What is it that Amazon KDP is hiding from us? Now, we’re blowing the lid on the biggest Amazon KDP secret.
Today's topic has three points and you're going to want to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to exactly how to go about setting up your books to get them sold. So that's the reason why in today's article, we're going to discuss Blowing The Lid on The Biggest Amazon KDP Secret.
By the end of this article, you're going to know exactly what this Amazon secret is. You're going to know how to apply it to your specific books. And you're going to feel great setting your books up to sell as many copies as possible as you implement this particular secret.
If you want to explode your self-publishing, one of the best ways to do it is to grab a copy of my Self-Publishing Checklist. The thing is that about a year ago, I was helping one of my clients whose name is Sarah with her particular books.
She was having a lot of difficulties in terms of getting them to sell. She was writing the book; she was still in the writing phase of these particular books at least at that time. But she was thinking, how do I even know that my books are going to sell?
This is incredibly common among authors. You have an idea either on the one side that you can write about however it is and then it will sell. The other idea is worrying that if you put it on the market, how do you even know that people are going to want to even read it at all once it hits the market?
Check out this related article: Breaking Down KDP Publishing "Algorithm"
That is exactly the reason why we are going to discuss Amazon's biggest KDP secret. So, let's get to the 3 points. The first thing is that Amazon shares the basic sales rank of every single book they have which is an incredibly important thing.
So many of the people I do Discovery Sessions with asking the question, what even is a basic sales rank? The answer is that we rank every book on Amazon from the absolute number one bestseller of all books on Amazon down to 50 million books or however many books it might be.
Then what you discover is that you can figure out within your type of book where exactly the best-sellers are in terms of ranking. What we want, what we're looking for here is in the top hundred thousand. This is an incredibly important area for your books.
Because as you're looking through this ranking inside of the category or the type of books that you're writing or considering writing, those books that are in the top hundred thousand are making a sale a day.
Buying Books In The Top Hundred Thousand
So, by looking at what they're doing and books of even higher ranking within our same niche, they're telling us what exactly people are currently buying. If you ask your friends and family and say, are you going to buy my book when it comes out? They will of course say they're going to buy it.
And when they read it, they will say it was an amazing book. The problem is that it doesn't necessarily connect to what happens when your book is put out on Amazon. Suddenly, you're like, where are all the sales all of my friends and family told me?
It was a wonderful book and I'm sure it will do great. The problem is they're trying to be encouraging but they may not be the ideal target reader that you would like to have purchased your book. So, then what are those people buying?
Well, they are buying the books that are in that top hundred thousand. That is where their money is going and they're voting with their dollars through each of these books. So, we want to pay close attention to what it's doing and Amazon gives this information away completely for free.
If you look at any book down below, it'll show you the basic sales rank for that book. In both the Kindle the KDP Kindle version and the print version, you can find exactly how the book is doing. Or you can use my favorite tool which is KDSpy.
Check out this related article: 3 Amazon KDP Strategies That DON'T WORK in 2022! *Try These Instead*
This tool makes it possible with a single click to immediately get the rankings and all of those categories. Or search terms so that the books that are showing up within are incredibly powerful ones that we were looking at within categories.
The second thing is within the search area, Amazon will show you the rankings there too. Not just in terms of what are the books that are the top ranking in the category but also for a search term. So, if it might be alien warfare or something like that, you can type that into Amazon.
And when you hit the search result, Amazon will pull up the books that it feels are the closest match for that exact keyword. Then with KDSpy, we can go in again and pull in those top hundreds. So, we can then sort by seeing how many of them are in the top hundred thousand.
That basic sales rank combined with the keyword starts to give us an idea if our book is in the same genre or subgenre as these books that we're seeing on Amazon. It gives us a fantastic way of figuring out whether or not our book would sell.
If it looked and had the same feel. If it had similar keywords that were in the title. If the description, the bio, some of the reviews, and all of these things are giving us information that we can use on Amazon. This is incredibly important because it's showing you what your competitors are doing and the money that they're making.
Shooting Ads And Targeting Keywords
And the absolute secret of today, the most important one is the fact and I'll even give a secret bonus one today. But the big one is you can look at the reviews, so you take your competitors’ books and see what they did not like about their books and if their book is on the same page.
For example, I was doing this with a self-help client who was writing books on self-help. We looked at the best self-help books in this exact area and what did we discover? Well, we discovered among the self-help books on Amazon people were complaining about one of their main competitors being repetitive.
Where too much of this or other ones would be too basic or they simply were not telling enough stories. Showing how practically to use the things which you can then reverse and use in your description.
So, this is the first big secret that so many authors do not bother to do. Look at what your competitors are complaining about, their reviewers are complaining about in particular. Here's a key power tip, you're going to look at the one-star reviews that bring in a lot of trolls.
People who are like, the book came in the mail and it was damaged. But that doesn't tell you about your book itself. The two-star reviews are people who are giving really honest reviews on the book. The people who love your book usually it's in the four-star range.
It's not just friends, family, or others who are giving five-star reviews. But, with these four stars, these are people who like the book. They may even be able to give some ideas of things that can be improved. You may be thinking, what does that book of my competitors have anything to do with my book?
The answer is you're going to want to specifically leverage the power of Amazon and it’s telling you here's what you can do to improve. To come out with an even better book than your competitors. Because our goal is not to take the entire cake of sales but just a small little slice.
Check out this related article: How To Sell ebooks without going through Amazon!
That would be completely sufficient for me and you in terms of it. But before, this involves even just the planning phases of the book itself when we're just getting started. We're pulling the whole thing through which is something that so many authors don't even consider.
But I did promise a bonus tip in addition to the secret. This is something I've been discussing in the coaching group. It's that you can look at what your competitors are shooting advertisements against.
So, when you search terms and you look up books that are in the same category, you'll notice the first results are sponsored. These are advertisements and advertisers do not generally waste money. What they're doing is they're shooting ads that they believe are highly targeted.
The books that they're advertising for, they believe are good matches perhaps for those exact keywords. They will also give you an idea of which keywords you should be targeting if you are looking to get your book to sell as well.
They're just giving it all away. Amazon is hiding nothing here. All of this information is free and so many authors completely ignore it. My question for you is which one of these secrets, which one of these techniques is something that you have not yet done?
Is it a matter of looking at the reviews? Is it a matter of looking at the advertisements? Have you ever tried out the tool KDSpy? If you have it, it's worth checking out. Also, check out my previous article about Ex Employee Warns Us About Amazon KDP.