Reading time: 2+ hot & sweaty summer minutes 🍉
Welcome back to the Weekly Book Business Brief—your weekly shot of strategy, tools, and real talk for authors building a book-based business.
We've officially hit the stretch of summer where the Tennessee air feels like soup, and Mr. Corder insists it's too hot to grill (but a gal's gotta eat--what do I do?! 🤣).
Seriously, I hope you're staying cool and enjoying some family and/or vacation time.
My motivation level has been a little lower these past few weeks, and I've stayed focused because once I get going, I really do love doing "all the things." Can you relate?
Our sweet Shadow is a month into chemo and while his disposition is always sunny, I can tell he's on the struggle bus. Hopefully this will work and we'll have him much longer than the original prognosis.
Which means I'm getting a lot of work done ... from the couch and the porch.
Hopefully you cranked out some awesome A+ Content from last week's message. Can we agree it makes a book page look extra legit?
If you did get it done, your book page is now dressed for a party. This week, I want to make sure readers can actually find the party.
📚 CATEGORIES + KEYWORDS: HOW READERS FIND YOUR BOOK
When you uploaded your book, KDP asked you to choose categories and type in 7 keywords. If you're like most authors, you picked them in about 90 seconds (willy-nilly, if we're being honest, and it can't just be me), hit publish, and never looked at them again.
Hmmm. Well, here's the rub--those categories and keywords connect readers with books. Leaving the effectiveness of them to chance is like gambling in Vegas...the house (Amazon) is gonna win. You're going to pay for a lot of overpriced pasta.
So let's chat a minute about why those two "little settings" matter so much:
→ Your categories decide which "shelf" your book lives on (and which books it sits next to), as well as which bestseller list it competes in.
→ Your keywords decide whether your book appears in the search bar when a reader types in their problem.
When you hit the mark on both, Amazon becomes a veritable sales team, and it works for you around the clock. And just like A+ Content, updating them costs exactly zero dollars. #letsgo
🎯 THE 20-MINUTE, 4-STEP VISIBILITY TUNE-UP
→ 1. See where your book is shelved right now. Open your book's Amazon page, scroll to Product Details, and look at your categories. Are they specific to your reader, or did your book land somewhere nebulous like "Self-Help?"
→ 2. Find the categories ("shelves") you can dominate. Niche, or sub, categories have fewer competing titles. And they are where your orange #1 bestseller banner comes from. A subcategory in which you can hit the top 10 beats a larger shelf where you can't even crack the top 100. (We've talked about how I feel about having a "bestseller" without the matching monies.) Remember: You get rich in a niche--a specialist always makes more than a generalist. This applies to the 'Zon, too.
→ 3. Refresh your 7 keywords. A keyword isn't a word, it's a phrase or "keyword string." Think of it this way, when you search for something you want, you ask "how to negotiate a raise," not "raise." Your reader, at 11pm, has a problem to solve. You could even add "how to" to your subtitle and if it's an effective subtitle, it'll make a great keyword.
→ 4. Let AI do the heavy lifting. Who else has a boyfriend named Claude these days? Try this prompt: "You are an Amazon book marketing expert. My book helps [your reader profile] achieve [specific outcome]. Suggest 10 specific Amazon categories where it could realistically rank (then recommend the top 3 I should choose for each of the versions of my book), and 7 keyword phrases my reader would actually search." Don't just input them, though. You'll want to take it from there—you know your reader best!
✏️ Your To-Do
Run the tune-up above on one book this week. Categories and keywords can be updated right inside your KDP bookshelf. You can have yours refreshed before the weekend.
Oh yeah, and refresh them monthly (and if not monthly, then quarterly). Just this one action can increase your book's discoverability by a lot, which will mean more sales! 😉
If you want a second set of eyes on your picks, bring 'em to the monthly Live Q&A—one good question can save you months of struggle. And the full Amazon visibility system lives inside Publishing Ph.D. (code subscriber still saves you 30%).
📚 BOOK SPOTLIGHT: THE BESTSELLING BOOK FORMULA
If this week's topic has you wondering what else goes into a book that sells on purpose and more often, The Bestselling Book Formula provides the four keys that'll help you combine great metadata with great book content.
👉 Grab The Bestselling Book Formula on Amazon.
Have a wonderful week climbing your categories, and I'll see you next Tuesday!
To your success!
