by Miral Sattar • March 17, 2015 • Follow miralsattar
Published in Events, Publishing Tips • No comments
Last night on #indiechat we had Penny Sensavieri of A Marketing Expert give us a tutorial on how to optimize your Amazon keywords and categories to sell books.
Basically, the chat blew our mind. What we discovered during our conversation is that success is defined differently in many ways.
A full recap of our chat. Remember, we’re here every Tuesday, 9pm EST. Just use the hashtag #indiechat.
Tips from Penny Sensavieri
Keywords:
Authors can add up to 7 keywords on Amazon, but think of it as keyword strings. Users don’t search by single words
Here's another one on the romance AND search I just shared, you can see what all comes up. #indiechat pic.twitter.com/g6fpTFeWg0
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
If you're searching for a biz book about organizing you aren't likely to search "organizing" on Amazon because that's too broad #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
You're more likely to search business and getting organized – right? #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
Your Description:
Now, for ur book description – if u have a fiction book this gets tricky, BUT u can add a descriptor to reviews #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
So, 4 example: "Most amazing book I've ever read!" Sally Reviews – romance and cowboys. That's a rough example #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
So, 4 example: "Most amazing book I've ever read!" Sally Reviews – romance and cowboys. That's a rough example #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
For you non-fic people, it's easier. You can add the keywords to your description. Easy #indiechat pic.twitter.com/U7snIr0BKE
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
Categories:
You can have up to two categories on Amazon. If you can’t add it to the front end you can email the folks at Author Central to manually add them for you.
Ok so now let's chat about categories. The uber geek in me loves this part. So you allowed to have 2 categories for your book; #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
And there are a few ways to search this on Amazon – the first is here, click this link: http://t.co/l7UDa5KixX #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
But, I want you to also try this. so, go to http://t.co/zJiYK2nuiH and highlight Kindle – see screenshot #indiechat pic.twitter.com/3RvbvF8QxZ
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
But, I want you to also try this. so, go to http://t.co/zJiYK2nuiH and highlight Kindle – see screenshot #indiechat pic.twitter.com/3RvbvF8QxZ
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
This takes you to a whole dif side of Amazon, with all new categories. It's really cool. And some VERY narrow categories – #indiechat
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
Check out women in biz Out of the millions of books on Amazon there are only 740 books in that cat #indiechat pic.twitter.com/l9QURkntYt
— Penny Sansevieri (@Bookgal) March 18, 2015
According to Penny, narrow categories can help you gain visibility and hitting trigger algorithms on Amazon.
We had a lot of folks stop by for #indiechat.
Follow #indiechat and @bookgal right now for a quick tutorial on using keywords/metadata effectively on Amazon.
— Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) March 18, 2015
I came up with my keywords using Google suggest, but this is much more specific. Great way to drill down to your target audience. #IndieChat
— Judith Gaines (@jpg_writer) March 18, 2015
Oh this is awesome info ! #indiechat
— lmpreston (@LM_Preston) March 18, 2015
@Bookgal @BiblioCrunch @miralsattar Thanks for the great chat & useful info. I'm off now to play with my keywords;) #IndieChat
— Judith Gaines (@jpg_writer) March 18, 2015
You can download Penny Sensavieri’s guide on Bibliocrunch.
Lover of books. CEO & founder of Bibliocrunch. Love storytelling in all its forms. Formerly TIME. I'm a new media entrepreneur who has worked in the media industry for 11 years. My mission is simple – to innovate the publishing industry with technology. My company has been featured in BBC World News, Money Magazine, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Forbes, WSJ, MediaBistro, PBS, Columbia Journalism Review, The Next Web, Publishers Weekly, and a bunch of other places. Bibliocrunch was also selected as The Next Big Thing in media by the Paley Center. I also used to run a popular South Asian culture blog called Divanee. Before I ran my own company and became a mom, I used to be on the board for several literacy organizations, and wrote a LOT more. Hopefully, when things are calmer I can go back to that! :)