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Showing posts with label Kindle Direct Publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle Direct Publishing. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

How to Use the Best Search Keywords With Kindle Books to Increase Visibility With Buyers




by Lorilyn Roberts


How do you determine what are the Best Search Keywords to use when you upload your Kindle book to Kindle Direct Publishing? If you are like me, you will think about what your book is about and start with that mindset. I chose “redemption” as one of my Search Keywords for my book The Donkey and the King. While it’s true my book is about redemption, is a mother really going to enter that Search Keyword to look for a book for her four-year-old son? As an author, I was describing what my book was about, Christian redemption, but a parent or prospective buyer will be thinking in terms of his son or daughter – entertainment, bedtime story, Bible story, or something along those lines.

Another Search Keyword I had entered was “fantasy.” While The Donkey and the King is a fantasy book, there are also 50,396 other fantasy books on Kindle. Before I changed my Search Keywords, my children’s picture book for four to eight-year-olds had about as much chance of appearing on the first page of a fantasy search as I have of being the next President of the United States.  Besides, is a father going to enter the word “fantasy” on Amazon to search for a good Christian book for his five-year-old daughter?

As you can see, I wasn’t thinking like a buyer. I was thinking like an author. When you choose which Search Keywords, think as if you are a buyer –who is your audience? What do they read?

I eventually entered these Search Keywords for The Donkey and the King: Christian picture books, books for children, children's fantasy books, children's story books, children's Bible stories, children's classics, favorite children's books.

Note that it doesn’t have to be just one word. You can enter several words as a phrase which counts as a single Search Keyword.

A couple of days later, I did a search with these words to see if my book came up in searches. In “favorite children’s books,” The Donkey and the King came up as number 25 of 151 books – on the second page, which is not bad. Still, I have a bit of work to do. You along with thousands of other authors are vying for the top spots, and there can only be fifteen on the first page. This is just one peg in the broader scheme of Amazon marketing, but it’s important to give detail to every step in the process. Focusing on the nuances can make a difference when it comes to the bigger picture.

Where does one go on Amazon to enter these magical Search Keywords when publishing with Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP Select? As of January 2013, to publish your ebook on Kindle, the first thing you must do is upload your manuscript to the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform at https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/dashboard. If you haven’t set up an account yet, you will need to do that first. Amazon will prompt you.

Assuming you have set up your account, you will be taken to the Dashboard page. At the top of the page, you will see Bookshelf, Reports, Community, and KDP Select. Below that you will see two options: Actions and Add New Title.  Let’s assume for this discussion, you have already added your book and you want to check and see how you entered your seven Search Keywords.

Select the desired book, choose Actions at the top, and click on the down arrow beside it. Then click on Edit Book Details. Scroll down to number three. You will see Options, Add Categories, and underneath that Search Keywords. Here is where you insert your seven Search Keywords for your book. Remember, Search Keywords can also be a phrase—not just one word.

Amazon will use these Search Keywords to help people find your book when a potential buyer enters a Search Keyword from the Amazon Home Page. I know this sounds rather elementary, but I was surprised when I snooped around Amazon looking at search phrases and then compared them with what Search Keywords I had used with my books. The disparity between what I thought were good Search Keywords and how Amazon used them was rather embarrassing.

With another one of my books, Children of Dreams, when I originally uploaded it on Amazon, the book was buried so deep in “adoption” as a Search Keyword on the Amazon Home Page I could never pull it up. I later wished I had added a Subtitle to help with search engine optimization; i.e., Two Adoption Stories In One. Less time would have passed for my book about adoption to be found in searches. Two years later, however, Children of Dreams is coming up on page four, number 53 out of 2,311 books. The ranking varies from day to day. I have seen Children of Dreams higher recently, but even if you have made mistakes along the way, all is not lost. Many other factors influence where a book appears in an Amazon Search Keyword with buyers. However, if you aren’t particular about what words you put in the Search Keyword box after uploading your Kindle book, your climb out of the abyss of undiscoverability will take longer.

While entering the Best Search Keywords won’t guarantee success in marketing your book overnight, you can be assured that readers will stand a better chance of finding your book out of the millions on Amazon, and small steps like this will ensure hope for giant leaps in your overall marketing endeavors.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Amazon Creates Another Way for Authors To Make Money Selling eBooks - What’s the Hype About Kindle Direct Publishing




By Lorilyn Roberts

The first time I read about Kindle Direct Publishing, also known as KDP, I couldn’t see the value of it. Why would I want to give away a Kindle book for up to five days every three months and be forced to yank it off all other distribution sites, including Smashwords? 

I had three ebooks at that time being sold through Smashwords, and with their premium distribution, my books were available to Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and other websites I learned about later. I didn’t understand the fine print about the KDP Loan Option, which sounded like a lot of hype about nothing, and I didn’t know anyone who was enrolled. I wrote off  KDP thinking it was too much trouble to implement and I would be wasting my time.

For those who don’t know me, I lead the John 3:16 Marketing Network, a network of over two hundred Christian authors. Our chief focus is to help Christian authors launch their books when published on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. One of the most valuable aspects of belonging to the network is the sharing of information. In January  2012, we had a new member, Bob Saffrin, who emailed me about his success with a Kindle book, Moses –Steps to a Life of Faith, in the KDP Select Program. After offering it for one day free, he had almost four thousand ebooks “sold” and topped the charts in all the nonfiction subcategories.

In over of year of launching books, we had never had anywhere close to that number of books sold in one day—and we are a network that launches books. Of course, Mr. Saffrin’s ebook was free, so my next question was, besides the great exposure he had received—four thousand books loaded on Kindles in the United States and Canada and even other countries sounded awesome—would those downloads translate into royalties? Or was if a fluke? Many people had bought Kindles for Christmas and were looking for cheap ebooks to load on their new “toy.”

I started paying attention to KDP Select through other authors in the John 3:16 Marketing Network. Some were willing to share their numbers. Martin Roth, an Australian author of international thrillers, emailed me about his success with Kindle Direct Publishing. He, too, had “sold” thousands of ebooks with KDP. Now I had validation that it wasn’t just nonfiction books that were doing well with KDP but fiction books also; and it couldn’t have been just  an after-Christmas rush to upload new ebooks on new Kindles. This was for real.

I decided to give KDP a try—which required a lot of effort on my part. Mr. Roth warned me that it was important to make sure you removed your ebook from all distribution sites except Amazon. Your book had to be exclusive to Amazon. My first thought was, how would they know anyway?

Don’t be fooled—Amazon will find your ebook on other websites and contact you to remove it. They are serious about this. When Amazon says exclusivity, they mean it. I waited a couple of months before enrolling my book in the program to ensure it was removed from all the websites I knew about, and Amazon found more later and alerted me.

My book Children of Dreams is an adoption memoir, and that was the first book I put into the Kindle Direct Publishing Program. In the meantime, some of our John 3:16 Authors had compiled a list of FREE websites where you could promote or advertise your ebook the days it was free on Amazon. I went through that list to maximize my book’s exposure.

For two days, over Mother’s Day weekend, I offered Children of Dreams for free on Kindle. By the end of the weekend, I had almost 17,000 ebooks downloaded and it hit number eleven out of all free books on Amazon.

I was ecstatic to have that many books downloaded on Kindles all over the world. In comparison to the number of ebooks I had sold previously, it was astounding. The question then became, how can I make money with this?

Since that weekend, I have offered my other ebooks for free through Kindle Direct Publishing. For the month of July, I received a royalty payment from Amazon for $350. Another author in the John 3:16 Marketing Network made $4,000 last month through Kindle Direct Publishing. The numbers vary widely, but you can make money using KDP. I am delighted that even I can make a few dollars to pay a bill, and the most important thing is, I didn’t spend a dime hiring a publicist or a marketing firm—and, to be honest, they will soon exhaust anyone’s financial resources and may not sell you a single book. I am speaking from personal experience.

Is KDP Select for you? To learn more about the specific details, go to http://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect. There are also step-by-step instructions on how to enroll your book in the program.

What about the exclusivity requirement? That means my book can’t be sold anywhere else.

Here are my thoughts: If it bothers you, then don’t do it. Amazon has come up with a marketing method that works. It’s a win-win for Amazon and the author. You have a choice, and as long as authors have that choice, I see nothing wrong with it. Amazon is in business and they are good at it. Looking at their growth and market share, they are probably the best. The challenge is for another company to come up with a better “KDP Select Program” than Amazon’s.

Here are some suggestions for anyone who is listening:  Implement a similar program that doesn’t require exclusivity. Challenge Amazon. Become a bigger player by offering authors more. What about an 80 percent royalty instead of 75 on books priced at $2.99 or more? What about a 50 percent royalty on books that are only 99 cents? What about allowing us to make our books free whenever we want—ten days a month instead of five?

Just like a lover woos his mistress, you’ve got to convince me to give up KDP Select in its current form and prove that you can offer me something better.

The royalty payments I have received from Smashwords pale in comparison to what I have earned with Amazon, even with Smashwords’ premium distribution. In fact, the $65 in my Smashwords account isn’t enough to deposit into my bank account based on their minimum requirement for direct deposit.

Until another company convinces me otherwise, I will stick with Kindle Direct Publishing, despite its exclusivity. Amazon needs more competition from other companies to entice them to adjust their paradigm. As long as KDP continues to put more money in authors’ pockets, including Smashwords, Amazon won't have any inclination to “rock the boat” and change it.

In a couple of months, I will be releasing my new YA novel, Seventh Dimension – The Door, and I plan on enrolling it into the KDP Select Program. One thing I want to stress, however, is you still need to promote your book. Laziness in promotion won’t sell books. KDP Select will require effort in terms of letting websites and others know when your Kindle book is free. Then you have the opportunity to make some money after the free promotion is over. It’s the uptake in sales following the free promotions that rings up that royalty check. Amazon also pays every month through direct deposit into authors’ bank accounts if it’s set up that way. My question is, why would anyone not want to do it?

For information on how to join the John 3:16 Marketing Network, go to: http://john316mn.blogspot.com/p/welcome-to-john-316-marketing-network.html