Is your book lost in the Amazon jungle? by Brendan Conboy

 

I recently addressed the issue of the Amazon jungle at the recent ACW writers’ day on ‘How to sell more books.’ For the benefit of those who were not present and those who have forgotten what I said, I’ll share some brief highlights from my talk.

Keywords are key – I repeated that several times. I also mentioned the Amazon algorithm throughout my talk. We refer to it in the singular, whereas there is an army of algorithms, each with a specific task. For instance, there is a different one to monitor each category, algorithms to measure reviews, new releases, promotions, etc. They have a single unified aim – to generate revenue for Amazon. They do this by introducing people to products that they are most likely to buy.

These clever little bots will show books to readers based on four main factors.

·      Relevance - If someone searches using the phrase, ‘Christian inspirational testimonies and stories’, the clever bots won’t show them a cookbook, as it’s not relevant.

·       Performance – The more you sell and the more reviews you receive, the more likely it is to be shown.

·       Customer behaviour – Imagine two different books, one receives 1,000 views and the other 100 views. They both sell 100 copies, but the latter has a lower ratio of clicks to purchases (conversion rate). This is the book that the bots are more likely to promote.

·       Freshness – Books don’t market themselves, and you should frequently refresh your metadata, or it will be lost in the jungle. Schedule a maintenance programme for each of your titles. Refresh keywords, categories, description, etc.

Keywords are not just words in seven different boxes – they are certainly not an afterthought; they are key in your marketing strategy. For years, I wrote my book, wrote a description, chose the categories and then the keywords, because that is the order the KDP form presents them. This is wrong.

Choose your keywords first and use long-tail keywords. These are possible search phrases of four or more words. You could buy software to help with this, such as Publisher Rocket. There are so many tools available, but most cost money. One free method is to use the Amazon auto-fill method.

My ChatGPT method – Whether you love it or hate it, AI is a tool that we can use to our advantage. Follow these steps to improve your book’s visibility.

1.       Upload a PDF of your book to ChatGPT. It reads your whole book in seconds.

2.       Ask Chat to provide seven strong, relevant, long-tail keywords and rate them out of 10, plus say why they are good, target audience, etc

3.       Ask Chat to write a book description and naturally include the keywords. Avoid keyword stuffing. Start the description with a question and end with a call to action. Make sure you edit as needed.

4.       Ask Chat to now choose your three best categories and why.

5.       If you are publishing a new book or a new edition, naturally embed some keywords into the title and subtitle.

Do get in touch with me if you have any questions about any of this, or if you can add to this.

Brendan Conboy aka Half Man Half Poet is the author of 16 published books including two fascinating autobiographies, The Golden Thread and I'm Still VALUED.  In 1986, Brendan invited Jesus into his life and God blessed him with the gift of rhyming words.  He used that gift as a Christian Rap artist for 25 years and has written 6 poetry books including the entire Book of Psalms in Rhyme.  He has 3 published novels - Issues, Invasion of the Mimics and Legacy of the Mimics.  He is the creator of Book Blest