing about it is, if you're really looking at I'm just going to call it Facebook now and Amazon, facebook is insanely good at pumping up the numbers to make you feel like they're doing a lot of work, okay, like they're really good at getting paid, okay, I have found, like, when I've done Facebook ads for some of the things, I have found that what they reported as in being a part of sales and what they actually really were doing were not exact, but they were getting paid. Amazon's, like they're not even reporting that they made a sale, even though they did. They're not even reporting stuff like you know. And so, anyway, my point is is that I stuff, like you know, and so, anyway, my point is is that I I'm kind of an Amazon ads um junkie, uh, maybe to put so I can't really answer the juxtaposition between the two.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm just. You know, I know of people who are running to at the same time, and so therefore, when they, when their ads, or when they're especially their pages red, start to increase, they're like well, is that from these ads? Because they're seeing clicks on meta and they're not. And my suggestion to them is always just don't do them both at the same time. If you really want to have a clean data set. Don't compare apples and oranges.
Speaker 2:And I would say that, if you're doing both understand, the numbers on Facebook are much more pumped up than reality and the numbers on Amazon are more suppressed than reality. Just out of legitimate experience and analysis, it's better to believe that the Facebook numbers are higher than they really are and the Amazons are lower than it really should.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if we could give people a kind of a what to do first, do you feel that, if we're taking the following tasks, getting your seven keywords first of all, let me ask you something Do people do this was a question I had that I was like I got to ask Dave this Do people do different keywords for their paperback and their ebook, and does that? Does Amazon frown upon that? Do they want them to be the same if it's the same book?
Speaker 2:So I wish I actually had a good answer for that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm kind of glad you don't.
Speaker 2:No. So we did an experiment a long time ago where people actually sent us the keyword phrases they had and we had a crawler go through and crawl everywhere that books were on Amazon to see how they were effective or not effective and that sort of thing. When we did the experiment I did not at the time actually there really wasn't a differentiation between the two. Now I think there is a little bit of a differentiation, but I don't have proof on that. Numbers Me personally, and this is just what I've decided to do as an author is I don't make them different. And I don't make them different because I don't think and this is again I'm going to say when I don't know, but I think, I'm going to stress the word think I don't think that Amazon believes there's a necessity for differentiation between the paperback and the ebook.
Speaker 1:There's the same book. Different stores, but same book.
Speaker 2:Different. Well, you know different format, correct.
Speaker 1:Like different yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, and so me changing up the description of a book just because it's, you know, an ebook as compared to a print book. I don't. I just don't know how Amazon handles that. I don't think that they add the information because I've seen nothing that would make me feel like that's beneficial. I only worry that some of the keywords in one might not be. They might be reduced in their potency because I've muddied the water with something. What I do is I do my research. Let's put it this way when I've done my research for keywords, I've never found it to the point where I'm like oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:There's a million amazing things and I can't like, like. No, I'm usually pretty particular about what goes in there. I just keep it the same.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I've always done as well. But I've I've had people say, you know, and it sounded somewhat reasonable, like hey, could I actually get 14 instead of seven, because I use seven on the? And I've kind of thought, well, you could, but to your point, I've never found 14 myself. That all felt super relevant. And, of course, in your keywords course, which I'll have a link to below, you talk about long tail keywords and kind of using up the character count as much as you can to get some different things in there and the recommendation how long does it take? So, all right, let me go back to the original question. So the first thing that I would suggest but I want you to validate this is get your keywords. Do a good job researching your keywords for your listing your seven keywords, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same thing Like if you go into the store and you get to talk to the manager. Make sure you understand how you describe your book and do a good job, because that's your first impression with the manager and that is really key information for where the manager puts the book. If you don't get that right, you could be standing in front of the store with a billboard saying check out my book and people won't know where to find it. Correct. You could be telling your friends to go into the bookstore and go get it and they keep thinking you know it's in the mystery thriller. Nobody finds it because it's in the children's book.
Speaker 1:So they buy something else.
Speaker 2:So they buy something else. Yeah, so I really think that if you don't get that part right, a, not only will it really hurt your marketing efforts in the future, like the other marketing efforts, it also makes it where you have no discoverability. The new people that really like your kind of book, can't find it and discover it.
Speaker 1:And I think how long does it take then? What is your recommendation for a good timeline to start running ads? Do people need to give their book a minute to? I know I? I'm often telling people and I'm curious about your thoughts on this wait till you have about 20 reviews before you start running ads. I I tend to feel like that's a good threshold to you know, but beyond that, does it? Is it worth their while to wait a second until the system kind of gets a feel for where the book should be and the also bots and all that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:When it comes to book marketing. Uh, we did an experiment and, uh, I don't remember the name of the article I wish I did. Um, but what we did was I wanted to know whether or not, let's say, let's say you had a magical wand, okay, and you could wave the wand and a thousand book sales would happen. Would it be better if a thousand book sales happen on one day or would it be better if that thousand happened over 30 days? Okay, consistently. And so we did this experiment. We found out consistency was way better, and the reason for that, like I mean, heck, I would even say 500 consistently is way better than 1,000 on one day, because what would happen is that Amazon again, let's imagine it was the store person, okay, back to the store person Well, one day, 1,000 books sold and then nothing after that. The book person might have like come back later and been like whoa, wait a second, there was a sales spike, wait, but there's no sales anymore. Eh, okay, don't worry about it. And you know what? They won't move it. But if, consistently, there are people coming in every day, hey, I'm needing my next. You know a orphan cat mystery? Okay, you got an orphan cat mystery. Hey, do you have so-and-so's book? Hey, can I get this? And constantly and they see it at the register, they're going to notice. And constantly and they see it at the register, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching, they're going to notice.
Speaker 2:And what we found was that's exactly what happens on Amazon is that the number of keywords that you rank for, if you have a sales spike of a thousand on one day, it's like minimal, you don't really show up for much. But when you show consistency, the number of keywords that you actually show up starts growing and you show up for way more than than if not. And so we found that. So when I said that whole, I would rather sell 500 books consistently in one month than a thousand on one day.
Speaker 2:Well, because in the second month I'm still making a lot more and it might be growing. And then the third month, and what happens is I start to really gain more momentum and so that Amazon popularity is seen through consistency and not in spike. So when I do my book marketing plans, I really try to kind of look at all of my tools in my arsenal. Okay, so you know, on marketing, two marketing, three marketing, whatever things I can do. Uh, if I have an email list. I have friends if I have this, and I try to plan them out so that I am continuously sending traffic to my book. Now I don't want to shoot all of my uh marketing strategies in one thing.
Speaker 2:I want to okay, if, if, if I've got an email list, I'll actually like, if it's a big email list, I'll actually like, if it's a big email list, I'll actually break it up into cohorts and I'll send you know emails on different days, like so let's say, there's a thousand people and there's 250 people on this day, two days later, 250 on that. You know that sort of thing and I think that really drives like. That drives consistency. Now, the moment that I'm starting to get close to running out of my marketing tools, that's actually when I'll do my Amazon ads, because now I'll pop it right in and that kind of helps.
Speaker 1:I've done all my marketing push. I've shot my shot. If you will, it's like the next layer of the bubble.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so it keeps the consistency. The other thing, too, is that during that time period I can put my book into a publisher rocket and the Amazon ads feature and I can see all the things that have been working, all the things that have been showing up, and now I can create ads. That kind of keep that momentum going so I don't have that drop off in sales. That's a really excellent part of it. And then you said the 20 reviews. I love that.
Speaker 2:I think that it should be a part of the marketing plan that you're, you know, talking to the people you sent, getting them to leave reviews. And, yeah, honestly, it almost times out that I'm around 20 to 25 reviews by the time I'm starting to run into my ads part. And the reason why I love the review aspect of it too is that you know when you're doing ads, you're just more effective when you have reviews. That there's what we call um, you know, social proof, as in when I come to your book, cause I saw an ad and I clicked on it, I feel more comfortable buying it because other people have bought it and they've told me it's good because they gave it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I even you know. I love what you said about kind of trickling things out, because when people have a launch team that they're working with, whether there are five people or 500 people on that launch team, I encourage people to encourage members of that launch team in phases to go leave reviews. You don't want everyone to go leave a review on one day because in my experience the Amazon system tends to kick more of those back. It feels like the system is kind of being gamed in some way. So I'll say, look, pick five people and ask them to review in week one. Pick another five. Like this is a marathon. It is just an ongoing thing and you kind of?
Speaker 1:right, you just got to keep feeding the beast, so to speak. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, it's, it is a marathon. I think that's a really important thing for an author to understand. Nothing more disheartening than thinking that it's it is a marathon. I think that's a really important thing for an author to understand. Nothing more disheartening than thinking that you know that nobody else has to do that. I think it's really important for us authors to understand that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're in the trenches with you. We know exactly how that feels. You know, like, like, keep going, you know. So that's one thing that's really important. And but, like I said, that's why when I go to do my book launch, like every day is almost orchestrated, like I literally have this plan where on day one I do, actually it's almost like negative T minus five, t minus three, t minus one game time one, three, two, seven. You know all the way up.
Speaker 2:Like everything, I wake up I told you before.
Speaker 1:I emailed you this morning and I said, okay, if the coffee doesn't, there are two things that'll get me bouncing in my chair. One is coffee and the other is just you're saying something that I'm like so excited and people could see I'm just almost literally bouncing in my and I don't know if it's from the coffee or the excitement, because you are speaking my language. Like I have a 12-day launch plan. It's T-minus-5, t-3. It goes all the way to 10 days out, but then we're not. It's not like you never talk about it again. That's just the beginning, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:In closing, because I could talk to you about. We could go down a million different lanes with this. Are there any other? First of all, is there anything that I haven't asked about or talked about that you think would be valuable? And secondarily, are there any other best practices that are kind of new or a lot of people don't seemingly know about that surprise you. That would be helpful for people, either just with their keywords and or running ads, either way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, one thing I will say is that years ago I didn't think that the book description was as important as it is. Like I used to kind of overestimate it, or you know, hey, if it sounds good, it's good. When ads came out for the first time, I got to see, like the number. Finally we got to see some kind of numbers about what happens, you know, with the ads you can get people like, like you have high impressions but low clicks or no clicks. Either A your ads are targeting to the wrong spot or B, it might honestly be an indication that your book cover has problems. It's kind of shocking how many problems exist on the book cover.
Speaker 1:Can I interrupt you and ask a question about that that I didn't remember that I had? When you have really high impressions but low clicks, can it also indicate that your impression is on page 20?
Speaker 2:of the results. So it can but what we found-.
Speaker 1:In other words, you're not getting top of search stuff.
Speaker 2:What I found in book searches on Amazon is nine times out of 10, people don't make it to the second page.
Speaker 2:Matter of fact, it's probably like it's 96% Don't even go to the second page. What they do is they redo their search criteria, okay. So like if I typed in romance book and then I looked and I saw ain't no romance book that I'm looking for. I want, you know, hot and steamy. So then they add, most of the time, by the way, well, yeah, toaster or whatever. They add toaster, then they're like oh, no, wait, hold on. You know, like I, I want redhead, whatever, and they just keep adding descriptions. Okay.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:They don't go to the second page, they don't go to the third. So I'm not as inclined to say that, because you know cause. If you've got an impression on page 20, my goodness, that would be insane. Uh, page two doesn't get many impressions. Page three, probably never nobody ever goes to that point In Amazon. We just redo our phrase.
Speaker 1:So an impression means that someone actually saw the ad.
Speaker 2:According to Amazon somebody somehow saw it at some point Now.
Speaker 2:So my thing is is that we found like I have found that a lot of times authors don't realize that their cover is the wrong genre, the feel Like, and so one of the tasks that I love, or tests that I love to tell people is hey, here's what you do. Take the title off, take your name off and go to somebody who doesn't know that you write or what you write, show them the cover and ask them what they think it is. Honestly, if authors really did that, 50% of the book cover problems would be solved before you can launch it. Um, I once had this cover where it showed the silhouette of a lady who had a gun, you know, and, and there was a hat or something and the city was in the background. And then there was this, like fuchsia, you know, hot pink, like skylight, and I was like, okay, so we're analyzing. And I start reading the book description. I'm like, wait a second, this hold on. So this isn't like a buddy cop, you know, or this isn't.
Speaker 1:I was thinking like detective or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like a detective, maybe you know something like a cool mystery. No, it was apparently a horror book. Like it was a horror book, yeah, like, as in like you lost me at the pink.
Speaker 1:I mean, at least if you had like some blood dripping or something.
Speaker 2:So that's the thing, there was no elements that said it was horror, like what this was. It was supposed to be like set, you know the movie Seven, like horrible mystery kind of thing, right, okay, what it was was it was about this ex-cop who was a woman, she was an ex-cop, she's an investigator and she was tracking down this insane mass murderer that was doing heinous murders. Not fun mystery thing. And I'm like, okay, we identified the problem here.
Speaker 1:That book cover does not fit your genre and I'm pretty sure that if you'd gone to anybody and asked, nobody would have about um, uh, mark Manson like uh is it, who had um subtle art of not giving a fuck Right and it's just text. I mean, there are so many books that are just text. Do you think those are just sort of outliers, because they get so much promo push on the side that it doesn't really matter, or no, well, because the title is so uh, it's so in your face and at the same time, the title is the cell, so the book cover is just the title.
Speaker 2:So it's a great thing, because, also, to also having a book cover that doesn't have any design to it is truly a subtle art of not giving a F, right, I mean seriously. So that's a great cover. They nailed that one, um. But you know, sometimes what you'll find, though, is is that, uh, you get like a famous book, okay, and it it might change the way covers are looked at, all right in that genre. But guess what? We now have an understanding that, oh, okay, you know that a simple logo or a simple like symbol in the bit, you know, is already bringing up ideas of romantasy, or you know, uh, dragon fantasy or anything like that, because a lot of famous books have done that. You're not copying them, but what you're doing is is that, hey, if somebody is really into like, say, fourth wing, and you write a book like that and your cover kind of looks like it, they're going to think, oh, this must be like fourth wing, and so you're going to connect. So my point is is that the cover is a lot is very important, but what I wanted to get to is the most most important part is all right, let's say you've got that. Let's say your cover, your keywords are good to go. You can now see that people are clicking but nobody's buying. That's because they're reading your book description and it's not engaging them.
Speaker 2:All right, and what I find out is that if anybody's like, hey Dave, help me out with my book, first thing I'll do is I'll do that test with their cover. Show me your cover, Don't tell me. Don't tell me anything about your book. Okay, show me your cover and I look at it. I generate my own ideas on what this book might be about. And then I go and I read the book description nine times out of the 10,. The two are not the same. They do not coincide. It does not fit. Okay, and then even more so is it's boring. The book description is an absolute bore.
Speaker 2:Or the person wrote a book report, not a book description. You know it is. You are giving me like seven different character names. You know the world name this and that you have to explain these things. Or you told me the story. Why would I buy it? My point is is that you could do all your advertising right, you can get these keywords, but you are losing people because you're not engaging. One last thing that I'll give, because I know we're hitting on our time when it comes to the book description. I tell this to everyone I spend 80% of my total time on the book description, just working on the first sentence or two.
Speaker 1:Oh, dang it. For me it's the first sentence and the last sentence yes.
Speaker 2:That is so that mic drop moment, because, remember, the book description is hidden. You have to click to see more. Well, make that the catchiest, best phrase ever. It's just like if you're designing a website, the top words on the website are the most powerful, right? You want to drive me to be like whoa? Hold on, let me click that. Okay, mic drop moment. Yes, also, too. I also found out that if you write something, my favorite little tip on it too is and, by the way, this skirts an Amazon rule perfectly Okay, amazon says that you can't say in your book description that you have a discount or that you can't say a price. So what I do is I say, hey, get it now, before the price changes. And the reason why is that gets a little call to action, it gets a little bit of urgency, and nothing I said violates Amazon.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Cause I didn't give a price.
Speaker 2:I didn't give it, I didn't say there's a sale, I didn't say anything. I just said, before the price changes, the price could go up, price could go down. I don't know, but get it before the price changes. Price could go up, price could go down. I don't know, but get it before the price changes. And that is, you can totally, you know, uh, genre-fy it, you know, like, make it really cool or sent but that structure right there, get it before the price changes. Uh, I've seen an increase in conversion rates just because people are like, well, they were thinking about it, now Might as well just buy it.
Speaker 1:Might as well, just get it now. Might as well, just get it now.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's my little favorite hack at the end.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that Well, and I send people to your book description generator all the time because it makes it so, you know, doesn't write it for them. I mean, you've got the AI component but still it doesn't write it for them. But the formatting of it. There's nothing that drives me crazier than going and seeing a book and the description on. Amazon is all, just one. It's one run on sentence right.
Speaker 2:Because I can't get through it and for people who don't know, understand that. So Amazon allows you to like. When you go to put your book description in there, you either need to code HTML to make things look right, to have you know paragraphs and have you know, have bullet points, or bolding, or any of that. So, yeah, the book description generator is what is called a WYSIWYG, which is what you see is what you get. You put it into it, you can highlight, you can make it bold by clicking a button, make it, et cetera. What you see right there in the book description generator of ours is exactly how we'll look on Amazon. We have the exact same font, all of that. It will look exactly that way. So now you know what you get. But what I love about the AI thing, by the way.
Speaker 2:So one thing that we added and it's free, you don't need an email address or anything like that. Let's say you wrote your book description and you're like okay, dave, I want to see if I can approve it. You can click the free AI button. Now the AI button is not just using chat GBT or anything like that Say hey, you know chat GBT, make this better. No, I've pre-coded a system inside of chat GBT because we plug into that that says follow this format.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that format is like so if you wrote just a book description, I would highly put it into our book description generator. Hit the AI button and then it will turn it into a great Amazon structured book description. Okay, it has. It will try to come up with a mic drop at the top. It you know. And again, you have to select if you're nonfiction or fiction, cause that's very different, but then it will start to form all the information that you put in into something that reads like what we've found at Kindlepreneur is a much more successful book description. So if you don't know where to start, just write your book report, put it into that.
Speaker 1:Right, just start there Absolutely. I mean, sometimes that's nine-tenths of the battle is just give me a place to start and then you can finagle it from there. But just give me some ideas, and it's so helpful because you don't have to be tech savvy. Now to be. I mean, I can code in HTML, but not not there. I have a limit. I can do it, but even I've tried to code in HTML in Amazon and it doesn't come out looking quite right, so Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it will literally crump it up into, like the right structure, the right sentence, the right and, and, and it does. It's your words are there and it will also hide in it too. It's really neat. It's makes it more powerful of a story than you know. Well, the princess went over here. No, you know, the kingdom, you know, depending on the princess's hand, sat in silence, as you know, such as like it will try to really make it more compelling. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Well, I can't thank you enough. I, like I said, I have been following all this stuff for so long and I just I'm super grateful to you and your whole team for just continuing to make stuff better and so much of your stuff is free and it's so easily accessible and it's. I mean, it shouldn't be like, speaking to you as a business person, I'm like this shouldn't all be free, but as a consumer, I'm like thank you, this is great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I appreciate that. That really means a lot to me.
Speaker 1:I already talked about it in the beginning, but there's a special offer on Publisher Rocket that's down in the show notes for just a few days and I thank you so much. I hope we'll get to talk again.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Let me know.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, this is your friendly reminder to follow or subscribe, leave a quick review and share it with someone you know has a great story or message but isn't sure what to do next. Also, remember to check out publishaprofitablebookcom for book writing resources and tips and to see all the ways we can work together to get your book out into the world. Again, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk with you again soon.
