Optimize Your Amazon Book Page

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To optimize your Amazon book page, treat the description as a sales letter, add an author bio with your photo, make the look inside professional, get honest reviews, offer more than one format, and use Amazon ads to see where buyers drop off. The goal of the page is not to inform readers, it is to sell the book. Here is each part and the mistakes I made on my first page. If you want to format your description for KDP and check its length, my book description formatter does both.

What mistakes did my first sales page have?

My first sales page was terrible. I revealed all of the details of what was in the book, but a description isn’t about describing the book. It is about convincing the person that this is something they need. It is a sales letter, even though we call it a description.

The reader deep down doesn’t want to buy. They are looking for a reason not to. As they read, you answer their objections so that by the end they feel they must have the book. My description was “here’s exactly what I cover,” which is not a properly optimized page. I also had no biography, no labels for the chapters in the look inside, and no call to action. See non-fiction book descriptions that sell books for the formula and KDP’s limits.

How do I write a description that sells?

Answer the objections. If it is a puppy training book, say the tips work for all kinds of puppies, so the owner of a poodle sees it is for their dog. Use bullet points that promise benefits, not features, and don’t give away what is inside the book. Break it up instead of a wall of text.

Then end with a call to action. Tell them: if you want to solve this problem, go to the top of the page and click Buy Now. If nobody tells them what to do, people sit there and do nothing, and a plain line like that can give sales a bump in my experience. Everything in the description must be true. Promise only what the book delivers, as I do with my coaching, which has a 7-day money-back guarantee.

What else belongs on the page?

Author bio. Use your face and build a brand around your name. Readers look for a bio, and if they find none you lose some. When people Google you, they should connect you with the kind of books you write. That is why I talk about content marketing. If you want to add images below the description, KDP’s free A+ Content is covered in is Amazon A+ Content worth it.

A professional look inside. The look inside shows the table of contents first, so each chapter heading should work like a small title that sells the book. Even fiction writers who skip chapter titles may find they pull readers in. Make the copyright page look like a publisher’s, with something like “Your Last Name Publishing”. I use “CAB Publishing”. You want your book to look like the ones from major publishers.

Reviews. The goal is a few honest reviews that show the book delivers the promised value. My aim for any book is to land between three and five stars, organically. Don’t leave a book at zero for long. Amazon’s community guidelines say they remove reviews from people with a personal connection or financial interest, prohibit paid reviews, and say a free advance copy can’t require a review. Reviewers must have spent $50 on Amazon.com in the past 12 months. So build a small group of real readers and an email list, give them a copy, and ask for an honest review with no requirement that it be positive. Don’t ask friends and family.

Prices and formats. My targets are at least $5 on each paperback and $2 on each Kindle sale, whichever country the sale is in. A shopper often sees the low Kindle price and then buys the audiobook or paperback. The more versions you have, including a hardback, the more credibility, because readers see the formats they like.

How do Amazon ads show me what is wrong?

Ads show how many people see your thumbnail, how many click, and how many buy. Many impressions with no clicks tells you the cover, title or reviews are the problem. Clicks with no sales tell you the thumbnail worked but the sales page doesn’t. I watch whether the ad earns more in royalties than it costs. The break-even depends on your royalty and your cost per click. Early on, even breaking even is a win, which is how I suggest you measure success in self-publishing.

Do I need a profitable niche first?

It helps. My goal with any book is to make money from it, and you can shift your title and genre to make an unprofitable niche more profitable. But even then, optimize the page. The goal isn’t a million copies. It is to increase the chance that each visitor buys. None of this has to be complicated, whatever you’ve heard. That idea is the greatest misinformation about book publishing.

Have you optimized your Amazon page? Tell me what you tried in the comments. If you would like me to look over your Amazon page with you, book a free 25-minute discovery call.

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