How This Tool Made Me A Best Seller

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KDSpy is the tool that helped me reach best-seller status. It shows the number of books for a keyword and how well the top results sell, so you can pick keywords with demand and little competition. Then use the genre or the problem as the title itself, so a searcher sees an immediate promise to fix their problem. Here is the ratio I use, where to put the keywords, and what the cover should do.

Which tools are worth buying for self-publishing?

Fewer than you think. Tools cost money, some every year (domain names, email), and others once (the formatting tool I use). Many are free. You can easily be flooded with options, and each one takes time to learn.

I know it from my kitchen. I have a graveyard of gadgets: a deep fat fryer, slicers that cut my fingers, an apple peeler that sat on the shelf. Then I wanted to cut mangoes, which have an awkward core and a skin that sticks. I ordered a mango slicer for one dollar. Even a cheap tool takes time to learn. People online said to peel the mango first, then push down the slicer to remove the core. It worked. Choosing tools takes trial and error and listening to others.

How does KDSpy help me pick keywords?

KDSpy is a one-time purchase. For a keyword, it shows the ranking of the search results and how many books have been published for it in the Kindle store.

My method:

1. Take the number of books published for the keyword.
2. Count how many of the first 20 results have a sales rank in the top 100,000.
3. Divide the first number by the second. The lower the ratio, the better.

For nonfiction I like a ratio under 30. If 100 books use a keyword and 10 of the top 20 are in the top 100,000, the ratio is 10, which is a profitable keyword. This is my own rule of thumb, not an Amazon figure. It matters more in nonfiction, but it works for fiction too.

Take puppy training. Puppy training or puppy sleep training may be popular, and KDSpy shows whether few books cover the subject. For more on picking a topic, read which genres sell best and KDSpy changes everything.

Where do I use my keywords?

In the main title, the subtitle, the description and your chapter headings. Right keywords mean free traffic, because people search Amazon, one of the biggest search engines in the world, and your book appears because it matches. Keep the title field to the real title as it appears on your cover, with no extra keywords or claims such as “bestselling” (KDP title guidelines). While you sleep, search engines show your cover to people. I use Publisher Rocket to find keywords for Amazon ads.

Make the title clear. “Puppy Sleep Training” tells a reader what they get. “Finally, Sleep Well” with a puppy picture doesn’t, and the search engines won’t send people to it. Horror: the word vampires belongs in the title or subtitle if the book is about vampires. For genres such as shapeshifter romance, Amish romance or cozy mystery, readers search the genre and look at every book that uses it. This is not the time to get creative with the title. That can wait until you are famous.

Don’t stuff keywords. I did it in the past, and older books of mine may still have it. KDP’s content guidelines say it does not allow descriptive content meant to mislead customers, so put the main keyword naturally in the title or subtitle.

What should my cover do?

Earn the click. It is not about being artistic or telling the whole story. Imagine it as a thumbnail: can you read the value proposition clearly? Don’t use huge subtitles. The cover gets the click, the description and Look Inside get the sale, and the keyword is the most important of all.

What can you copy from the bestsellers?

KDSpy can take the top 20 or top 100 results for a search and show a cloud of the most-used keywords. Those books sell because people search for them and find them. Ignore well-known authors, who can put anything on the market and sell it.

I used these techniques on several books and got them to number one in their categories on Amazon. They still sell, with traffic from organic search. Don’t overlook it.

If you’d like help finding the right keywords for your own book, book a free 25-minute discovery call. Which tools made the biggest difference for you? Tell me in the comments.

I change my tools from time to time and update my affiliate links. You pay nothing extra, and I make a little money, which supports my YouTube channel.

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