FAST KDP Income Growth

You may already have your books on KDP but they are not generating sales. Here is how one author got fast KDP income growth after more editing and paid promotions did nothing.

Editing The Book Many Times

Jessica told me she was considering giving up completely and not even finishing her second book. That is why I’m putting out this article on fast KDP income growth.

Several years ago, Jessica, who soon became one of my coaching clients, put her very first book on the market. She was getting no sales on her Kindle book. She hadn’t even published a paperback, not realizing how much more money you can make when you have both, and she figured she would start with the Kindle book alone. She was getting discouraged. Whatever she was writing, nobody seemed to want it, so maybe she just wasn’t a good enough author.

The first thing she decided was another round of editing. She had already edited the book many times before it went on the market, since she assumed it wouldn’t sell if it had mistakes. That was a mistake too. We don’t need infinite rounds of edits. We do need to get rid of the major errors, but some top-selling books have mistakes in them. I read two books most days and regularly find mistakes, yet I keep reading those authors. So it’s not a game-changer. She took the book through another edit, reformatted it, and put it back on the market. It made no difference.

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The second thing was a clever idea. She had heard of authors paying someone on Fiverr to promote their book to thousands of followers on social media, which would somehow drive sales. She paid, got in the queue, and was excited to see what would happen. They posted her book in all sorts of Facebook groups, and it had no impact on sales either. Now she had wasted time and money on editing and on promotions.

Doing A Coaching Session

She was close to giving up when she started watching some of my material on this exact subject, and decided to book a coaching session.

We discovered the issue very quickly: keywords. I asked, “What keywords are you targeting with your book?” She said, “What do you mean by keywords? I just wrote a book and put a title on it.” That was when I explained the importance of knowing exactly who your audience is. Even though you think you’re just writing a book, you’re getting into sales and marketing if you want to succeed, unless you’re one of the miracle people who is discovered by a publisher without paying any attention to marketing.

I showed her how to use KDSpy and we looked at where her book belonged, and at her competition. For a book on puppy training, “puppy training” may be a keyword, but a longer one like “puppy training to protect poodles” is a long-tail keyword, which is easier to compete on with other authors writing on the same topic.

Check out this related article: Myths About Success in Self-Publishing

She wasn’t using any keywords in her title or subtitle, which are incredibly powerful. People search for books on Amazon all the time, and when they search for those keywords, we want your book near the top, even without ads. Even if they don’t find us by searching, when they see the cover and title, those should signal that this is the kind of book they want. So the first thing we did was change the title to include the keywords KDSpy showed were the most profitable.

For some books it’s difficult, because some niches nobody searches for. If your book is How to Feed Your Anteater, KDSpy will show that nobody is searching for it, so there is low competition but no sales. You might know everything about feeding an anteater, but nobody is going to buy the book.

Seeing A Huge Bump In Sales

What we want are keywords where lots of people are buying books and not many books compete. Then we put our book in that area. Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean it’s too late. For Jessica it was a bit of a stretch, but we moved her book into a specific, profitable niche.

Then we started running ads. We used Publisher Rocket to get the keywords for the ads, lots of keywords related to the first one, and to find categories to add her book to. With ads running, you see impressions, how many people see the cover, how many click, and of those who click, how many buy.

Check out this related article: Creating An Email List For Self-Publishers

She found working through the tools a challenge, and we went through them in our coaching sessions. In the end she got it all aligned. She did not hit a home run, but she saw a huge bump in sales, something she hadn’t seen from more editing or from paying someone to post her book across social media. What you need is aligned keywords, ads, and a clear target market for your specific book.

She realized it wasn’t the quality of her writing. Her writing had been fine many edits ago, and she didn’t need as much editing as she thought. It was the marketing. And that motivated her to start her second book.

What have you tried to get a bump in sales for your KDP book? Let me know in the comments. If you’d like me to look at your keywords the way I did with Jessica, book a free 25-minute discovery call.

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