My first novel – historical military fiction – made it to the top 10 of 9 of Amazon's bestseller lists. Via my blog I share what I have learned while writing two more.
I’ve not changed the price of my first book on Amazon in a year and a half. My guess is that frequent price change or even free days will not do much for your sales and won’t result in many new reviews. Nonetheless, I thought I’d make my book free for a day and see what happens.
The day is about half over, and per the KDP report Amazon offers, I’ve had about 70 downloads. Given that I barely advertised it — a few tweets only — that is not too surprising. But there are a few surprising things.
A recent article argued that there is a formula to writing bestsellers. The article says the algorithm is “built to predict, with 80 percent accuracy, which novels will become mega-bestsellers. What does it like? “Young, strong heroines who are also misfits (the type found in The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). No sex, just ‘human closeness.’ Frequent use of the verb ‘need.’ Lots of contractions. Not a lot of exclamation marks. Dogs, yes; cats, meh.” So if you are writing a novel and want to trump your competition, you should abide what this book says, right? Let’s see how I’m doing with my upcoming science fiction novel:
* Young, strong, heroine — check.
* Misfit — check.
* No sex — this one is an in betweener…you’ll have to read the novel to understand.
* Human closeness — check.
* Frequent use of the verb “need” — hmm… 154 times in a novel of 116k words…I can work on this one.
* Lots of contractions — I probably need more, so this is fixable.
* Not a lot of exclamation marks — I’ve got too many. I can fix this.
* Dogs — Several of them.
* Cats — One. Dead.
I suppose if I put an image of a young woman on the cover… Bestseller, here I come!
Traditionally Publish or Self-Publish? This is a more complex question than it first appears. You also have to answer 1) What are your objectives? 2) What are you willing to do/not do yourself to help sell your book(s)?
I have modest experience with both traditional and self-publishing: 20 years ago I wrote a novel, printed it, put it in a box and sent it to what back then was a medium size, independent publisher of military history that was trying to break into the fiction market. I had no agent and put a letter in the box to the effect of ‘let me know if you want to publish this.’ A few weeks later I got a thick envelope back. They loved the book and had sent me contracts for it and two more books. I signed all three contracts and they sent me advances for all three.
Example of a 3D book cover I created for free in about three minutes. This is not the actual cover of my upcoming novel…just a working example for this blog.
I stumbled on a powerful and simple way to make a 3D book cover for free. Several sites offer book cover makers, but they all seem to either want your email address, have poor resolution or offer only a few predefined views from which you must pick. I found one that with a little bit of “post production” work on your part will leave you with a very nice ebook cover or paperback book cover, much as you see above and in my sidebar. Now you can do your own book cover design, and see it in 3D. Let me show you how it’s done.
In a recent blog, Neil Patel shared an article titled: “Modern Online Marketing Education: 18 Courses and Resources”. There are only a few blogs I follow closely, and Neil’s is one of them. I know of no one who provides so much value so clearly. In his most recent post, his intent is clear given the title. Too many writers don’t understand that their success has as much to do about marketing as it does about writing well. That is why most books published on Amazon never sell more than 20 copies. Writing blogs can help you write better, but you have to know who you are targeting to sell.
My first novel has been the #1 bestseller in its category in the UK, and it has made it into the top 10 of nine Amazon bestseller lists worldwide. My sense is that when most US authors post their book to Amazon, they don’t think twice about their overseas or international sales. This is a mistake because there are a lot of big markets outside the United States. You can fall further behind or you can ramp your sales. About 10% of my volume is now coming from non-US Amazon sites.
I have not translated my novella into any other languages, and I have spent less than $10 on advertising outside the United States. Here are a few things you can do in about an hour to help ramp your own international book sales…
So this was cool… Last night one of my 12-year olds asked me what was my favorite book when I was her age. I told her Dune. The other book I thought of, though I was a bit older than 12 when I read it, was one of the few books I’ve read several times. It was Leon Uris’ Battle Cry. It is the story of Uris as a young man in the Marine Corps in some of the most vicious fighting in the Pacific during WWII. Though the book rambles a bit and is a bit choppy, I was deeply impressed by his depiction of coming of age in combat. I was also engaged by how he showed the development of the unit. A bunch of young men became an unrelenting fighting force.
My Vietnam War novella is small in size and stature compared to Battle Cry, but my story is also about young men coming of age in battle. In some ways, I’m sure, my novel is a product of Battle Cry and many other stories and life events.
For those of you who don’t remember him, Leon Uris was one of the big names of fiction in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. His books consistently hit the New York Times Bestseller lists and were made into movies.
I never imagined I’d see my first novel side-by-side with his on Amazon’s bestseller list, but it happened today.
My novel is climbing Amazon’s bestseller lists! Now at # 6.
To be clear, this is the “Kindle –> History –> Military –> Vietnam War” list, but it’s still sweet. Sales are erratic, but — after a bit of a slow down at the start of the month — averaging about 5 copies a day again.
I’ve also made it to number 9 on Amazon’s “Short Reads” list for history.
I published my novella in March after putting it through a review cycled at CritiqueCircle, and having my editor mark it up. I published via Amazon, and at the time I did so, I loaded seven keywords as they allow you to do to help potential customers find your book. I was simple-minded in my process and quickly picked seven words/phrases that I had thought would guide buyers to my book.
My book has bumped along slowly and erratically, ramping to roughly 3.5 copies a day. There have been other variables in play — for a week, I raised the price to $2.99, three times I’ve spent $10 on advertising (I know, big spender), etc.
Nothing has really had much of an impact other than the price increase. The day I did it I sold five books, then sales tapered off, so I went back to $.99.
About 10 days ago I decided to rigorously review the keywords I had loaded into Amazon for my novella. I set out to unequivocally convince myself that I had the best seven words to help drive sales.
The first thing I did was search on my keywords to see how far down the list my book showed up.
Ugh. It was bleak. Really bleak. My novel was six or more pages deep for all but one of my keywords.
I decided to start over.
To start over I first created a table in Excel in which I loaded all the relevant keywords I could think of. To be clear on these keywords: They had to be really relevant to my topic. It is a fine balance between picking words with high volume but words for which you will not rank, and for word for which you might rank well but will not attract many people who will buy your book. More on this below…
Then I loaded them into Google’s keyword planner tool and checked on their search volume. Of course, search volume on Google does not necessarily match search vol on Amazon, but it was a good starting point.
After that I used a tool that reports average monthly sales for books on Amazon for a given search word. This gave me insight into how many books are being sold that include a given search word. I loaded this info in beside the Google search vol. From there I ranked them: The ones with the highest sales volume at the top. The volume reported by Google’s tool mattered, but it was a distant second in my ranking process.
Then I began experimenting. I’m after one of the top four spots for each of my Amazon keywords because the top four books are “above the fold” (in SEO speak). That is, the top four titles you can see on your computer screen without scrolling. They are the ones that get far more sales volume than any other book lower on the page. This is both cause and effect: they are there because their sales are relatively high. Their sales are relatively high because they are in the top four of what Amazon presents.
Yes, it is tough because you have to break in somehow. And for that, I have no easy answers. All I can suggest is keep tinkering and testing as you find keywords for which you rank, and keep elbowing your way up the list.
When I got ready to change out my keywords, I actually started near the bottom of my list. That is, I first used words for which I was sure I was going to be the only (or one of a very few) books that would come up when potential buyers searched on, that keyword. I preferred to load keywords that I was sure (that I thought I was sure) were going to land me in one of the top four spots and were going to drive traffic to my site.
When you load new keywords in Amazon, it takes about six hours for them to process. So I generally check my progress twice a day, and I carefully tally the results as I go.
As an aside, one of my daughters was watching over my shoulder last night as I manipulated the data in Excel. She watched the cells automatically change colors as I worked, which she found intriguing. After a while, though, she said, “I thought you were writing. That’s not even English.” So goes the “writer’s” life.
After the first four days, I had managed to land at or near the top of a few pages. I was rocking the world. …sort of… The downside was that I was coming in at or near the top of pages for which the average monthly volume is 20 books or less. Hmm… That is a start and better than where I was, but still not so good. I had, though, proven to myself that I was learning how to control outcomes, which is important.
If the total monthly volume is less than 500 units, and I was not in the top four books listed, I would replace that keyword and try a word higher up my list. This has gone on for over a week now, and I’ve found a few keywords for which I can land in the top four or at least on the first page for pages/keywords that have materially volume.
As a result of this exercise, my weekly sales have climbed steadily. There is a very obvious spike that occurred the day after I started this exercise, so I’m sure this is having an impact. That said, you can’t judge your progress on the sales from one day; sales are too erratic.
Obviously, the words I had loaded initially were a bust. It is frustrating thinking about the sales I have already lost, but I have no one to blame but myself. Hopefully, what I’ve shared here will help you start faster with your book than I did with mine.
Some of the words I’ve migrated to as I’ve climbed my list have been bad misses. For instance, though the total vol might have been huge, my novel was two or more pages deep. Again, if I did not come in among the top four Amazon presents, I will drop that word and try a new one.
Two other points:
Words in your title and subtitle also act like keywords for search purposes on Amazon. So don’t duplicate those in your keyword list. So if you have not yet published your book, think very carefully about your title and subtitle for these reasons. I encourage you to do some testing before you settle on both.
As you’ve seen, I’ve made it to 6 on one of Amazon’s bestseller lists, and when I got up this morning and checked my sales, I’ve already sold five books today. Clearly getting my keywords right has had a huge impact on my sales, more so than any other promotional activity I’ve undertaken. And though five sales a day won’t land me on the New York Times bestseller list, it is about 50% more than what I was doing. All it took was some time and thought. I assume I’ll have to tweak them once every few months, but otherwise they’ll be quietly working for me as I’m working on my next novel.
Hope this helps! And please share any other tricks you have learned about Amazon’s keywords.
Update 3 Jan 2016: I have continued to tinker since I first wrote this article. You might think I’m going to tell you that I’m selling 100 copies a day due to what I’ve learned and my ongoing testing. I am not selling 100 copies a day. I’ve gotten to about 5.9 copies a day on average, which is pretty consistent. The standard deviation over the last 2 months is 2.5, so daily sales are pretty consistent. The good news is that sales are nice and steady. But I’ve learned a lot more too…
I also have learned to track my sales in the “Vietnam War” category of books. Though I did not explain it above, all of my keywords included “Vietnam War” because my novella is set in that conflict. There is no value to me to have a keyword such as “combat” without “Vietnam War”. Yes, if people search on “combat” my book will be included in their results, but it would probably be very low, and odds are low that they will buy my book. They could have actually been looking for “hand to hand combat” or “virtual combat” or “combat boots”. So I only care about results that include “Vietnam War” + “[keyword]”. And to be clear, I do not include “Vietnam War” with every keyword/phrase because it is in the title. Again, I’m only interested in potential buyers who are interested in a story about Combat in the Vietnam War.
Why does this matter? Because “Vietnam War” is very much the category of books my buyers are after. And it is a big category. Obviously, it is far bigger than any subcategory of “Vietnam War [Keyword]”. So…
In addition to tracking the performance of my specific keywords when coupled with “Vietnam War”, I also track just “Vietnam War”. Here is the punchline and the great news: As I have fine-tuned my keywords to climb the sales charts for each of my seven keywords/phrases, I have also climbed positions for the overall category of “Vietnam War”.
For a while, I was #1 for “Vietnam War”. During that period of time, what do you think was happening with my sales? Yes, those days I was selling about 10 copies a day. Of course, being #1 — and “above the fold” — is part of that virtuous cycle which keeps you at or near #1. Or it should.
I’ve since fallen back down. In fact, I fell way back down to about #20. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think part of it was that as I continued to tinker with my keywords, I picked some words that were not driving as many sales.
Amazon is also a dynamic place: Every day about 3K new books are published. That is a lot! Of course, there are lots of categories, so you are not competing with all of them. You can go to this Amazon site and drill down to get some insight into how many books are being published in each category. For instance, if I drill down into the category for which I got to #6, there is about one book being published a day in “Kindle–>History–>Military–>Vietnam War”. And I think Amazon rankings have a bias toward new books for a short time; I’ve seen new titles with few sales and no reviews bump my book down in the rankings for a few days. After a week, though, they are gone. In any event, you can use this method to see just how many titles are being published in various categories to plan your own keyword strategy.
Over the last three weeks I’ve actually worked my way back to some of the keywords I had in place when my sales were doing better, and I’ve managed to get back to #4 in the “Vietnam War” category.
Lastly, another conclusion I am drawing from all of this is that unless my short novel breaks out in the ‘general interest’ category, my daily sales are about as high as they are going to get. Being #1 for “Vietnam War” and having steady sales of about 6 copies with a standard deviation of about 2.5 tells me that I’ve probably tapped into about as much vol as I’m going to get unless the reading population at large latches onto my book, which I think extremely unlikely for a number of obvious reasons.
On the other hand, it seems to be an “evergreen” book that will continue to sell over time. This is great news because as I write more books, I’ve got one that will keep selling and showing up in Amazon in various ways, which will provide visibility to my subsequent books, which will help with sales of those books.
…I hope this update helps. I’ve still got much more to learn but wanted to give you some insight as to how things are progressing and what I’ve learned to this point. Good luck with your own sales!
I don’t normally do much off-the-cuff editorializing on my blog, but I’m intrigued by Amazon’s recent announcement that they are going to attempt to get rid of bogus reviews.
I think it is a great news. This means that serious novel writers will have less BS competition out there.
