I Wrote it; I Properly Formatted it; I Listed it; But No Sales. Why?

In 2012 I wrote three novels that were spinning around in my head. One I cranked out in three weeks after dreaming it one night. When I launched them I had no one to guide me on formatting and I made 100% of every mistake, even right rag. I was beyond embarrassed. So I search KDE for pre-formatted book templates and found some (located in earlier post on this blog) and reworked all three of my titles, and even got a good editor. So I launched them again, 1,2,4,1,2,1 would sell ever few weeks. WHAT! I’m an author and a good one why are people not buying my books?
Oh wait it’s not them but marketing. WHAT! So I bought two books “Crush it with Kindle” and “Sell More Books With Awesome – Amazon Descriptions”. The book that proved to have the greatest value was “Crush it with Kindle”. You can find both on Amazon for free. I am going to summarize some of the primary tips and suggest that to get the greatest benefit that you download the two books.

1. Keywords: In Createspace and KDE you are allowed to use keywords in the book information so people searching for content can find your book. Do not use the same keywords for both Createspace and KDE, it’s redundant. So suppose you have 5 keywords to use in each, choose 5 different keywords or phrases. Do not use words that are already in the title, as those are already in the search matrix. So how do you choose your keywords? Don’t just make them up off the top of your head based on context of your novel. Keywords are most common words used in searches for that topic. Take for example my book “Still With Eyes Closed”. Keywords would include; [medical science, genetics, romance, etc] But to understand what are the best choices use Amazon search itself. Go to Amazon’s landing page and choose the category “Kindle Books” and in the search window start typing in the words that you feel would make good keywords for your book. Now notice the drop down selection of words showing up? Those ARE the most common searched for phrases; the 1st one is always the best. Google uses the exact same matrix and Google will index Amazon for you. Repeat these steps for every keyword, please do not rush this process as this is how you are found. Also keyword technology is based on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) it is how the entire Internet indexing works so it would not hurt to learn the basics of SEO.
2. Book Description: In the two books I suggested to download they give power words to use in your description to draw readers in. Think of the movie voice overs where the booming voice is using words like “Thriller; Suspenseful” Use the books and incorporate some of the power words. But be careful not to over use. Then write a good description of your book in 3rd person using HTML tags. Again SEO comes into play and it will help get your book noticed. In all three of my books I used HTML for the description and make a key phrase stand out at the top to grab fly by reader’s attention. In the above book “Crush it” it goes through the steps to create an HTML description.
3. Book Categories Createspace: (I will deal with KDE next.) Createspace categories are straight forward so pick two that best fit your book…no STOP! Don’t. Why? Okay you wrote a great life testimony story, like my book “David’s mark”. Naturally it falls in the category of “True Life Stories” or “Child Abuse” etc. But look at how many titles are in those top main categories. If you drop your title into a category with 345,000+ other titles how are you going to stand out? What to do? As an example take “David’s mark”. Its top primary category is “True Crime”. In that category there are few titles listed and they are not quick sellers, the goal of category selection is the ability to hit #1 in that given category. Choosing a category with hundreds of thousands of titles you may never hit #1 but a category with fewer books means you have a better chance of hitting #1. “David’s mark” has hit #1 in its category once that I am aware of and top 40 several times and top 100 nearly every day. These figures are updated hourly. So take your time to study the categories in Createspace and compare them to the given live categories on Amazon. Choose categories with the fewest books but that would still apply. Ensure that the exact same tree and categories exist on both the live site and Createspace.
4. KDE Categories: Scream now because this is going to get confusing. Nearly most of the categories listed in the KDE book description area DO NOT match the Amazon live categories. Again; nearly most of the categories listed in the KDE book description area DO NOT match the Amazon live categories. So why? I have not found a valid explanation anywhere, but I have a theory which I’ll explain in a minute. But first you have to put your book in KDE categories no matter what. So how to do it? Start with Amazon’s landing page>Kindle Books>Then use the tree on the left to navigate through the categories. Keep a browser tab open to the category that you think will best fit with the fewest titles listed and then open a new browser tab and go to your KDE book description options and see if that same category exist..no..go back to the Amazon tree browser tab and choose another category…go back to KDE…go back to..get the idea. You have work to do going back and forth and you are going to get frustrated. It took me about 4 hours to match all three of my titles with existing categories. BUT, I don’t want to spend all that time searching…fine drop it in any category in KDE. Where does the Amazon Live Tree drop your title? Who knows, but it will end up somewhere, but not where you intended it to be. Take the time, spend the time to do the work and place it correctly. So why don’t the KDE categories match the Amazon Live Tree? As I mentioned nothing has ever been put out by Amazon and Amazon has stated for the last 5 years they are working on it. But here is my theory. In the beginning Amazon started selling books, hard copies and eBooks. Then Amazon created Kindle and Kindle readers meaning many new categories on the tree. They were added. Then Amazon started the indie author program and set up KDE. In this new beginning KDE categories matched Amazon live categories, but something changed. The Amazon Live Tree kept growing and more categories were added, some were combined some were deleted. Okay Amazon needs to update the KDE categories, NO STOP! Changing the KDE categories will delete the title listings from the system completely. Why? The matrix that the KDE tree was built on allowed additions but not deletions or restructuring of categories. I believe that the KDE code of categories is built firmly into the titles themselves. Deleting a category will delete the titles in that category if the KDE system is altered; therefore I do not believe Amazon will be able to alter the KDE categories. So each author must make the best and closest possible choice that they can. Nevertheless they must do the work.
5. Book Cover: Spend time here folks. I know some graphic designers that I can direct you to, but don’t default choose. I see lots of titles with covers almost the exact same. Research this using the above suggested books or at least hire someone here. You won’t eat food that looks like poop, don’t make your book cover look like poop.

These are some of the highlights from the above books. I suggest reading the entire books to take advantage of all the suggestions as there are a lot of ideas I did not cover that can help in sales as well.