The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 32 – Publisher Rocket Ninja Tricks (with Dave Chesson)

Now that KDP Rocket changed it's name to Publisher Rocket, we brought its founder and creator, Dave Chesson, on to Am Writing Fantasy.

We discuss the recent change to Publisher Rocket, but more importantly, how authors can get the most out of Publisher Rocket. The conversation covers everything from how to rank on Amazon, insights on the Amazon A9 algorithm, KDP keyword selection and onto Amazon ads.

There's a lot to take away. Enjoy.

https://publisherrocket.com/ 
https://kindlepreneur.com/ 

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Read the full transcript below. (Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Jesper (0s):
So the awesome tool for authors called KDP rocket recently changed its name to publisherrocket and I could think of nothing better than to bring its founder and creator Dave Chesson on peer two amwritingfantasy to talk about why he changed it to publisherrocket and what is it that we people can learn from it. And maybe we can get some Ninja tips out of him. We'll see if you're a fantasy author, then you've come to the right place.

Jesper (32s):
My name is Jesper and together with autumn I've popped this modern 20 books and it is our aim to help you in your writing and marketing endeavors. So Dave maybe you would like to just say a few words about yourself and thank you for coming onto amwritingfantasy.

Dave (50s):
Well, it's really awesome to be here. Um, as, as you said, I'm Dave and a. I run a website called kindlepreneur.com a that teaches authors how to sell their books and get their books discovered on Amazon as well as the creator of publisherrocket. I started off as an author, but I actually have a bit of dyslexia. And so I've never thought of myself as a great writer. And that's why it was very important for me that if I was going to spend all that time, you know, uh, I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I was, I used to be military. If I was going to spend all that time writing on wanting to make sure that I had the right market.

Dave (1m 23s):
And so it's from all that research and understand that helped me to get my books out there and to make enough money for my books to be able to quit my job and be here full time with my children. So

Jesper (1m 33s):
yeah. Excellent. And uh, we use a tend to be rocket, uh, ourselves as well. Autumn and myself and the, actually I talked about it in a, in a previous video, so if any of you watching wants to sort of get a inside KDP rocket look, I did some screen-sharing stuff and whatnot. I'll put a link right here on the screen for you so you can just click that one and then it'll take you through that video. Would you want to see what the KDP rocket looks like inside? Because we're not going to do three SEO in here today. And for those of you listening on the podcast, you need to cycle through to episode 11 and that's when I talked about canopy rocket but maybe to start us off Dave maybe we can sort of why, why did you want to change the KDP rocket into publisherrocket?

Dave (2m 15s):
Well, the first thing was, is that Katie P rocket uh, we used to have version 1.0 and it's solely focused on Kindle and that's why we chose the name KTP because the Kindle aspect, this is back in the day when create space existed and then there's KTP for ebook. So now that a publisherrocket is a version 2.0 it covers both books and eBooks. So we needed to make sure that nobody got confused about thinking it was just a Kindle tool anymore. But another crazy thing too though is that we've been in talks with Barnes and noble, Kobo and iTunes about including their markets data in rocket in the future.

Dave (2m 53s):
It's kinda hard to have a conversation with those guys when your name is very Amazon centric. He has to say it stalls the the discussions. But now that we're publisherrocket though am most of the representative we've been working for a very pleased about that and had been really forthcoming in looking into how we can access the data that we do to be able to provide authors with the information that we give. So that was a really major factor about, you know, taking and changing the name. And at the same time, like I talked about, we did the name change, right as we transitioned to version 2.0 and version 2.0 is not only faster.

Dave (3m 30s):
And I would, I would say sleeker, definitely a better look, but also the internal programmings allowing myself and my programmers to add even more. We have a whole bunch of new features and capabilities coming out. We'll be adding every international market here very soon. And this isn't just pulling information from those markets. We've actually been collecting years worth of data on all of the, from the German, that UK, the Japanese, you name it, to be able to give the right analysis that fits those markets perfectly.

Dave (4m 2s):
So now that we have a more robust program, we can do things like that. We also have added every one of the 16,000 Amazon categories inside the program itself. So for the first time authors can go in there and be able to see every possible category, especially from their genre or their string. And then they can even see how many books that day they need to sell in order to be number one. And that that is updated daily. And as a matter of fact, we're actually adding new systems to make it update even more so.

Dave (4m 32s):
So you can get real time data and find out which categories are best. And in the future we're going to be adding even more to that to include the average am abs, LR of the number one books. And here's the cool part. We're going to be adding something that lets you know how many shoppers actually go to that category to purchase books. So now authors can finally select categories that help them to be a bestselling author even more so and on top of that categories that will help you to sell more books.

Jesper (5m 2s):
It's a, it's an amazing tool. I mean, I, I can't imagine the amount of data scraping you must be doing. I mean, actually last time when I recorded the previous video I was talking about every time, can it be rocket started pulling data. I did the screen sharing system recording sessions just like, Ooh, powered down or the most I could see it. You know what a but I'm glad that the a that you mentioned that the publisherrocket is, is, is let's say faster because also sometimes it didn't happen often, but a few times it didn't happen on me.

Jesper (5m 34s):
That KDP rocket crest and I had to restart it. It was not a big deal. You know, we just do the research again, but, but of course, I guess publisherrocket tests that fixed mountain, is that right?

Dave (5m 44s):
Seven times faster and it's able to hold more information. The thing about it was when I created KDP rocket 1.0 back about three years ago, I had no idea how popular it was going to be, nor did I understand how many extra things I wanted to add to it. So our original foundation of the program was, was meant for just keyword research and competition analysis, you know, helping you to choose the right keywords that get discovered and help you to see what your competitors are doing. And that's it. But over those three years we added the category feature.

Dave (6m 16s):
Then we added Amazon book ads feature and you know, we have even more that we want to do a. And it was evident that our original programming wasn't able to support that. And so as we added more, it started to slow down just a bit. Or like you said, there was the crashes. So we completely overhauled the entire system with the plans in the future of adding even more. And we put that in the infrastructure. So, and we timed it seven times faster, which believe me, it's, if you're doing a lot of research or you're pulling, you want to pull hundreds if not thousands of keywords for your ads, every second counts.

Jesper (6m 51s):
Yeah. You have some new cabinet. And it is, I mean, it is amazing how, how much computer power that needs to be to actually pull all that data out, uh, from, from what is, you know, from, from the use of perspective on my end, it just looks like a very sort of, that's a simple piece of software, but there's a lot to it underneath the hood if one were to look at it. Right?

Dave (7m 14s):
Yeah. When I first designed the a the software, I did what I call the Mazy test. And, and Muzzy is actually the name I give my grandmother and she's super awesome. Um, she knows about that much about book marketing. But the key was, is that I, I wanted to see if she could figure out how to use it, you know, kind of on our own. And, um, that was kind of a test that we did to figure out, okay, how good is this? How is it going to work? But then on top of that, we continue to revise it and change things and move things around so that no matter what age you are, whether or not you're young or you're in retirement age, it's very intuitive and we'll help you to get through it.

Dave (7m 51s):
And one thing that I want to add too is, is that, you know, we talk about all these additions and new features and even the upgrade to version 2.0 a I'm a strong believer of software companies never charging people again, you know, you make your software better. Don't, don't make me pay more money for it. Uh, so every one of those things we've talked about has been a free upgrade for every user on that. That's our policy. That's the way we're going to keep it.

Jesper (8m 13s):
Yeah, that's excellent. But I w I was thinking maybe for, for those who doesn't jump on to that, the other video that I recorded them, but who just sort of want a very quick overview. Maybe you could just start off, talk us through that for different features that are inside the publisherrocket and I think it's four, if I remember correctly, four different areas that you, what you can do and maybe maybe your thoughts on what is, which one of these are, if any, are most useful in your view for, for authors if any of them better than the others or, or, or what, I'm just curious to have your thoughts on that.

Dave (8m 49s):
Well, let me answer the first question and then we'll get to that last one. What I'd like to tell people is, is that that publisher rockets entire design is to help authors get their books discovered. Okay. To get found on Amazon and hopefully in the future the other markets as well. Uh, so that they can get their books in front of the right shoppers slash. Readers. Now, every one of those features was designed with this in purpose. Okay. But with different ways of doing it. The first feature is keyword feature and that is helping you to choose your seven Kindle keywords, okay?

Dave (9m 20s):
Those are the words that people type into Amazon and then Amazon chooses to show books of for it. There are three very important questions when choosing your keywords that authors should definitely consider. The first is they want words that shoppers actually type into Amazon. The second is they want to make sure that that shoppers actually buy those books when they see them. Okay. A great example is you're in fantasy, right? What are the chances that I type in the word fantasy and Amazon shows me the perfect book, right?

Dave (9m 51s):
Like the type, I mean, you know all the different types of genre out there. Right? On top of that though, what if I type in something like Velossa Raptor, Epic war? Okay. Maybe there's a book out there, I don't know, but you know, you can quickly see that no, there are no sales coming in for those books. Therefore, this is not actually the end game. This is not where shoppers end up and then purchase. So knowing how much those books are making that show up is a very important thing. And the third and final part is understanding the competition.

Dave (10m 23s):
It's great to choose those words, but if your book doesn't show up on the first page of Amazon, your book will not benefit from that keyword. So we've designed it for authors to quickly answer those three things inside the keyword feature. They can see all the words that people are typing into Amazon that pertained to what they're thinking about. They know the average amount of money that books are making that show up for that keyword and they know how hard it would be to rank for it. And we give it a great score from one to a hundred. And our programming, uh, takes into account when it creates that competition score.

Dave (10m 57s):
It takes into account the popularity, the author, the popularity of the book, the sales, how new is it, uh, the re review grades, uh, and more importantly recent review grades cause that has a major effect. I would say reviews that came in two years ago, I have little to no effect where as a review that came in yesterday as more of an effect. Um, we also take into account, um, some other factors as well, and we compile it into a number that makes you easy for you to say, Oh wow, that keyword would be a lot harder to rank for then that one.

Dave (11m 31s):
So right there you have everything you need to select your seven Kindle keywords. But I'd also say too, that that feature's really important for new authors just about to start their book. Say for example, your thinking of writing a book on, we'll say, um, some type of magician fantasy I'm going to stick inside of your genre. Here is I give an answer, right? Okay. Now knowing what it is that people are typing into Amazon and whether or not there's a hungry market for it can be really important to helping you sort of not only choose the niche genre that you go into, but more importantly, it can help you in figuring out what should be the focal point of your book cover or your book description and help you to know that your book idea before you even start, whether it has a market on Amazon that's willing to pay or if it doesn't.

Dave (12m 25s):
Okay. So you can collect all this information and validate your book idea before you start, as well as have important information on how you design and layout your book going forward. Because remember, keywords are the words that your market is using when they are shopping and looking for the next book. So if somebody, if there's a lot of people say typing in necromancer, uh, you know, Epic fantasy right, okay. You know, you were thinking about having a wizard that, you know, maybe, maybe it does raise the dead or are deals in the dark arts a bit, you know, um, and you know that that has a hungry market.

Dave (13m 3s):
You may want to focus or ensure that your cover represents that more so that it truly needs the desire of those of those readers. You may find out that, well, there are other characters, you know, in, in my, in my group that are trekking through the woods, you know, but maybe that one should be front and center. Um, you may do research and start to find more and more about what people are typing. And so that information can really help you get your foot, you know, get you started on the right foot. The second feature is our competition analyzer.

Dave (13m 34s):
And the purpose of this one is to understand what your potential competitors are doing, how well they're doing and what they're doing, right? So you start by typing in say a keyword phrase or whatever it is you might want to target for your keyword. And rocket will list out the books that Amazon would list out and it gives you important information about, you know, the book cover, the title, the, the age, how much money it's made. It made that day about how much money it's making on average in the month. Um, and so you can start to kind of see what's working.

Dave (14m 4s):
You can even flip between book and ebook and see how, how well their ebook is doing compared to their book and understand which ones actually making more money for them. And so that can kind of help you with some of your marketing decisions moving forward, your price selection, um, you know, whether or not you want to target this an advertisement later on and so forth. The third feature is our category feature. And like we talked about earlier, you know, Amazon has 16,000 plus categories and we have the data to help you find the right category. Okay.

Dave (14m 33s):
It's interesting, there's actually a lot of authors, especially for fantasy might think that a that the main category of science fiction and fantasy would be the only category that holds fantasy related categories. That's actually not true. There are four different main categories that have a whole subsection on just fantasy and especially in literature and fiction, um, young adult. And there's a couple of more that are just really weird and out of place. And our software actually helps people to find those very quickly. And I assure you, if you look at the science fiction and fantasy and then you find your fantasy selected category there, it's probably going to be a lot harder to rank for that than say a the fiction or literature and fiction version of that same exact category because nobody thinks to look there.

Dave (15m 18s):
So the software helps you to find those opportunities so that you have a much better chance of actually being a bestseller. Why does bestseller help? Well, there's a couple of things that come from this. Number one is that you get the orange tag that says bestseller. And that's cool. I mean from a humorous perspective, but what's really good from a marketing perspective is that when Amazon shows your book and others, it shows the orange tag or yeah, it's the orange tag that says bestseller. So your book sticks out, which means my eyes are going to direct to yours, even if somebody else's is above you.

Dave (15m 50s):
And on top of that to that tag is a bit of social proof. It tells me that other people like this book because they're buying it and I feel more comfortable purchasing it. Now that I know that others have bought it as well. What's funny is is that you might not be selling as much as the others, but you selected the right category. And so you have that advantage. Another thing that's coming from category sales to is that Amazon sends out emails to people who've bought inside that category. And if you're the new bestseller, you're actually gonna get promoted more often from their email campaigns.

Dave (16m 23s):
And so that's a major help. And a third thing that's really coming from, from categories as well is that we're seeing an increase in shoppers' purchasing from categories themselves. And you can see this cause Amazon is now adding filters inside of the categories on amazon.com. So say for example, you go to your favorite category, you can now look on the left and it'll give you phrases that people have used to describe different types of fantasy. You'll see a top authors listed. So you can click those series names, um, genres to choose from.

Dave (16m 57s):
And if there are fantasy specific awards, they even have little click boxes there for you to select. So you can see the award winners. So Amazon's really focusing on improving shopper experience through categories themselves. And that all starts with authors selecting the right one. And finally we have the Amazon ads. We call it the AMS keyword feature. Because say for example, you've got a great book and you just can't seem to either break into your, uh, your area. There were too many powerful, awesome, you know, books make more money and you just can't get up to the top.

Dave (17m 29s):
Or maybe you know that you're creating something absolutely new, like some crazy new genre a or what have you. Then Amazon ads is probably a phenomenal way for you to take it to the next level. And I would also say to those who have written a book and it failed, maybe try given a little breathing it, you know, new life into it through ads and you may see it finally get that opportunity with Amazon ads, you can now say, Hey, look Amazon, I want to put this book at the top of the search result. Somebody types that in, I want to show up for that.

Dave (17m 60s):
Or you could also say, Hey, Amazon, anytime somebody sees this book, I want to be next to them. Okay, I want to be right there so that you know, they've got to see my book first. This gives you ability to 100% now. You're getting eyes on your book and that can be incredible. But the problem that author's run into is you can't just select 10 or 15 terms, sit back and say, sweet. You know, and even raise up the cost per click to make it. Yeah, no obvious that you're going to make those. The you're going to get seen. Actually, it's taking hundreds if not thousands of keywords that you want to focus on for your ads before you can really start to see some progress.

Dave (18m 36s):
And so we created a system that helps you to auto-generate those pertinent keywords and help you to make your ads more effective and efficient. So from those four features, we're helping you to get discovered naturally. We're helping you to understand what your competitors are doing as well as what you'd be facing. We're helping you just like those categories who you're seeing and found and connected to other books. And finally we're helping you with your ads, if that's what you choose, all of that to help get you discovered.

Jesper (19m 3s):
It's amazing. I really liked that. The piece of software, it's very well developed. Um, and I think especially now in, in the, if we're, if we're looking at Amazon for a second year in the Amazon marketplace, if you are to let's say, get any sort of traction with your Amazon ass, we are getting to a stage now where short the top keywords, they are so expensive that when you're selling an ebook for $5, it's, it's, it's forget about bidding on it.

Jesper (19m 33s):
It's way too expensive. And then the only other option then is to have tons of apps running on a little bit, but then you're going to pick up the fuse that nobody else saw bidding on or maybe a few people are bidding on. So and there I have found now publisher Rob, I was just about to say KDP rocket, but probably so rocket to am to be incredibly helpful because I think on, I, especially one of my books I have, I think I have my 20,000 plus keywords ads running on those a but, and then just out of KDP rocket, I mean it's so easy to just go in, generate lists, pump them into Amazon and other list into Amazon.

Jesper (20m 9s):
I mean, it doesn't matter if some of the keywords are replicates of of one, you already have it there because who cares? I mean, you were going to win one of them and as long as you are bidding the same, it doesn't really matter. So you can just, you know, beef up your Amazon ads by pulling data out of K.D.P. Oh, sorry. Now I did it again. Publisherrocket I mean, uh, so I, I think it's, it's an amazing tool that saves, she was so incredibly much time.

Dave (20m 34s):
Yeah. You know, a lot of people are afraid about, like you were talking about 20,000 keywords are, so what happens if I'm showing up for keywords ed, you know, nobody's ever going to buy. That's okay. Because the thing is you don't pay Amazon until somebody clicks on your ad and nobody will click on your ad unless after seeing your book cover in your title and your ad blurb, if you choose to have one that still interests them, then they click. So, you know, I found some interesting keywords that I still can't figure out exactly why that directed, but it somehow caught the attention of a larger number of people.

Dave (21m 9s):
Those people clicked and those people bought. And again, I think the reason why I made those sales was because nobody was thinking to target that. And yet it was a good fit in some way. And again, I only pay if people's, after seeing my ad like it and choose to learn more.

Jesper (21m 26s):
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's exactly my mentality with it as well. I mean, it doesn't matter what your load in there, because as you just said, you know, you only pay for the click. So who cares if you're 500 keywords for that you got from publisherrocket that nobody cares about, that doesn't really relate to fantasy, but for whatever reason, that's what you've got in your list. It doesn't matter. You know, you gotta kinda pay for them anyway. So yeah, it's just a base, you know, you can just go crazy and lots of lots of keywords and look them into Amazon with lope it and some of it will get clicked.

Dave (22m 0s):
Yep, absolutely. And you know, and that's, that's an interesting thing. I just kind of break away for a bit on this is what I love most about Amazon ads is I can use the numbers to finally figure out where the problem is with my book. You see, when am here's an example. I, have you ever heard of the book a battlefield earth? It's a science fiction book. There's actually a really bad movie made about it, but it doesn't ring any bells red, but okay. Well anyways, uh, this book was written and uh, awhile ago the publishing company reached out to me and said, Hey, we'd like your help about figuring out how to improve our Amazon ads.

Dave (22m 39s):
I said, okay. You know, I actually read the book as a child and it was probably the second ever science fiction book I read and I credit it for kind of turning me into a scifi fan. Uh, the first being Ender's game. Love that one. So I said, cool honor to, to kind of work on a book that I read as a kid. Sure. So we looked at it and we looked at their Amazon ads and it was crazy because I saw him now they had a large number impression, so great. They were, they were choosing the right keywords, you know, Amazon was choosing to show their book and they had a lot of great clicks and awesome.

Dave (23m 12s):
The cover fit, it was perfect. Got it. And they've just done a new cover when they were doing this new launch. However though the percentage of people choosing to buy that clicked on it was pretty low. It was like 0.5% maybe it was 0.4% but it was like somewhere that low that we're actually going from clicks to buy. And while they were making money and they were helping to get their book out there more in, the problem was was that there was a significant number of people who were coming to their sales page and choosing not to buy. So they were like, well, maybe we need better keywords.

Dave (23m 43s):
I was like, no, no, no. I know what your problem is. Your book description is horrible. So I told him that the problem was was that the book description was more like a book report. They were giving way too many details. They were listing out, you know, characters that didn't need to be in there. They were giving, you know, the specifics of the entire story and it dragged on. Now I said, so really we shouldn't be focusing on our keywords because obviously those are driving in the right people because they're clicking and they're interested, but they're not paying. So I said, look, I'm going to rewrite your book description, I'm going to use what I know about Amazon and everything and we're going to go ahead and construct something that makes shoppers now.

Dave (24m 21s):
This is truly an a post-apocalyptic Saifai book that you know of, you know, Epic proportion and why they need to read this book. So I wrote one, they said, yeah, that sounds really cool, but we really think that our original one fits most with fans. I said, all right, hold on, let me, let me show you something. So I went to a website called petfood.com and it's where you can pay to like submit two different versions, whether it's like two different versions of a cover or two different versions of a book description. And they go out and they find people to survey and to choose which one they liked best.

Dave (24m 54s):
But more importantly, those people have to give a reason for why they chose one of the other one. What's really cool is is that we had about 75% of the people choose mine over the other. One. More importantly, when reading the comments, most of the people that chose the other one said, I've read this book before and this one gives more detail. So obviously it wasn't the best one to choose a new person to purchase it. It was only the one that they felt most comfortable with because they knew the story and that was the thing about the publisher was they were so close to the story that they thought they needed more information.

Dave (25m 26s):
So when I showed that to the publishing company, they mirror like, Whoa, okay, cool. So they changed out the book description and immediately they tripled their conversion rate of their ads. And even more so from tweaking it beyond then to get even more sales. Now that not only helps with their Amazon ads but also helps with every other effort they're making in marketing, whether it's Facebook ads, email campaigns or whatever, because now when people land on that book, more people are converting to purchase because the book description is that good.

Dave (25m 57s):
So I love Amazon ads, not just from the ability to proactively and absolutely get my book in front of people, but also I can learn through the numbers where my bra, my book is having a problem and then I can fix it and give it the best success rate.

Jesper (26m 14s):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean a I also wrote a whole guide, step by step guide book on how to read, write fantasy book descriptions because it doesn't matter. Your book description is part of the equation that makes people buy. So it's not only about finding good keywords and finding out what to be and so forth and of course have a good cover. But the book description is absolutely a part of the equation.

Dave (26m 38s):
Yeah. I never realized how important a book description was until finally Amazon provided those AMS numbers mean I kind of used to think, eh, you know, it's, I mean the coverage is really important, but really that book description is what makes somebody who's interested turn into a buyer. So 100% and yeah, use that kind of resource and material, make sure that your book description is stellar arrests, all of your marketing efforts could be dying prematurely because you couldn't land that sale.

Jesper (27m 6s):
So I wanted to cycle back to the seven keywords again, um, that you mentioned before, and I'm sort of spraying this question on you a bit. So if you don't know, that's fully fair. Uh, but I was just wondering, when you're looking at the data from, you know, under the hood, if you have any reflections or insights on how much those seven keywords actually matter. Because when I use publisherrocket, of course, I also figured out which with seven keywords performance better than the others and, and, and all that. And I could see the data from publisherrocket that there is a difference.

Jesper (27m 38s):
So of course I researched out the seven best ones and I used those. But in terms of moving actual book sales, at least on my end, I did not really see that those setting the keywords mattered much. So I'm just wondering, based on your data perspective, if you know, if it's because there was seven keywords, actually it doesn't matter as much as we think they do. Or is it because maybe it's too saturated with those keywords and that's why you're not seeing the needle move? Or I don't know if you have any insights on this.

Dave (28m 10s):
Well, there are three important parts to keywords to help push book sales. And the first one is identifying your target keywords, right? So knowing which keywords really will work to help move the needle. And that's exactly what publisherrocket does, is it finally gives you the ability to see what those keywords are. The second important part is making sure you get indexed for that keyword. Okay? And indexing is where Amazon acknowledges that your book should show up for that keyword. K, uh, ways to influence indexing are, you know, you've chosen that phrase is when you're seven Kindle keywords.

Dave (28m 43s):
Another thing is, you know, the words are either in your title or subtitle and yes, Amazon does index the book description. I know a lot of people say that it doesn't cause they'll take like a full sentence from a book description or some made up word, put it into Amazon. It doesn't show anything but Amazon's own a nine a algorithm. That's actually the name of their search engine. If you go to a nine.com which has its own website a they flat out say we index book descriptions and descriptions of products. So the way that they do it though is they know what words should be appropriate to that genre and therefore those are very important to them.

Dave (29m 17s):
Um, to go a step further on that, if you scroll down on the Amazon book sales page and you'll get down to where the reviews are and notice that there's a word cloud density above the reviews now. And these are like words that Amazon has figured out that people are using when reviewing the book. Guess what? A majority of those are genre or category specific words that it has identified. I believe it does the same thing like that with book descriptions. Um, that's why you don't see a lot of buzz. He is, you know, because it's, but you'll see like war made, you know, you'll see a necromancer, you'll see those words popping up.

Dave (29m 54s):
So I'm going to throw in book description, um, for that purpose. So again, those things all help to show Amazon that. Okay. Yeah. And same thing with reviews. What people put in reviews. I definitely think his index, but I don't see a nine. Talk about that. The work high density makes me think so. So those things help to say to Amazon you should show up and yeah, to a certain extent that will help you to show up, um, higher in the rankings. Okay. But it depends on the competition. Maybe just choosing those words is enough to get you on the first page.

Dave (30m 25s):
So long as the competition is low, that you know that competition score we talked about, right? You get an 80 competition and I'm sorry, but you choose the best seven Kindle keywords, you're not going to show up on that first page. Um, but you choose like a 20 and yeah, you can get there just by choosing one of them. So that brings us to the third one, which is ranking for that keyword. Now statistically speaking, if you ranked number one for a keyword, okay on Amazon, you can expect 27% of the people that typed in that phrase. We'll click on your book. You ranked number two though, and it quickly quickly drops to 13, then 11 then nine, eight, seven, six, six, six, six and then it bumps up to seven at the bottom because apparently people scroll down and then they see that last book the most.

Dave (31m 6s):
Um, but that's a huge difference. You ranked five or you rank seven for that book, that title, excuse me, that keyword. And that's 6% compared to 27%. And if you rake on the second or third or fourth page for that keyword, it's, it's, it's like 2%, 1% less than 1% of the people will actually find you from that keyword. So making sure that you're in the top of that keyword is very important. Now, one of the best ways to increase your rankings for that keyword is by the sheer act of a shopper typing in your keyword, finding your book, selecting it, and purchasing it or downloading it, okay.

Dave (31m 46s):
Because that is a pure signal to Amazon that somebody went, when they typed in this phrase, this product was the one that connected with them. And this is the product that actually made us money as well, right? So they'll want the best selling for that keyword to be at the top so that they make, um, you know, they make the sale. And I've actually got a quote from Jeff Bezos about this, the CEO of Amazon and he said, we don't make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.

Dave (32m 20s):
So they want to show the one that makes that, that sale. So how do we as authors influences were, remember when I talked about, uh, you know, validating your book idea and choosing covers that fit that term better. That's huge. Um, I was working with a romance author and she was writing a romance. We did our keyword research. Long story short, her perfect keyword phrase was am second or Victorian second chance romance family or with baby or these other words at the end that helped people to know more about the book.

Dave (32m 54s):
Let's just those words, we understand what the story is. K Victorian error. So we're looking at the Victorian period of time. Second chance romance is a type of romance where somebody finds love again and then the whole family or with baby is that at the last moment people were adding in there some kind of phrase or term to help them know that no, this isn't hotter steamy or no, this isn't, I want this to be about family. She needs to have a kid and she's looking for love again. So she's looking for somebody who would be cool enough to, you know, to date her while she has somebody else's child.

Dave (33m 30s):
And even more so if you put that on in the context of the Victorian error, right. I mean that sh that wife, no matter how it happened, she must be a charlatan or an end, a social pariah because she's without husband. So he's, you can see, we just know from those words exactly what it is the market is looking for. And the interesting part was that the, the cover originally was of like a castle that was kind of Victorian period. So cool. She nailed the, the time setting. However though there was nothing about it that helped to personify the other parts. So instead that cover was designed where it showed the, you know, like a ball basically happening and the mom holding the child with kind of the group of people looking down on her like, Oh, you know, she without a husband and the Charlotte and, but there's one guy standing in the back kind of looking very interested.

Dave (34m 16s):
Notice that that cover symbolizes everything the shopper's typing in. So what do you think's going to actually get the click? Write the book that shows exactly what they're looking for. But another tactic for people who are like, look, I already got a cover and I'm cool with it. Another tactic that I recommend to people is that if you know that somebody is going to be buying your book, okay? Uh, so you have some people out there that yes, they are fans, they love what you do. I would recommend to tell some of them to go to Amazon, type in your keyword, phrase your target, and then find it that way.

Dave (34m 51s):
Might want to give him a warning. They may have to go through a couple of pages, but it means the world to you. If you did that, what that will do is that we'll send the signal to Amazon that this book should definitely be ranking. You'd be surprised how little amount of sales, what happened, you'll shoot up to the top. Now I'm not, this is not a hack and I'm not ruining Amazon and I'm not going to help a bad books when, okay? Because what ultimately happens is this tactic will give you that ability to be at the top and to be found. However, though, if your book continuously is passed up from books under it in case so shoppers are normal, shoppers are typing it in and not choosing your book, but choosing this book or this book or this book, you will start to come back down in the rankings and you'll finally sit at where you belong.

Dave (35m 35s):
So us doing researches, authors is not about hacking Amazon it's not about bad books. Winning Amazon smarter than that and its algorithm is great. What we've talked about here is helping authors know their market better, make better decisions as they develop their book, make better decisions on how they want to position it, and know that all of those efforts are actually going to existing markets where they will find the right readers.

Jesper (35m 58s):
I couldn't have said it better myself then, but a that's the thing. Am you know the thing about all this machine learning, because I fully agree. I'm an Amazon the the algorithm behind or I guess there's actually many probably, but the algorithms then a behind the drives Amazon are very intelligent. The only thing that seems very old school to be still it, you know, in 2019 that we even have to write in those 70 words manually. It seems crazy to me. I mean Amazon should be able to learn by a machine learning, which are the works that associates to this book and you know, I don't know, maybe that'll stop at some point.

Dave (36m 37s):
Well, and to an extent that really is what we were talking about in the indexing, right? It's taking the input you, the author gave, it's taking the input of the categories you choose. It's taking in the input of the title and the words you use in the book description and it's taking in the input of what your customers are writing and then it is figuring out where it should put you. Now what's really cool about keywords is that you may say you may choose seven particular phrases, right? You're going to show up for more than that. Okay. You don't just show up for those seven, you're actually going to be indexed on a whole bunch more like hundreds.

Dave (37m 12s):
Okay. But the key is is that if you show that your book is making more sales, okay, it's succeeding Amazon then starts to spread you out even more. Okay? That's why like if you type in Harry Potter, you know, or any type of wizard kid, wizard, wizard school, whatever, you're going to find Harry Potter in that list. Harry Potter didn't have 50,000 keywords they can enter and they just had seven. But Amazon is going to test and show books more and more often because the whole point of the 89 algorithm, again that's there they have lots of algorithms.

Dave (37m 45s):
Um, but the 89 is the search bar that shows up and it's the only one that's got its own name. The a nine algorithm is going to test and push and show products because the ultimate goal of the a nine algorithm is to make Amazon more many. And like we heard from Bezos, it's not about the sale, it's about providing the right product and that's when they get the sale. So

Jesper (38m 8s):
we've, we've sort of talked them out a lot around the publisherrocket and how Amazon works and all that. So I think there was a lot of good stuff here for, for people to take home and consider the Dave. But is there anything you want to share who are at the end around a? Maybe what your future plans are with publisherrocket or anything like that?

Dave (38m 29s):
Yeah, like I said earlier, we're going to be adding the international markets so that people in Germany can focus on the German or Indian or Japanese. And we've been collecting information for years now for that. We're also going to be adding more information about each individual category so that people can choose less volatile ones are more popular ones, you know, for purchasing power. Um, and help people see seasonal changes as well in categories. And again, you know, as an author myself, I'm always testing and Amazon's always changing so we're always staying on top of that as well.

Jesper (39m 3s):
And if people would like to sort of get more insight into publisherrocket a where can they, where can they find publisherrocket and maybe you can share how much does it cost?

Dave (39m 15s):
Sure. So publisher rocket you can find it@publisherrocket.com and it's a onetime payment of $97. So, and you get that for life a that includes all updates, upgrades, you name it. As we add more as we change, uh, you'll benefit from those as well. And I would also say too, if anybody out there wants to learn more about Amazon ads, I've got a full free course on Amazon ads. You can find that@amscourses.com and it's one of those that I give every detail for you to do Amazon ads without software or without paying for any other aspect.

Dave (39m 48s):
It'll take you all the way through the process.

Jesper (39m 51s):
That's excellent. And if you email me the link to those things, then I will put it into the description field below. If you're watching on YouTube, so just go below this video, or if you're listening on the podcast, you just go to the show notes and then you'll find the links there from, from Dave that he mentioned. So thank you so much for coming on amwritingfantasy Dave and at least from my end, I can say that the, I think the dose $97 I will spend, it's definitely worth it. So, uh, but I'll leave that up to you guys. Thank you so much for joining Dave.

Dave (40m 22s):
Absolutely. And it's really good being here.