**This post originally appeared on dvmulligan.com on 7/10/15**
In this post, news about 2 tools I've just learned about to help you maximize discoverability of your book within the Amazon ecosystem.
If you've read The Sane Person's Guide to Self-Publishing, you know that my advice to sell more books is to maximize discoverability of your book work in the Kindle store, a task that sounds specific until you try to do it.
In trying to learn how to boost my book's visibility, I have read a lot of advice about researching book categories and keywords, using Google Adwords, and search engine optimization (SEO), and I have honestly not found any of that research useful. I consider myself pretty smart, but trying to figure out the exact categories and keywords for my books made me feel like I was back in calculus all over again, and let's just say calculus wasn't my best subject.
Enter two interesting and helpful tools:
1. Kindle Samuri
2. Kindle Spy
Both of these tools are designed to cull data about bestselling books and provide you with all sorts of data you can use to improve your own book category, keywords, and visibility. Not only does each give you lists of categories and keywords, but they use handy, color-coded systems to show you what topics and keywords can most benefit you. They consider the popularity, potential, and competition in categories, all of which is fascinating and useful.
The downsides: These are not free products. They cost $27 and $47, respectively. Also, Kindle Spy seems to me to be more helpful for those in the book planning phase than for those who already have books available for sale.
The upsides: Way cheaper than paying an SEO expert. Once you buy the tools you can use them over and over. You'll get all kinds of hard data to be better informed about the book selling marketplace.
When I used Kindle Spy to look into my competition for The Latecomers Fan Club, what I learned is that to be a bestseller in women's fiction, you need to compete with 50 Shades of Grey, and the books doing so with the most success have the following words either in their titles or keywords:
- Romance
- Billionaire
- Stepbrother
- Secrets
- Series
Yes, this is totally depressing, but it is also educational. Right now, the books experiencing big commercial success in the women's fiction market are pushing modern fairy-tales (with a healthy dose of sex) in which extremely rich men fall in love with ordinary women and everyone is hiding a dark secret. And sometimes that secret is that we fall in love with the wrong person, such as our stepbrother. And if a writer hits on a successful formula, she keeps it going with a series of books to capitalize on that success.
Personally, I despise those types of stories. I write realistic fiction, and I almost never read series, and I have no interest in writing them. And as long as I'm okay with the fact that my books aren't likely to be break-out bestsellers, that's not a problem.
But here's the thing: I've come to believe that authors should consider what people want to read. I'm not saying we should all sell out. I'm saying that it could benefit our careers to see if we can find an intersection of our personal interests and what is commercially viable.
For instance, I like reading books that revolve around secrets. I'm a huge fan of Liane Moriarty, and each of her books slowly pulls away the layers around surprising secrets. Same with Kate Morton. Same with Jojo Moyes. And like everyone else, I enjoy a good love story, which is actually all the category "Romance" requires (50 Shades-style sex is really erotica, and not all romance contains it). So maybe for my next book I think about ways to make a romance and juicy secrets integral to the plot.
Then again, I thought I did that in The Latecomers Fan Club, and it's not exactly flying off the shelves, but if at first you don't succeed... And I can see that my characters' secrets did not have the kind of shock value that big best sellers have. My devotion to realism kept the drama level of my story at a simmer, and I really need to bring it up to a boil to compete. I can do that. I think.
So, if you are looking for tools to help you maximize your book's category and keywords, you might want to give these tools a try. And if you do try them, let me know what you think. Let's trade notes!
________
Post Comment
Post a Comment