WEBVTT

1
00:00:07.660 --> 00:00:08.850
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Okay.

2
00:00:12.030 --> 00:00:19.549
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Hello, everyone welcome to another Science Fiction week session, the will.

3
00:00:19.670 --> 00:00:22.239
Emilio at ProWritingAid: We'll wait a few minutes before we start.

4
00:00:22.772 --> 00:00:32.020
Emilio at ProWritingAid: But in the meantime, if you can see me and hang and hear us, please drop your name and location in the chat.

5
00:00:36.450 --> 00:00:43.519
Emilio at ProWritingAid: I'm going to share some links with you in the chat, and we will start the session in in just a moment.

6
00:00:45.720 --> 00:00:53.190
Hank Marcacci: I'm seeing people from all over the world here. That's very exciting. I see Venezuela, St. Louis, Canada. I'm from Atlanta. It's exciting to see someone from there.

7
00:00:59.230 --> 00:01:04.290
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Perfect really, really excited as well to see everyone from

8
00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:11.430
Emilio at ProWritingAid: from from so many places I'm in in Scotland. So it's quite

9
00:01:12.165 --> 00:01:15.978
Emilio at ProWritingAid: far away from from Atlanta. But

10
00:01:17.310 --> 00:01:23.870
Emilio at ProWritingAid: but that's the that's the magic of of the Internet that we can connect in real time, despite I agree.

11
00:01:25.670 --> 00:01:32.710
Hank Marcacci: It's so exciting. And what I love about this and what we're about to talk about today, Emilio, is that I mean the concepts we're talking about work, no matter where you live.

12
00:01:32.820 --> 00:01:43.810
Hank Marcacci: I mean this whole idea of selling books online, this whole idea of marketing everything. It's fantastic because you're not locked to a certain area. I love it because we see people come from all over the world, and these are things that we can help out with.

13
00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:46.750
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Absolutely, absolutely

14
00:01:47.180 --> 00:01:51.500
Emilio at ProWritingAid: and and also like the one of the the

15
00:01:51.670 --> 00:02:04.629
Emilio at ProWritingAid: like. The beauty of of the topic as well, is that you? This is not the 1st time that you that that we have you. You've presented for other writer weeks for different genres. So.

16
00:02:04.630 --> 00:02:05.300
Hank Marcacci: I spoke.

17
00:02:05.590 --> 00:02:07.902
Emilio at ProWritingAid: It's not something that

18
00:02:08.780 --> 00:02:12.109
Emilio at ProWritingAid: that is tied to Science Fiction only, which is great.

19
00:02:13.150 --> 00:02:30.199
Hank Marcacci: Work for any genre. However, science Fiction is my favorite genre, so I'm a little partial to it. But that being said, it does work, even if you're not fiction. But we're gonna put a science fiction twist on it today and really talk about how that applies specifically to science fiction for all our Science Fiction authors out there.

20
00:02:30.920 --> 00:02:41.200
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Amazing, really, really looking forward to the presentation. But first, st let's go over a few housekeeping note.

21
00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:59.570
Emilio at ProWritingAid: So 1st of all, if you want to access the replace. Please note that we will be adding them to the hub once we are once they're finished. So just having, mind you, hours to process them.

22
00:02:59.570 --> 00:03:22.059
Emilio at ProWritingAid: So if if you can see the replay right away, just check after a few hours or after a day, and you should have it in the hub, and the replays will be in the Hub until the 20th of September. After that you will find them in the writing a community at circle for all members.

23
00:03:23.510 --> 00:03:27.210
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Also, if you are a premium or premium pro user

24
00:03:28.880 --> 00:03:32.266
Emilio at ProWritingAid: well, 1st of all, all the sessions between

25
00:03:32.890 --> 00:03:43.239
Emilio at ProWritingAid: until tomorrow are free for everyone to attend. But the sessions on Friday are limited for premium and premium pro users.

26
00:03:43.770 --> 00:04:04.699
Emilio at ProWritingAid: If you want to attend, and you're not a premium or premium pro user. You can upgrade until Friday morning to gain access. And if you're already a premium or premium pro user. You will receive an email on Friday morning with the instructions for attending the the live sessions on the premium day.

27
00:04:05.772 --> 00:04:12.569
Emilio at ProWritingAid: We also have a special offer for all our non premium users

28
00:04:12.730 --> 00:04:18.560
Emilio at ProWritingAid: as part of the Science Fiction writers week, you can get 15% off

29
00:04:18.570 --> 00:04:23.862
Emilio at ProWritingAid: your yearly or or sorry yearly premium. April

30
00:04:24.730 --> 00:04:34.689
Emilio at ProWritingAid: subscription, and you only need to use the code Sfw. 2024, or a link that we will share in the

31
00:04:34.740 --> 00:04:39.370
Emilio at ProWritingAid: in in the chat, and it's also on the hub. So if if you

32
00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:52.239
Emilio at ProWritingAid: don't decide today, but you tomorrow, you want to, you decide that you want to upgrade. You can find the link in the hub as well, and the offer will end in September 27. By again.

33
00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:52.830
Hank Marcacci: Have the money.

34
00:04:52.830 --> 00:04:58.779
Emilio at ProWritingAid: You join the premium day, and you're not premium premium pro user yet.

35
00:04:59.303 --> 00:05:02.900
Emilio at ProWritingAid: You have until Friday morning to join.

36
00:05:04.020 --> 00:05:04.880
Emilio at ProWritingAid: And

37
00:05:04.890 --> 00:05:14.554
Emilio at ProWritingAid: also, if you want to keep talking about science fiction, you can join us and our circle community. You just need to log in using your providing it.

38
00:05:16.590 --> 00:05:17.490
Emilio at ProWritingAid: credentials.

39
00:05:17.610 --> 00:05:37.839
Emilio at ProWritingAid: If you don't have a prowriting it account yet, or if you can remember the the username, you can get in touch with us, or you can create a an account. But you just need to use the the same credentials as providing it.

40
00:05:39.680 --> 00:05:42.120
Emilio at ProWritingAid: so that is it for

41
00:05:42.170 --> 00:05:43.590
Emilio at ProWritingAid: the

42
00:05:44.800 --> 00:05:57.859
Emilio at ProWritingAid: for the housekeeping. Oh, one more thing. If you need any help, you can drop us a message in the QA. Here, or you can email us at hello operating at.com.

43
00:05:59.078 --> 00:06:13.379
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Also, if you have a question for our speaker, Hank, you can use the QA. Box so that they don't get lost in the in the chat, and you will find the button on the center of your screen.

44
00:06:14.342 --> 00:06:19.977
Emilio at ProWritingAid: If you want to chat with us, you can use the chat. Just make sure that

45
00:06:20.380 --> 00:06:26.550
Emilio at ProWritingAid: you send it to everyone, or your message will come to us by default

46
00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:54.220
Emilio at ProWritingAid: and also check the the Science Fiction writers. Week chat for you need regarding Science Fiction week. So so that's all for housekeeping. Now, I want to thank Hank for joining us and thank everyone for joining us. We love having you here, and I'm very, very excited to introduce you to our next speaker, Hank Mcatty.

47
00:06:54.744 --> 00:06:59.460
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Hank is a data engineer turned Amazon best-selling author.

48
00:06:59.460 --> 00:07:14.079
Emilio at ProWritingAid: He writes in several genres, including Science Fiction on Amazon, Kdp. As product manager of publisher Rocket. He's always on the lookout for how authors can better connect with readers who will love their work.

49
00:07:14.210 --> 00:07:23.490
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Hank was a presenter as well at our last crime writers week earlier in the year in the year. Thank you for coming, Hank. We're really thrilled to have you back.

50
00:07:24.330 --> 00:07:27.140
Hank Marcacci: Thanks so much, Amelio, and am I good to go ahead and share my screen.

51
00:07:27.570 --> 00:07:32.599
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Yes, absolutely. Let me stop sharing mine, and you can.

52
00:07:33.220 --> 00:07:33.760
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Wonderful.

53
00:07:33.760 --> 00:07:34.650
Hank Marcacci: Fall. Well.

54
00:07:35.180 --> 00:07:52.870
Hank Marcacci: we're extremely excited to be here. Like, Amelia said. We've presented several other genres. But science fiction, I mean, don't tell the other genres. Science Fiction is my favorite here. Give me just a second to make this full screen, and we'll go ahead and get started. Emilio, can you let me know if you can see this.

55
00:07:54.400 --> 00:07:55.670
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Yes, I can see it.

56
00:07:56.540 --> 00:08:17.159
Hank Marcacci: Wonderful. Just a second here, all right. Well again. Thank you all so much for joining in. I've got a special spot in my heart for Science Fiction. It's my favorite genre. I quite enjoy it. Love to read it, love to write it, and also love to look at the market, and some of the trends and different things that are happening there. And what we're going to talk about today is the art to science fiction keywords and categories.

57
00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:32.569
Hank Marcacci: And the reason that this is so important is this is how you can get discovered on Amazon, and what I mean by that by when I say discovered is, I mean people that have never heard of you. They don't know your book. They're not your friends and family. These aren't people on your mailing list.

58
00:08:32.570 --> 00:08:56.370
Hank Marcacci: These are people who for the 1st time are finding you on Amazon just when they're browsing around. They see your book, and they said, I love that I'd like to read that, and they check it out. And we're going to talk about all about how we can make sure your book is getting in front of the right readers so that they can look at you, see your book and decide whether or not they want to buy. So that's an important part of discovery there is how we make sure our book is popping in front of the right readers for our book.

59
00:08:56.520 --> 00:09:07.060
Hank Marcacci: So a lot of people ask us why Amazon, why is it that we care about Amazon? When there's Google? There's Kobo, there's Barnes and Noble. There's so many different places you could sell your books.

60
00:09:07.130 --> 00:09:08.520
Hank Marcacci: and the answer

61
00:09:08.770 --> 00:09:38.669
Hank Marcacci: is that, hold on here. The answer is that every month over 197 million people around the world search or shop on Amazon. This is a huge number of people. It's absolutely enormous. It's a huge market. And whether or not you sell on Amazon you definitely need to be aware of what's going on here in the industry trends that are happening now. The other important thing about Amazon as well is this isn't like Facebook, where someone might see the front cover of a book and say, I'm not really interested in reading right now, I'm gonna continue looking at cat videos

62
00:09:38.710 --> 00:09:53.070
Hank Marcacci: with Amazon. These are people that are active and they're ready to purchase. Their wallet is out. They're looking for their next book, and they're ready to buy. And like we said, here, there's over 197 million of them. So we want to focus on this market because it can really help out our book sales.

63
00:09:53.240 --> 00:09:58.359
Hank Marcacci: Now, the important thing about Amazon as well is Amazon from their own words

64
00:09:58.630 --> 00:10:04.370
Hank Marcacci: doesn't make money when they sell things they make money when they help customers make purchase decisions.

65
00:10:04.410 --> 00:10:23.789
Hank Marcacci: And what this means is when we look at Amazon, they're in it for the long haul. They're interested in long term customers, people that come back time and time and time again to purchase from Amazon and Amazon knows that if they can help a customer find their next favorite book. Well, as soon as that customer finishes reading that book and wants to find their next.

66
00:10:23.790 --> 00:10:35.420
Hank Marcacci: they're gonna come right back to Amazon. So for Amazon, it's really important to show the customers different options to help them make that decision of finding their next great, incredible book, because they know that they'll come back.

67
00:10:35.520 --> 00:10:52.070
Hank Marcacci: Now as authors. This is really important, because what it means for us is we need to help Amazon make that decision. We need to give Amazon the tools so they can show our book to the right. Readers that are going to love it, enjoy it, read it, and come back in the future. So Amazon knows that they're promoting a good product.

68
00:10:52.100 --> 00:11:11.770
Hank Marcacci: Not only that, but when we meet up with the right reader, we have all these benefits, and one of the benefits is, you get great reviews. Another benefit is that they tell their friends, and more people read their book, and you find that right market that's going to read through and read all your sequels and everything else we produced. So that's why, again, it's so important that we help Amazon when they help the customer see that purchase decision.

69
00:11:11.900 --> 00:11:13.679
Hank Marcacci: and what that comes down to

70
00:11:13.900 --> 00:11:26.959
Hank Marcacci: is trying to determine how Amazon helps book shoppers find the right book, because, remember again, we want to match our right book with the right reader, because they're going to love each other, and that will help our sales and help us gain further traction on Amazon.

71
00:11:27.460 --> 00:11:40.000
Hank Marcacci: Now, as we get into this webinar, this was developed by Dave Jessen, and Dave is someone that actually never thought he'd be an author. He's someone that had dyslexia. It really wasn't in his cards. It wasn't something that he thought he'd be doing in the future.

72
00:11:40.020 --> 00:11:45.190
Hank Marcacci: However, Dave was someone that was actually deployed in the military and wanted to come back to the United States and work with his family.

73
00:11:45.320 --> 00:11:57.770
Hank Marcacci: and in order to do that, he went across when he was in the military, and started writing bestselling books, and was able to publish 9 of them on different topics, and do well enough publishing these books to allow him to move back to the United States and support his family.

74
00:11:57.950 --> 00:12:12.000
Hank Marcacci: Well, when Dave was writing these books. Something that he realized is, there's a lot of authors out there with incredible stories. They have great characters. It's really quality material that they put together. But they don't know how to market it, and they don't know how to reach out to their readers.

75
00:12:12.040 --> 00:12:25.610
Hank Marcacci: So for that reason, Dave went on, and founded Kindlepreneur, which is a website all about how to publish your book and market it online as well as publisher rocket, which is a tool. We'll reference today which is used to help out with keywords, categories, and promoting your book on Amazon as well.

76
00:12:26.350 --> 00:12:55.790
Hank Marcacci: Now, in order to do this, Dave consulted multiple large publishing companies and best selling authors in both fiction and nonfiction. So these are ideas and tactics that we're going to talk about today that aren't just things that came out of the cloud, or just seem like a bright idea. These are things that are tried, tested, and true. The experts say it as well as case studies and data that supports as well, and don't just believe them. But believe Amazon themselves, who have said, learn from Kindlepreneur on how to optimize your book for more sales. So again, that's Dave. He created this webinar as well as kindlepreneur and publisher Rocket.

77
00:12:55.810 --> 00:13:07.349
Hank Marcacci: and then I'm Hank. I'm the manager of publisher rocket, and something about me is I, unlike Dave, always wanted to be an author. I knew, since I was about 10 years old, that this was something that was in my cards, and I really wanted to do.

78
00:13:07.390 --> 00:13:22.680
Hank Marcacci: However, I always heard that it was impossible to make a living. Being an author, that you couldn't become a bestseller. It was too competitive, or the systems rigged against you is what I always heard. And so I went on, and I became an engineer instead, but I always held that dream of becoming an author, and I always kept it with me.

79
00:13:22.680 --> 00:13:44.410
Hank Marcacci: And when I finished college and started engineering, I continued writing books on the side, and was able to see some traction there, and using many of the tips and tactics we talked about today as well as other ones. On Kindlepreneur I was able to become a bestselling author on Kindle and reach Top 50 in the entire kindle store. That's 1 of my proudest moments, and it's something I know. All of you can do as well as long as you remember how to market and make sure you're putting your book in front of the right people.

80
00:13:45.240 --> 00:14:01.429
Hank Marcacci: Now, something about me is I'm a data addict with a passion for machine learning analytics. I'm the type of guy that on a Saturday night, instead of watching, Netflix probably has excel open. I enjoy looking at spreadsheets. I love looking at the numbers I looking love, looking for trends and helping other people see those trends to better position their book.

81
00:14:01.460 --> 00:14:18.869
Hank Marcacci: And that's what led me on to become the product manager of publisher, Rocket, and not just that. But the question, what makes a best-selling book a best-selling book? And what I mean by that is that we have 2 books, and they're both great quality. They both have great stories, great characters, beautiful covers, and both of them have gone on the Amazon store.

82
00:14:18.870 --> 00:14:36.749
Hank Marcacci: Sometimes we see where one book does really well, but the other one barely sells anything, and I'm always asking the question, What is it that makes one book take off? And what is it that makes one book really stutter and not take off in the store? What can we learn from that and make sure we apply that to our own books so that we could get more readers and we could get more sales.

83
00:14:38.020 --> 00:14:51.350
Hank Marcacci: Now, what we'll be covering today are the steps you can take to increase the number of shoppers that discover your book. And remember, when we use that word, discover we're talking about people that don't know who you are. They've never heard of your book. They're seeing it for the very 1st time on Amazon.

84
00:14:51.400 --> 00:15:13.859
Hank Marcacci: And in order to decrease your or in order to increase your discoverability. We have to focus on 2 areas. And these are the areas that shoppers use in order to discover books. And those 2 areas are Amazon categories and the Amazon search bar. So that's the 2 ways that people can actually go and discover books on Amazon. And we're going to talk about how you can best position your books in both of these areas to really improve your discoverability.

85
00:15:14.520 --> 00:15:33.460
Hank Marcacci: The 1st of this is the Amazon Search bar, and when we look at the Amazon search bar. It's when someone actually goes to Amazon and they type in a keyword in the upper left hand corner. And then Amazon says, here's all the books that are related to that keyword. So when someone types it in Amazon shows the ones that they think that readers most likely going to read, and that resonate really strongly with that keyword.

86
00:15:33.570 --> 00:15:53.860
Hank Marcacci: Now, 66% of book shoppers actually use this toolbar when they're starting their book search. So something we can't ignore. It's where most people are discovering their books. And the other interesting thing is, when you publish a book on Kindle Kdp, your 7 kindle keywords determine when you actually show up and where you show up on here. So, for example, in this example, here on the left, is the gift starts.

87
00:15:53.910 --> 00:16:07.239
Hank Marcacci: If Sci-fi military is one of your 7 kindle keywords, you will show up somewhere in this list of return results from Amazon, where you show up is something we'll talk about today. But you will be in that list and then actually make sure that your book shows up in those keyword results.

88
00:16:07.620 --> 00:16:15.369
Hank Marcacci: So that's Amazon search. And again, we'll be looking at how we can improve search results today. So people can find our book when they're typing in keywords.

89
00:16:15.950 --> 00:16:34.389
Hank Marcacci: The second area is Amazon categories. And when we look at categories, this is all talking about the best seller lists on Amazon, where Amazon shows off the books that are performing best in that category. And what Amazon actually does is, for example, in a category like Science Fiction, Amazon will show you the top 20 books that are selling the most in Science Fiction.

90
00:16:34.390 --> 00:16:51.870
Hank Marcacci: So if you're able to reach the top of Science Fiction, this example Amazon has shown you to tons and tons more readers, because you're appearing at the top of these lists. Now, Amazon has a ton of different categories, many, many, many different types of categories, and we'll look at today how you can show up at the top of these different categories and become a bestseller in several areas.

91
00:16:51.960 --> 00:17:11.560
Hank Marcacci: Now, the important thing, too, is, if you become a bestseller, you get this beautiful orange tag right by your book that lets everyone know your book is a bestseller, and this shows up throughout the Amazon store. So if you reach position number one in any category, you get this beautiful orange best seller tag, and that tells people they should take a second look at your book.

92
00:17:11.560 --> 00:17:27.349
Hank Marcacci: It's just like if you go to the bookstore and you walk through the bookstore, and you see a book that has a bestseller tag there, you're likely to take more of a look at it and actually read the back. The same thing happens on Amazon and customers when they see this beautiful orange bestseller tag. So, if possible, we want to make sure we can have this appear for our book.

93
00:17:28.500 --> 00:17:41.369
Hank Marcacci: Now, these 2 areas of keywords and categories increase your discoverability. These are the 2 areas that if we focus on, we can help more people find our books online on Amazon, discover them for the 1st time and decide if they actually want to read them.

94
00:17:42.600 --> 00:18:03.460
Hank Marcacci: And today we have 3 secrets about actually how to improve these, and the 1st secret I have is that everyone can have a bestseller without spending thousands of dollars in ads or working 18 HA day. Now, if you told me this at beginning my author career, I would have said, you're crazy. I would have said, there's no way to do this, but this is something that everyone can do, and if you follow the tips and tactics here, it's something you can make sure that you do for your own books.

95
00:18:04.270 --> 00:18:15.100
Hank Marcacci: and in order to do that we have to find profitable keywords, and we also have to select best-selling categories, because those are the 2 things that are going to increase our discoverability and the chances that someone will find our book on Amazon.

96
00:18:16.010 --> 00:18:26.929
Hank Marcacci: And what we'll focus on 1st are Amazon book keywords. So again, the areas that we're going to focus on are keywords and categories. The 1st thing we're looking at here are Amazon book keywords.

97
00:18:27.770 --> 00:18:53.020
Hank Marcacci: And when we talk about Amazon book keywords. We're referring to these 7 boxes in Kdp that you enter in when you actually publish a book. So when you go over to Kdp and you click, publish on a book. Amazon asks you for 7 search keywords that describe your book, and when you're filling out these boxes, you really want to think about what people are typing into Amazon when they're your target, reader, and making sure that you put the things in these boxes that someone's actually looking for on Amazon, and resonates strongly with your book.

98
00:18:53.120 --> 00:19:03.680
Hank Marcacci: Please, please. I know it, says Optional here, but make sure you fill these out. This is your chance to put your best foot forward with Amazon and help them understand what your book is about, and what type of readers are actually going to search for it.

99
00:19:03.930 --> 00:19:09.449
Hank Marcacci: And the reason these matter again so much is that these are what determine if your book shows up in search or not for that keyword.

100
00:19:09.670 --> 00:19:16.970
Hank Marcacci: So if we look at this example here, if you remember the Amazon search bar. If your keyword is sci-fi military and you type in sci-fi military up top here.

101
00:19:17.160 --> 00:19:27.299
Hank Marcacci: Well, Sci-fi military is one of your keywords. That means your book is going to be somewhere within these results, and people that are typing that in are going to scroll through these results and determine whether or not they want to purchase it.

102
00:19:28.610 --> 00:19:34.009
Hank Marcacci: Now, we already said that 66% of book shoppers start their shopping, using Amazon search.

103
00:19:34.110 --> 00:20:01.570
Hank Marcacci: However, 89% of those end in a purchase. So almost everyone that uses that search bar is ready hungry and trying to buy a new book, and they're going through and actually purchasing it. And a great example here of how this actually applies is buying a book on Amazon is a lot like being hungry and walking in the grocery store when you're hungry and you walk in the grocery store, you know you're not going to leave until you find a snack. You might not know what you're going to get yet, but you know you're going to buy something, and that's going to satisfy you when you leave

104
00:20:01.610 --> 00:20:19.439
Hank Marcacci: Amazon, or readers that go to Amazon work in the same way. They're hungry for their next book. They're going into Amazon, and they're not going to leave until they find that next book. And our goal here is to make sure our book is one of the ones Amazon recommends, and it appears up in search, because almost everyone that's using search ends up buying a book on it.

105
00:20:20.540 --> 00:20:32.659
Hank Marcacci: Now, in order to understand how to improve our search, we need to jump a little bit into data science. And these are areas that we've boiled down for you all to understand the basic trends and the different things that you can do to immediately improve your books on Amazon search.

106
00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:53.000
Hank Marcacci: And the 1st part of Amazon data. Science is where your books rank on the Amazon search algorithm, or where your books rank on the Amazon search algorithm really affects how many people go and click on it. And what I mean by that is that if you type in Sci-fi military and your book shows up in position number one, that means you get 27% of the clicks for people searching that term.

107
00:20:53.030 --> 00:21:01.959
Hank Marcacci: If your book shows up in position number 2, that means you get 12% of the clicks. If it's at position number 3, you get 9%, and it continues to drop and drop and drop. After that.

108
00:21:02.040 --> 00:21:16.540
Hank Marcacci: something really important here is if you're showing up on page 50, for example, for Science Fiction. No one's going to scroll down that far into your book. So it's really important again, that you try to show up in the 1st couple of areas with a search term. And here's an example of how that actually looks on the Amazon store.

109
00:21:17.190 --> 00:21:32.259
Hank Marcacci: So if we look on the Amazon store and you type in something like space brains. Well, you can see the book in position number here, or one here is getting 27% of the clicks. The book in position number 2 is getting 12. The book in position number 3 is getting 9%, and it continues to drop off.

110
00:21:32.260 --> 00:21:48.529
Hank Marcacci: And what's really important is that the book in position number one gets over 2 times the clicks as the book in position number 2. So if we can find a search term where our book can show up in position number one, that's incredibly important. And you get way more visibility there, because that's where everyone is clicking to try to find their next book.

111
00:21:48.670 --> 00:21:52.859
Hank Marcacci: And here's an example of why this matters so much, for how many people actually go on and purchase.

112
00:21:53.350 --> 00:22:02.470
Hank Marcacci: So let's say, for example, your book ranks at Position Number 5. So if you type in Space Marines and your book is down here at Position Number 5, which means you're getting 7% of the clicks.

113
00:22:02.570 --> 00:22:14.140
Hank Marcacci: Well, if a thousand people search for space marines by every month, and you get 7% of clicks. That means you get 70 clicks per month that are actually coming over to your book. And that's not bad. And that helps us out, and that elevates our book on the store.

114
00:22:14.290 --> 00:22:18.870
Hank Marcacci: However, say, instead of position number 5, you showed up position number one.

115
00:22:18.980 --> 00:22:21.799
Hank Marcacci: Well, what that means is, you get 27% of clicks.

116
00:22:21.960 --> 00:22:37.090
Hank Marcacci: And if 1,000 people are searching for that book every month, you get 270 clicks per month extra coming to your book. So that's 200 clicks per month over the 70 that you normally get where, if you can optimize that keyword and show up towards the top, are all going and driving traffic over to your book

117
00:22:37.170 --> 00:23:06.400
Hank Marcacci: now, you might say, Hey, Hank! 200 clicks doesn't seem like a lot. I can send out to my mailing list and get that I can post on Facebook and get that. There's many other ways that I can get 200 clicks. And you're right. But the difference here is that these are free organic clicks. These are clicks from people that are already interested in your subject matter. They've typed in saying that they're interested in something your book is related to, and not only that, but you don't have to pay for them. These are happening all the time as you sleep time and time again every day to drive more traffic to your book and drive more attention to it.

118
00:23:06.470 --> 00:23:16.820
Hank Marcacci: So again, it's critical. It's extremely important that if you can find a keyword, your book ranks at position number one, it means that you're gonna get much more percentage of clicks and much more attention for that keyword on Amazon.

119
00:23:17.220 --> 00:23:32.870
Hank Marcacci: Now, something else that's important. Here is you don't just get one keyword. If you remember, you have 7 boxes, and you get 7, and all of these add up to help your book. So, for example, say you have keyword number one and keyword number one that you're using gets you 270 clicks per month.

120
00:23:33.060 --> 00:23:36.180
Hank Marcacci: Keyword number 2 might get you a hundred 22 clicks per month.

121
00:23:36.270 --> 00:23:38.710
Hank Marcacci: Keyword number 3 can get you 87.

122
00:23:39.030 --> 00:23:41.360
Hank Marcacci: Keyword number 4 could get you 1, 13,

123
00:23:41.500 --> 00:23:43.970
Hank Marcacci: keyword number 5. Get you 66,

124
00:23:44.160 --> 00:24:06.260
Hank Marcacci: keyword number 6 could get you 211, and keyword number 7 could get you 1, 6, 7. Well, those are all separate areas and different funnels on the Amazon store pointing back to your book. So the benefit here is that all these different areas are funneling and pointing back to your book on different areas of the store, and all these clicks per month. Add up to help your book, climb the rankings and help Amazon. See that people are interested in your book and looking to buy it.

125
00:24:08.760 --> 00:24:29.000
Hank Marcacci: Now, in order to understand how we come up with good keywords, we really have to know what they are, and we have to understand what keywords are in order to optimize them, and what keywords are is for fiction. Keywords are the words that your target shopper uses to find the book that they want. So it's what someone's typing into that Amazon search bar to find their next book. They're actually trying to read.

126
00:24:29.370 --> 00:24:48.699
Hank Marcacci: And for fiction these keywords describe the type of story that this book is about. So when you're trying to come up with keywords, we want to look at our actual book. And look what we've written, think about what type of story it is, and use that to brainstorm and come up a list of different keywords that we can use. Now we have a cheat sheet here that really helps out and helps you come up with different keywords that you can brainstorm for your book.

127
00:24:48.930 --> 00:24:50.629
Hank Marcacci: And this is the example here.

128
00:24:50.640 --> 00:25:00.130
Hank Marcacci: So there are 5 different types of fiction keywords, and these are all things that you should use to start brainstorming, about which ones you want to use for your book, create a list, and then from there you'd pick the best ones.

129
00:25:00.150 --> 00:25:20.189
Hank Marcacci: So these different areas are settings and time periods, character types and roles, the plot, theme events and situations and the story tone. And we're going to jump into each of these. So over on the right here. I have some examples that we can use to help understand the type of keywords that we come up for these books, and we'll jump in and think about what the reader might be thinking of when they're actually typing these into Amazon.

130
00:25:20.720 --> 00:25:47.419
Hank Marcacci: So the 1st one of these is settings and time periods, and there are readers out there that will read a book just because of when it took place, or where it took place. And we see this. Often in Science Fiction people might type in historical science fiction or futuristic science fiction. They might go type in deep space, science fiction or contemporary. There's things that they're looking for. That'll determine whether they're going to read that book just about when and where it took place, and people that are going to read tons of books, for example, about deep space, or people that are going to read tons of books about people on Mars.

131
00:25:47.420 --> 00:26:03.619
Hank Marcacci: So if we look at these examples books over here we see red or ready player one. And when we look at ready player one, the setting there is really the video game. So they're in a video game. It's a great example of where that book took place. And there's a huge market out there right now for people reading about books where the characters in a video game.

132
00:26:03.830 --> 00:26:11.460
Hank Marcacci: When we have the man in the Eye Castle, we can tell that's something contemporary that's happening right now. We can look at it and say, that's something that is current or present day Science Fiction.

133
00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:21.909
Hank Marcacci: When we look at colony launch, you can immediately tell that's a space colony. It's somewhere out in deep space and centered around some planet in deep space. There's plenty of people that love reading about Colonial Science Fiction.

134
00:26:22.140 --> 00:26:32.850
Hank Marcacci: And then when we look at the right, we have the Martian, and immediately you can tell where that's taking place, you have it actually taking place on Mars somewhere nearby. And again, you know, that's present day or something that they're writing about present day.

135
00:26:32.860 --> 00:26:41.280
Hank Marcacci: So the important thing here is, if you think about your keywords. Think about when and where your book took place, because people will search for that on the Amazon store when they're looking for their next book.

136
00:26:42.010 --> 00:26:50.779
Hank Marcacci: Your next example. Here are character types and roles, and people will look for a specific type of character or archetype within a book and read it just because that character is there.

137
00:26:50.880 --> 00:27:01.520
Hank Marcacci: So a great example here is, we have tech mage on the left, so we can immediately see that this is something that has to do with magic, that there's a wizard type character in this book, and people read Science Fiction that has that theme or that type of character in it.

138
00:27:01.560 --> 00:27:08.400
Hank Marcacci: We have a huge mech character in this example here, and someone might want to see the giant finding robots. And that's the type of character. They want to see as well there.

139
00:27:08.840 --> 00:27:20.109
Hank Marcacci: Another good example here is Devolution. This is a science fiction, actually about Bigfoot. And there's people that will read books just about Bigfoot, and that's something they like to read and sparks their interest. So if you have some type of character in there as well, you want to include it.

140
00:27:20.350 --> 00:27:29.250
Hank Marcacci: And in the far right we have, for example, a superhero character. So if there's something there like if they like to read superheroes, they're going to read a whole bunch of books about them just because the superhero is present.

141
00:27:29.310 --> 00:27:38.699
Hank Marcacci: So again, if you have a specific type of character type or role, or something that is commonly known, that appears in books and applies to a character. You want to include that in your keyword, because people will search for that Amazon.

142
00:27:39.730 --> 00:27:59.009
Hank Marcacci: Next, we have the plot theme, or what the core of the story is about, and some examples that we have over here is, for example, the cobra event. So this is a medical science fiction. So something where people like to read medical books that are thrillers also have that science fiction element. That's what they're likely typing in is something like medical science fiction, and that applies to what the book is about the core of it. Or that plot that's occurring.

143
00:27:59.170 --> 00:28:10.419
Hank Marcacci: We also have post-apocalyptic books. There's people that love reading books about post apocalyptic and read tons of different ones, because that's a major plot thing that's occurring. That book of survival, of trying to stay alive after earth has perished.

144
00:28:10.580 --> 00:28:32.710
Hank Marcacci: and on the right, when we look at something like red rising. We have things that are like war games that are occurring in this book, and that's something. Again. That's a major part of that plot theme are those games that are occurring and that theme of them actually going off and competing in those games. So something like the hunger games as well would fit in that category of looking at those different types of war games. So if you have a specific type of plot theme that's occurring in your book, make sure you include it, because that's also what people search for.

145
00:28:33.440 --> 00:29:02.660
Hank Marcacci: Next, we have events and situations. And this is particularly important to Science Fiction, because Science fiction. A lot of times our characters are put in weird situations, or the earth is put in weird situations, and it's all about how to survive it or what methods they may use, or different types of ways that you can look at science that will actually be applicable here. So some great examples here are 1st contact. So when we look at the expanse or children of time, both of those are looking at 1st contact stories, and how it actually how we engage with the alien race in the future. So that'd be a situation, that, or an event that the characters are put into

146
00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:15.060
Hank Marcacci: a great situation. Example is paradox bound. When you look at this you can immediately tell. The characters are stuck in some sort of time loop, and that's a situation that a character will be put in. And there's people that love reading those stories about time loops or things to do with time travel.

147
00:29:15.140 --> 00:29:45.100
Hank Marcacci: and if we look on the right. We can see there's a massive battle here in Columbus Day. This is a type of major battle type of thing that someone might read a book for, or want to read about space warfare or space war. So those are thinking when we talk about events and situations, think about a common event it might be historical or just something well known that might occur in the future, such as like the end of the world. And that's something that you'd want to include your keywords. And when you think about situations with Science Fiction, think about all the crazy situations that someone your book may be put into that they use science or technology to actually solve. And that's something that people are going to be searching for.

148
00:29:45.570 --> 00:30:10.280
Hank Marcacci: And then last and extremely important is the story tone. And when we talk about the story tone, this is what your book feels like when someone opens it. So if you just open it to a random page, and you start reading. What are the feelings and the emotions that they get out of this? And some great examples? Here are lighthearted Science Fiction. So, for example, right now, Dungeon Carl, or Carl's a great example that we see on the markets. You also see things like Hitchhiker's Guide. But it's lighthearted, it's humorous. It's something that probably doesn't take itself too seriously.

149
00:30:10.280 --> 00:30:25.269
Hank Marcacci: Then you have something like 3 body problem and 3. Body problem is hard science fiction, something that is really looking after the technicalities really trying to show off the science within the book. You also have ones that are softer. Science fiction, something like Star Wars might be adventurous or other different areas that people are looking into.

150
00:30:25.450 --> 00:30:39.620
Hank Marcacci: Something important about. The story. Tone as well is, if you look at this book on the far right we see an immediate, huge character on the cover, and we can tell it's heavily influenced by romance. So if you're writing Science Fiction as well. A lot of Science Fiction genres have very heavy romance books that are included in them.

151
00:30:39.620 --> 00:31:05.409
Hank Marcacci: and if your book has that, you want to include it. But if your book just has light romance themes, you want to make sure your book doesn't get conflated with those areas because they're totally different types of readers. So, depending upon what you're looking for in the story tone there with romance, be careful, because if you have something that is heavy romance included. If it's not heavy romance, you want to make sure that you have that somewhere, that it appears that it's that it's more of a story that's more pop focused or character focused as opposed to something that's very heavily romance on the store.

152
00:31:05.690 --> 00:31:23.989
Hank Marcacci: So just to recap over here the 5 different areas that we want to use when we're coming up with our keywords are settings and time periods, character types and roles, the plot theme events and situations and the story tone. Use these to build a list, and then we'll talk in just a second about you can decide what's best on that list and what you should actually use for your book.

153
00:31:26.170 --> 00:31:48.899
Hank Marcacci: So the second secret that we have for you today is not all. Keywords are created equal. And that's what we saw earlier, where there's certain keywords that are going to get you 300 clicks per month on your book, and there's other ones that might get you barely anything, and we need to help and understand, or we need ourselves to understand what are the keywords that are going to really drive traffic and drive people that are going to want to buy. And what are the keywords that aren't really going to help us and maybe aren't worth our time.

154
00:31:48.910 --> 00:31:50.779
Hank Marcacci: And this is how we can actually do that.

155
00:31:51.060 --> 00:31:57.300
Hank Marcacci: So what we need to determine is what makes for good keywords. And here's how you can actually determine what makes good keywords.

156
00:31:57.690 --> 00:32:20.259
Hank Marcacci: So there are 3 steps here to determine if a keyword is good, the 1st step is, you need shoppers that are words that shoppers really use on the Amazon store. So if you have a keyword that perfectly describes your book, but no one actually searches for it. It doesn't help you out because no one's actually looking for it, and your books never popping up. So you need to think about words that people are actively typing in and looking for on the Amazon store that are also relevant to your book.

157
00:32:20.580 --> 00:32:40.560
Hank Marcacci: Second is, we need words that shoppers used to buy. So if a whole bunch of people are typing in keywords. But no one's actually buying off of that keyword. It also doesn't help us, because we're getting a lot of views are our book. But if it's not driving, actually sales and traffic, then it's not worth it. So again, we need to make sure whatever keyword we choose actually drives sales and actually drives people to see our book and decide they want to purchase it.

158
00:32:40.770 --> 00:33:10.120
Hank Marcacci: And then, 3rd is, we need to make sure keywords aren't too competitive. As you remember earlier, it's really important to show up at the top of the keyword lists. Well, if you're using a keyword that's really broad like science fiction. It's really hard to fight for that keyword and actually appear there. And the reason why, again, is that there's huge name. Authors that are fighting for that keyword. People have massive advertising budgets, and if you're an Indie author, it's extremely difficult to actually show up for that keyword and compete against those really big names, because Amazon knows those big names with a ton of sales, and they show them at the top of their list

159
00:33:10.430 --> 00:33:21.809
Hank Marcacci: so as a recap step one. Use words that shoppers really use. Step 2. Make sure shoppers are buying with these keywords and step 3. Make sure these keywords aren't too competitive. And here's how you actually go through the steps.

160
00:33:22.440 --> 00:33:34.409
Hank Marcacci: So with Step One, we can find out if the keywords actually been searched for on Amazon by actually using the Amazon search bar. And what we do over here is we start typing in our keyword in the Amazon Search bar, and we see if Amazon recommends it back to us.

161
00:33:34.420 --> 00:33:48.050
Hank Marcacci: and if Amazon recommends it back, that means that hundreds and hundreds of people have typed in that keyword before searching for it in the past. And Amazon has taken notice. So any of these words that Amazon's recommending back are ones that hundreds of people have typed in, and their algorithm has figured it out.

162
00:33:48.060 --> 00:33:53.550
Hank Marcacci: So these are great examples for ones that you may want to use for a book, because you know that there's actually traffic coming through from these.

163
00:33:53.620 --> 00:33:58.149
Hank Marcacci: and interesting as well, you'll notice as we type, all these keywords up here change, you add an S,

164
00:33:58.230 --> 00:34:11.110
Hank Marcacci: and everything changes as well. This is a great way to also brainstorm for keywords. So if you know space range or keyword, you may want to type in it and see all the different options that pop up and decide if something. There's also something to help your book, because, you know, people are searching for it.

165
00:34:12.050 --> 00:34:24.200
Hank Marcacci: Step 2 is, we need to make sure people are actually buying with this keyword. So we go type in that keyword and we click on the book in position number one. We want to see what their best seller rank is on the Amazon store, and you can find this in the book description section.

166
00:34:24.199 --> 00:34:45.259
Hank Marcacci: and what that bestseller rank does is it tells you how many sales per day that book is actually making on Amazon, so you could take that bestseller rank, and you can put it in the kindlepreneur best selling calculator, which is online and free. So you can access that online. And it'll tell you how many sales per day. That book is making. So use that number. See how good their attraction is, and how many sales are actually making per day to determine if they're likely using a good or bad keyword.

167
00:34:46.090 --> 00:34:53.739
Hank Marcacci: and then step 3 is, we want to make sure these keywords aren't too competitive. And here's some of the things that we use to determine how competitive a keyword actually is.

168
00:34:53.790 --> 00:35:08.749
Hank Marcacci: So one is if it's by a famous author. So someone famous wrote it. And it's showing up in position number number one for that keyword. It's really difficult for you to also show up there. So if you type in a keyword like science fiction and someone really popular pops up in Number One. It's gonna be hard for you to reach that position.

169
00:35:08.900 --> 00:35:24.369
Hank Marcacci: Next is we're going to look at the actual quality of the book. If it has a beautiful cover or tons and tons of 5 star reviews, or the book description is so good that you want to read it yourself. You probably also want to avoid that keyword because it's extremely competitive with that fantastic product that's showing up in position number one there

170
00:35:24.900 --> 00:35:27.059
Hank Marcacci: and then. We also want to look at things

171
00:35:27.600 --> 00:35:56.860
Hank Marcacci: such as how old the book is, so if it just released, it might be harder to appear for it, as well as if the keywords in the title, because and then Amazon might be mixing up the keyword itself, or someone else's book, title name, and they won't know which one you'd actually show. And then the last thing you want to look at is how skilled the author is at marketing. So if the author has a blog or other online assets, or they have tons of knowledge of marketing skills, you can just tell the way they're doing things. It's very savvy, and they're very strong in it, or they're running a lot of promos and ads. You know, it's gonna be a lot harder to get those keywords. So that's what we use to determine how competitive they are.

172
00:35:57.720 --> 00:36:06.700
Hank Marcacci: So what you would do here is take all those keywords that you brainstorm with, build a spreadsheet, and you repeat this process over and over and over again until you find the right keywords for you.

173
00:36:06.850 --> 00:36:12.540
Hank Marcacci: or what you can do is you can use the easy button to get this all done in minutes rather than hours.

174
00:36:12.990 --> 00:36:32.979
Hank Marcacci: and that easy button is publisher Rocket, and when we come to publish a rocket. It does all this for you, so we just showed you the manual way to do it. You can absolutely do it that manual way, but if you want something to speed it up, this is what publisher Rocket can do. So if you go to keyword, search on here, and you type in something like fantasy rocket will show you all the different keywords that are appearing for fantasy and other ones that you may want to select.

175
00:36:33.090 --> 00:36:38.390
Hank Marcacci: It'll also show you the estimated searches per month. They're appearing for that keyword. So you can tell how popular that keyword is.

176
00:36:38.590 --> 00:37:01.810
Hank Marcacci: Next, it'll show you how much sales are actually going for books that are showing up for that keyword. So you can tell if that keyword is making sales, or if it's something that makes almost no sales, and then you can also go and look at the competitive score, and this will tell you how difficult it is to rank in position number one or number one for that keyword, and your competition score goes from 1 1 all the way up to 100, where one is extremely easy to rank for it, and number 100 means it's really difficult to actually rank for it.

177
00:37:02.830 --> 00:37:15.120
Hank Marcacci: Now, here's some examples of keywords that we put into publisher rocket, so that you all can understand what keywords are good for books which ones are bad and which ones are really nuanced and difficult for human minds to tell, even though they can be very different on Amazon.

178
00:37:15.160 --> 00:37:25.430
Hank Marcacci: So in this particular example, we're looking in how a keyword that may sound the exact same to us, has extremely different results on Amazon one really drives sales and the other one really doesn't.

179
00:37:25.450 --> 00:37:38.049
Hank Marcacci: So in this example, here we have books about space opera. And if you use the keyword phrase space opera future, you can see that space opera future has less than 100 searches per month and only earns $197 per month.

180
00:37:38.150 --> 00:37:46.839
Hank Marcacci: However, if you space opera or space opera futuristic, you can see that has over 400 searches per month, and it brings in over $3,000 per month.

181
00:37:46.870 --> 00:38:01.039
Hank Marcacci: So if you're an author and you're trying to decide which keyword you want to use. You really want to use space opera futuristic as opposed to space opera future, because even though they sound very similar to us as people to Amazon, they're completely different keywords, and one does far better than the other.

182
00:38:01.430 --> 00:38:05.990
Hank Marcacci: Another example here is space, opera, wizard versus space opera, mage, or mage.

183
00:38:06.190 --> 00:38:32.620
Hank Marcacci: Now, for this example, think you wrote something like Star Wars, something where there's a little bit of magic mix in with Science Fiction or space opera here as well, and you're trying to decide which of these 2 keywords is best for you. Well, if you choose space opera Wizard, you can see again there's less than 100 searches per month, and it only earns $18 per month. So the results are really are not strong. But if you choose something like space opera Mage, you can see that there's over $600 per month coming for that keyword, as well as over 800 searches per month.

184
00:38:32.620 --> 00:38:46.940
Hank Marcacci: So when you go and pick these keywords. It's really important to actually do your research and see which ones are actually earning, because, even though these sound very similar to our minds and seem as humans to be the same type of words on Amazon. They're completely different, and they'll give you completely different results.

185
00:38:48.220 --> 00:38:56.420
Hank Marcacci: Now, here's an example, when you're choosing your keywords, how you can choose a niche keyword to really help, better drive or better drive results. Your book. So if you choose, like or sorry

186
00:38:56.630 --> 00:39:07.969
Hank Marcacci: one second, if you choose a keyword such as science fiction, that's very broad and very generic. What that means is that you're gonna have a ton of different competitors that are actually trying to show up on a keyword as well.

187
00:39:07.970 --> 00:39:27.230
Hank Marcacci: So if you choose science fiction, there's 130,000 other authors there that are also trying to show up for Science Fiction. All these would love to show up in position number one for here, and it's extremely competitive where we see a competition score 70. So if you use the Keyword Science Fiction for your book, chances are you're on page 50 for that book on Amazon. It's really not helping you out.

188
00:39:27.310 --> 00:39:43.650
Hank Marcacci: However, if you niche down and get more specific, then you can lower that competition level. So if you go from Science Fiction down to Sci-fi military, we go from 137,000 competitors down to 17,000, so almost a mortar or order of magnitude less, and we see our competition score drop as well.

189
00:39:43.750 --> 00:39:56.980
Hank Marcacci: and if we niche down again from Sci-fi military to Space marines, we can see we go from 17,000 all the way down to 3,000. So that's another huge jump in less competition, which helps our book actually appear closer to the top, and our competition score continues to drop.

190
00:39:57.050 --> 00:40:08.460
Hank Marcacci: Well, if we get even more specific, we can go all the way to space marine, bug hunt. If we go all the way down to space. Marine bug hunt. What we see happen here is there's only 8 competitors on the Amazon score, and our competition scores a number 27.

191
00:40:08.550 --> 00:40:21.389
Hank Marcacci: Well, what this means is because there's only 8 competitors. Our book is automatically in the top 10 for this search. If you space marine bug hunt, because there's only 8 other people showing up. That means that worst case scenario you're showing up on Number 9, and you're on that front page.

192
00:40:21.390 --> 00:40:39.940
Hank Marcacci: And not only that, but it's so much easier to beat out 8 different competitors to show up at position number one than it is to try to beat out 137,000 other competitors. So when you're thinking about your keywords, you want to make sure you choose niche ones that have low competition, because that means you can show up on the front page for that keyword. It'll actually help your book sales.

193
00:40:40.310 --> 00:40:50.569
Hank Marcacci: Now, you might say, here, hold on a second Hank. I see that science fiction gets $84,000 per month, whereas space marine bug on only gets 243. Why would I ever choose that?

194
00:40:50.580 --> 00:41:08.459
Hank Marcacci: And the answer here is that even though Science Fiction earns $84,000 per month, that's only the top 5 books in science fiction. It's so competitive that chances are you're showing up on page 50. No one's ever going to scroll down that far, and you're probably never going to see a single dollar that's coming out of that science fiction keyword. So you definitely want to avoid it because it's way too competitive.

195
00:41:08.470 --> 00:41:23.740
Hank Marcacci: however, with space marine bug hunt. If you can only beat out 3 other competitors, you're earning that full $243 per month, and that is actually appearing in your book sales. So again, it's really important to make sure you go niche and actually capturing these sales by showing up by showing up on the front page for that keyword.

196
00:41:25.440 --> 00:41:39.369
Hank Marcacci: Now, here's another example of how Amazon considered keywords in a very strange way, and that our humans minds actually don't work this way. So we're going to look at the psychology of what people actually type in here and how this can look very strange to you and I. But to the computer it makes perfect sense.

197
00:41:39.430 --> 00:42:00.689
Hank Marcacci: So, for example, here say you had a keyword such as romance. If you use a keyword such as romance, and you type. Sorry if you use a keyword such as romance. And you type that in, you might say, Hey, that's not the keyword I was really looking for. I'm actually looking for a different type of book. So a reader, that types in romance say, no, that's not the book I want. They're going to go ahead and append additional keywords on the end, and they might say, I'm looking for romance

198
00:42:00.770 --> 00:42:07.520
Hank Marcacci: and sex, and so they'll go ahead, and they'll add additional words on the end to clarify to Amazon what they're actually looking for.

199
00:42:07.590 --> 00:42:17.150
Hank Marcacci: Well, what this means is that because we just continue appending words on the end of keyword phrases. There are some really strange results that show up on the Amazon store. And here's an example one.

200
00:42:17.250 --> 00:42:34.130
Hank Marcacci: So, for example, we have second chance romance. And what second chance romance is is that someone's using their second chance of love? Maybe they're getting out of relationship that didn't go so well, they're looking at a new chance of love and who they're gonna find in the future. Well, people might type in second chance romance and say, Oh, those books aren't really what I'm looking for.

201
00:42:34.190 --> 00:42:44.530
Hank Marcacci: I'm actually someone that has a baby, and I'm looking for a second chance romance with a new father, for example. Well, they'll type in second chance romance. See? It's not what they're looking for, and then add, with baby at the end.

202
00:42:44.540 --> 00:42:57.479
Hank Marcacci: And this is a really strange keyword, a really strange connotation. And this is, we know this is not what they're actually trying to find on the Amazon store. However, when you look at the numbers we can see, tons of people are actually searching and looking for this keyword. So, for example.

203
00:42:57.560 --> 00:43:17.599
Hank Marcacci: if you look at second chance romance, you can see that this brings in $390 per month. But second chance romance with baby brings in $23,000 per month. So because of this weird psychological trick where people just keep appending words on the end, you can actually see really strange keywords earn tons of money on the Amazon store, even though it's not what we would necessarily think the book is about.

204
00:43:18.220 --> 00:43:32.220
Hank Marcacci: Another example here is how, by just changing up your keyword a little, you can have drastic results. So if you type in, for example, billionaire romance. Well, billionaire romance is extremely competitive, and you have a competition score of 80 here, it's really hard for your book to rank for it.

205
00:43:32.310 --> 00:43:40.910
Hank Marcacci: Well, if all you do is change the B to M. So go from billionaire down to millionaire. Your competition score drastically drops, and it's far easier for you to peer.

206
00:43:40.940 --> 00:43:59.860
Hank Marcacci: So the benefit here is, if you look at billionaire romance, it earns $43,000 per month. But it's too competitive. You're probably not showing up for it, whereas millionaire romance is far less competitive. There's far less competitors over here, but still earns a good amount of money. So if you can use that variation of the keyword and show up higher in the search results, it might be worth your time to actually do that.

207
00:44:00.220 --> 00:44:15.829
Hank Marcacci: Another example here is Alpha, male romance versus possessive Alpha male romance. And if we look at the difference between these 2 keywords. Just by adding the word possessive at the front, we can see our competition score dropped by 10 points, and it's much easier to actually show up for this keyword, even though the earnings are very similar.

208
00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:28.950
Hank Marcacci: So again, when you go through this, think about it from a psychological perspective of what really strange things that people might be typing on the ends of keywords to narrow down their search, and what other things you might be able to change about your keywords in order to drop that competition score.

209
00:44:30.140 --> 00:44:44.260
Hank Marcacci: Now, if you were to go through and do this manually, what you find out is you can actually find all the different keywords here that you want to use, and you can see the average earnings them. So you can go in. And you can actually determine these on the Amazon store using the search bar. And you can see roughly how much those books are making.

210
00:44:44.270 --> 00:44:52.659
Hank Marcacci: And if you were to do this and go through all these keywords as well as the earnings, you'd likely choose a keyword such as pandemic, because it earns a huge amount of money for your book in this area.

211
00:44:52.800 --> 00:45:10.270
Hank Marcacci: However, if you do this by hand, you don't see the competition, and if we go look at all the numbers that publisher Rocket got us. You can see that pandemic actually is one of the ones that has the highest competition score here. So if you use a keyword like pandemic. It's not really going to help you out, and the benefit of publisher rocket is, you get more keywords here

212
00:45:10.270 --> 00:45:25.039
Hank Marcacci: you can see your searches per month, your average earnings and your competition score. And what this means is, you get a full picture on what keywords are good for your book, and what we can do here is we want to make sure that we have searches per month that are high earnings per month that are high and a competition score that is low

213
00:45:25.450 --> 00:45:30.949
Hank Marcacci: and doing that you can actually go through and select your best keywords based upon the ones that you earlier brainstormed.

214
00:45:32.140 --> 00:45:35.509
Hank Marcacci: Now, just as a recap. There are 3 different ways to get your keywords.

215
00:45:35.700 --> 00:45:49.379
Hank Marcacci: The 1st of these you can guess, and the problem with guessing is, you never know what's going to work or not. If you think about space opera, future versus space opera futuristic, you might not know which one's actually going to perform well in the store, and you can hurt your book by not choosing the best. One

216
00:45:49.860 --> 00:46:04.379
Hank Marcacci: second is, you can do it manually, but there's a lot of pitfalls doing it manually, just as like the example of pandemic. And this might really hurt your chances on the store because you don't realize how competitive those keywords are. It's really easy to get buried on Amazon under big name authors, and that's likely going to happen if you choose them manually.

217
00:46:04.780 --> 00:46:16.650
Hank Marcacci: And then, 3rd is, you can use publisher rocket, and if you use publisher rocket you'll be able to go through and see all the different keywords that are good for your book. The number of searches per month, the number of sales as well as a competition score. To make sure you position your book fast

218
00:46:18.000 --> 00:46:35.090
Hank Marcacci: now as a recap again. That was all about keywords, and how we improve our Amazon search on the store, and, if you remember, in order to improve discoverability, we had to also look at book categories. So what we'll be focusing on from here forward is book categories and how we can improve our book categories on the store to show our book to more readers.

219
00:46:36.060 --> 00:47:04.489
Hank Marcacci: Now, when we look at Amazon categories, what these are are the best seller lists that appear on Amazon, and these are just like shelves in an actual bookstore. So if you go through, for example, Barnes and Noble, and you walk up to the Science Fiction section, you'll notice that they're showing off certain books within that section and showing you best sellers in that section. This is Amazon, same exact thing that they're doing here just digitalized. So if you get in, or if you go into Amazon, you can find all the different categories here, and just like a bookshelf, you can go and wander through these and see what book you may be interested in reading. Next.

220
00:47:04.620 --> 00:47:14.019
Hank Marcacci: As an author, it's really important to us that our books show up at the top of these charts, because if they do more people see our books, they realize it's a bestseller, and they're more likely to actually go buy it.

221
00:47:15.180 --> 00:47:29.829
Hank Marcacci: Now, the important thing here is we have to understand how we can find bestseller categories that help sell our books. So when we go through and we look through Amazon. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of categories. How do we find the ones that are going to let us be a bestseller, and also sell more copies of our book.

222
00:47:30.710 --> 00:47:45.939
Hank Marcacci: and in the past this used to be pretty different. So if you all publish for a while, you're probably familiar with the old system Amazon categories. And here's how that used to work, and what Amazon used to do is they used to allow you to choose 2 different categories from a list of about 5,000.

223
00:47:46.060 --> 00:48:10.930
Hank Marcacci: You would choose those categories, and Amazon will put you in the store just for those 2, and then what would happen is you could actually request 8 more categories for your book by writing into Amazon and asking to be included in these categories that they didn't even let you select from. So in the past again, Amazon didn't show you all the categories they let you get into. You had to go through a customer service agent. It was a mess trying to get your book in the categories that you wanted, but the benefit was you used to be able to choose 10 categories.

224
00:48:11.260 --> 00:48:36.340
Hank Marcacci: Now, in the present Amazon systems, very different. And in this new system of categories you can actually pick every single category that's available in Amazon Store. So you can go through and you can select which ones you want to out of this Amazon picker here that they provided in Kdp. Find the categories that you want, and your book will actually appear in the store, and the benefit here is you don't have to go through a customer service rep. So it's something you can handle on your own side, and you don't have to go back and forth trying to tell them what categories your book belongs to.

225
00:48:36.400 --> 00:48:49.539
Hank Marcacci: However, the concern here is, you're only allowed to choose 3 categories now, so your categories that you choose now matter far more than in the past, because in the past you could choose up to 10. But Amazon has restricted this down and said only, or every book only gets 3.

226
00:48:49.710 --> 00:49:03.600
Hank Marcacci: There is a caveat to that, though, which is that Amazon doesn't have to believe you, so they don't have to accept the 3 categories that you choose. They may say your book doesn't belong in here, or something with their system has raised a red flag where they don't think your book belongs in that one Science Fiction category that you really want.

227
00:49:03.670 --> 00:49:16.420
Hank Marcacci: Not only that, but Amazon might say on the flip side, wow! This book looks like a great match for this additional category, and they might drop your book to that additional category. 2. And if they do that, that's great for sales, because you're appearing in one more extra spot on the Amazon store.

228
00:49:18.330 --> 00:49:26.950
Hank Marcacci: Now this all seems pretty simple compared to the past where you go through. You just select the categories you want. And you actually appear from. However, there are 2 main issues with this

229
00:49:27.300 --> 00:49:44.270
Hank Marcacci: and the 1st pitfall, or the 1st issue that happens here is that 54% of the categories listed are actually duplicates of each other. And what I mean by that is, if you go through that Kdb, picker, you'll see that these books are listed over, or these categories are listed over and over and over again, even though they only have one page on the Amazon store.

230
00:49:44.270 --> 00:50:02.520
Hank Marcacci: A great example of this is the Revolutionary War category, which has over 17 different mentions on that Kdb. Picker, and they all point back to the same page on the Amazon store. So if you're doing your research on your different categories, you want to understand that they're all duplicates of each other. So you don't do 17 times the research only to find out it's only one category in the store itself.

231
00:50:02.810 --> 00:50:18.810
Hank Marcacci: and then the second pitfall, which is much more dangerous is, 27% of all categories are ghost categories. And what I mean by this is that there are categories out there that you actually don't appear from the Amazon store, even though they let you select them. So if you go through that Katie Picker and you select it.

232
00:50:18.810 --> 00:50:33.800
Hank Marcacci: there's actually categories that don't have a page, and readers can't find it, and there's no actual digital self or digital shelf that exists. So if you choose a ghost category, it's something where readers can't find your book, and you're wasting one of your category chances on it. And here's what those categories actually look like.

233
00:50:34.230 --> 00:50:46.219
Hank Marcacci: So when we look at those categories. That means you can't be placed, or it's a category where you can't actually be found by shoppers. And not only that, but you can't become a best seller in them either, and you generally should avoid them. And they look like this.

234
00:50:47.370 --> 00:51:05.460
Hank Marcacci: So we go through. You can actually see, here's a real category in the Amazon store. And if you go look through this, you see this category tree on the left. You can also see that it's a best seller area in historical mystery. Well, if you put your book in a ghost category, one that doesn't really exist, if you somehow find that page, there's no actual category tree on the left.

235
00:51:05.460 --> 00:51:26.769
Hank Marcacci: and it also doesn't say what's best seller in. Not only that you can't get a bestseller tag, even if you show up in position number one. So these ghost categories are a huge problem, because if you put your book into it, it's the same thing as putting your book on a shelf in a bookstore, and then they hide it in the closet. There's it's an area where no one can actually find it on Amazon. You can't become a bestseller in it, and you really want to avoid putting your book into them.

236
00:51:27.830 --> 00:51:42.130
Hank Marcacci: Now remember, beware! You have a high chance of selecting a ghost unless you know about this. So I recommend going and checking your categories to make sure that they're not a ghost category, because if they are. Again, it'll be detrimental to your sales, because people actually can't find that category on Amazon store.

237
00:51:43.110 --> 00:51:52.090
Hank Marcacci: Okay, now that we know about pitfalls, we need to look at how we can select the best categories, the ones that are really going to help our book. And here's what we do to select the best ones.

238
00:51:52.150 --> 00:52:10.439
Hank Marcacci: So to remember to become an Amazon best seller. All you have to do is sell more books in one day than any other book in that category. So when we're selecting these best selling categories, we want to make sure that we can hit that number of books sold per day to show up in position number one and rank as a bestseller. And here's an example of why that matters so much.

239
00:52:10.590 --> 00:52:24.639
Hank Marcacci: So if you look at 2 different categories, such as category, one. Where it takes 3 books per day to become a bestseller and category, 2. Where it takes 247 days to become the best or 247 books per day to become bestseller. It is far easier to become a bestseller in category number one.

240
00:52:24.650 --> 00:52:36.519
Hank Marcacci: What that means is category number 2 is far more competitive. There's really big name authors in this category. There's a lot of people fighting to get to the top, and it's really difficult to even show up on position, or even on page number one for that category.

241
00:52:36.540 --> 00:52:44.909
Hank Marcacci: Whereas if you look at Category number one, if you only sell 3 books per day. You're immediately best seller. You're getting that recognition, and you're showing up on the front of that page.

242
00:52:45.030 --> 00:53:05.769
Hank Marcacci: Now, something that's important here is, make sure this category actually describes your book. Make sure it is a strong category that fits, and it's within your niche, because the last thing you want to do is misread or mislead readers just in order to get that bestseller tag. So again, make sure it fits with your book, and it's a strong descriptor. But if it is, that means you're going to rise much faster in that category, and you can actually get a bestseller tag to describe your book.

243
00:53:06.970 --> 00:53:12.160
Hank Marcacci: Now, in order to find these best-selling categories, we have 3 steps, just like we did with keywords.

244
00:53:12.380 --> 00:53:20.539
Hank Marcacci: And step number one is, we're going to look for the categories of other books like our own. We'll write those down or record those down and make sure we use those in our category. Search

245
00:53:20.760 --> 00:53:30.459
Hank Marcacci: step number 2 is, we want to find the absr of the number one best-selling book and put that in the kennelpreneur calculator, because that way we can tell how many sales it takes to actually reach position number one.

246
00:53:30.530 --> 00:53:37.110
Hank Marcacci: and then step number 3 is you want to repeat this until you find 3 categories that work well for you, and strongly represent your book.

247
00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:38.660
Hank Marcacci: So if we go through this.

248
00:53:38.830 --> 00:53:49.109
Hank Marcacci: and we look at Step one. What you would do is find a book similar to your own. And you go through and actually see what categories they're using for their book. You want to write those down because those are ones that might work well for your book as well.

249
00:53:49.640 --> 00:54:04.669
Hank Marcacci: Step number 2 is we click on one of those categories and we click on the book in position number one, and we actually see how many sales are making in the kindle store using a kindle bestseller calculator. So that'll tell us again how difficult it is to get that copy that category, and how many sales per day it takes to reach position number one.

250
00:54:05.330 --> 00:54:12.310
Hank Marcacci: and then step number 3 is we actually go make a list of all these and decide which ones work best and hold on one second. I'm not sure.

251
00:54:14.490 --> 00:54:20.090
Hank Marcacci: Oh, there we go! So we want to go through, and we make a list. Give me one second here.

252
00:54:25.660 --> 00:54:54.519
Hank Marcacci: perfect. So once we have them all together, we want to make a list of those categories that will help your book. Now, here's an example within publisher Rocket, how you can do that. So I want to show you within publisher rocket how you can easily do it, and it's something that you can go ahead and put all your categories together and see which ones work for you. Now, remember, you can do this manually. You can write down all these categories together and see the number of sales that actually takes to reach your book into position number one manually do it in excel, or something else that'll actually show you which ones are best. But within publisher Rocket, here's how you can move forward.

253
00:54:54.660 --> 00:55:03.059
Hank Marcacci: So if you go to publish a rocket, you do the category search. You can go through and look at all these parent categories, and you want to go through and select a category that describes your book.

254
00:55:03.090 --> 00:55:31.260
Hank Marcacci: and this will tell you all the subcategories that fits really well within your book. So, for example, if you chose self-help as a parent category, you can see all these different sub categories that might apply really well to your book, and from there you can see the sales it takes to get position number one, the sales it takes to get position number 10 as well as other metrics, such as the percent of publishers within there, and the percent of kindle unlimited titles within there as well. So I'm going through here. I can immediately see which categories are competitive and which ones are easy to actually rank for.

255
00:55:31.730 --> 00:55:35.280
Hank Marcacci: And those are the 2 columns that you want to use when you're looking for that information.

256
00:55:35.410 --> 00:55:47.990
Hank Marcacci: Something else that really helps is we list all the ghost categories here, so you can make sure that you're avoiding all those ghost categories that are detrimental to your book. So you can see, for example, which ones are duplicates and also which ones are ghosts and can really hurt your sales online.

257
00:55:48.830 --> 00:55:59.350
Hank Marcacci: Now that, you know which categories are duplicates and ghosts. You can make sure you don't waste any of your categories here, because, remember, we don't want our book to show up in the ghost categories because they're actually hidden on the Amazon store.

258
00:56:00.100 --> 00:56:03.549
Hank Marcacci: Now, as a recap, there are 3 ways to get your categories.

259
00:56:03.790 --> 00:56:14.740
Hank Marcacci: The 1st is, you can guess, and if you try to guess, you're not going to know which categories the most competitive, you won't know which ones take a thousand sales per day become a bestseller, or which ones only take 5 sales per day to become bestseller.

260
00:56:15.220 --> 00:56:28.049
Hank Marcacci: Second is, you can actually go through and do this manually, and if you do this manually, you have the benefit of actually going through and seeing which ones take lower sales to reach. But the problem is is, you're probably not finding the best niche categories which are going to help your book.

261
00:56:28.950 --> 00:56:48.499
Hank Marcacci: And then the 3rd way you can do it is you can use publisher rocket, and when you use publisher rocket, the benefit here is, you can see all that information about categories you can see which ones take low sales per day. You can sort by it, find the best ones and the niche ones that may be really difficult to find on Amazon, and using publisher Rocket, you can make sure you find those ones where you can get recognition, and your book can be discoverable on Amazon.

262
00:56:49.230 --> 00:56:52.849
Hank Marcacci: Now, at this point you may be wondering how you can get your hands on publisher rocket.

263
00:56:52.950 --> 00:56:58.040
Hank Marcacci: And what we're doing today is we're offering publisher rocket for $199 for unlimited access.

264
00:56:58.070 --> 00:57:01.310
Hank Marcacci: and the benefits here is you can find profitable keywords fast.

265
00:57:01.320 --> 00:57:07.680
Hank Marcacci: You can go through and see all the 14,000 categories and sales required to rank at position number one and show up near the top of them.

266
00:57:07.920 --> 00:57:17.070
Hank Marcacci: You can go through and actually find the effective Amazon ads keywords. So we have a brand new ad system available in rocket, which you can use to generate up ads keywords for your book and help you out there.

267
00:57:17.370 --> 00:57:24.440
Hank Marcacci: And then you can also see how much money other authors are making. So you understand the competition, and who's doing well in the industry, and who you may or may not want to emulate.

268
00:57:24.850 --> 00:57:35.150
Hank Marcacci: And then, finally, you can see emerging and hot book markets. Trends can be very popular in Science Fiction, and you want to look at the ones where they might be emerging and hot, and which ones you where you want to actually write a book for in the future.

269
00:57:36.000 --> 00:58:02.820
Hank Marcacci: Now for just 199 for limited access. The benefit here is that if rocket helps you sell only 96 more books in your entire author life. So if you're our author for a couple of, or if you're an author for a couple of years and helps you sell just 96 more. Then Rocket actually pays for itself, or if you value your time at $20 an hour, and you buy rocket for 1 99. That means you've actually made your time back and marketing investment there. Because, remember, if you're not doing this with Rocket, you really want to do this by hand and find those proper keywords and categories for your book.

270
00:58:03.530 --> 00:58:26.840
Hank Marcacci: Now, something else that we're doing today for Science Fiction week is we are giving away the keywords and categories course which goes with this for absolutely free. So the keywords and categories course normally costs $50. It's something that's developed by Dave Chesson, and it really jumps into the depth of this with real life examples, and how to use rocket more, the most effectively. And if you buy today, you get this absolutely free, and you can use this on your journey to become an author.

271
00:58:26.880 --> 00:58:34.089
Hank Marcacci: and within this course you get the tips to become more discoverable. On Amazon. You get the step by step process to finding profitable categories and keywords.

272
00:58:34.120 --> 00:58:55.510
Hank Marcacci: And you also can see how to best use keywords and categories for more sales. There's a lot more within this course as well, such as how to increase your tactics, increase rankings, and just generic examples that you can use and look at and apply over to your own books. So if you're interested in getting this course for free, make sure you buy at this link, which is kinopreneur.com slash sf, week. And that's the way you can actually get that course for free.

273
00:58:56.290 --> 00:59:17.880
Hank Marcacci: Now, here's our testimonials, and something really important about these testimonials is a lot of times. There are books out there that have flatlined or gone through, and they're just not seeing the sales that they used to see, and people that use rocket say, Hey! Even though my sales had flatlined, even though they weren't actually making, or even though my books weren't making sales when I went and used publisher Rocket. I was able to revive these books and bring them back to the sales. That they really should have

274
00:59:17.920 --> 00:59:40.890
Hank Marcacci: something else important about publisher Rocket, is it? Is that investment? So if you use publisher rocket, it should pay itself back over time because you're making more sales and you're saving time on marketing, and I don't know about you. But when I became an author I didn't become it to become a marketer. I became it to actually sell and write books, so I don't like spending my time on the marketing side as much as I do the writing side and publisher Rocket helps you actually avoid that marketing side and go and really focus more on writing.

275
00:59:42.170 --> 00:59:54.359
Hank Marcacci: Now, as a recap, this offer is only available for a limited time. So you can buy it today. And with this you get publisher, rocket limited access, which is worth $199. You get your keywords and categories course, which is $49. You get that absolutely free.

276
00:59:54.360 --> 01:00:12.560
Hank Marcacci: you get unlimited updates. So whenever we come up with something new and publish your rocket, it's included in there. You get world class support from real authors. So people like you that have published on the Amazon store, and you also get access to lessons, resources, tutorials, and more. So it's all available for 1 99. If you want it, you can find it. kindlepreneur.com slash sf, week.

277
01:00:13.070 --> 01:00:21.919
Hank Marcacci: Not only that, but is risk free for 30 days. We have a money back guarantee, so we don't ask questions. If you like your money back, just let us know, and we'll make sure we take care.

278
01:00:22.410 --> 01:00:30.439
Hank Marcacci: So that is it for today. Again, if you're interested in the deal, go to kenopreneur.com slash sf, week, and we're more than happy to answer questions from here forward.

279
01:00:32.490 --> 01:00:38.870
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank. That was that was really really insightful. And there's

280
01:00:38.920 --> 01:00:44.929
Emilio at ProWritingAid: actually quite a few questions in the in the Q&A

281
01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:51.156
Emilio at ProWritingAid: so we can start. We have about 10 min for questions. So

282
01:00:51.630 --> 01:00:52.540
Hank Marcacci: Sounds, wonderful.

283
01:00:52.800 --> 01:00:53.460
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Sorry.

284
01:00:54.010 --> 01:00:56.660
Hank Marcacci: I said, it sounds wonderful. We're happy to help with these.

285
01:00:56.660 --> 01:01:02.549
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Perfect. I I think, the 1st one we already answered. I don't know.

286
01:01:02.600 --> 01:01:08.990
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Hank, if you want to add anything. What makes Sci-fi the most freestyle genre.

287
01:01:09.642 --> 01:01:13.349
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Where we could combine it with another general tropes.

288
01:01:14.433 --> 01:01:30.579
Hank Marcacci: I don't know if science fiction is the most freestyle. It's my favorite genre, so I want to clarify. Maybe I broke up on screen a little there. So it's my favorite I do think it is freestyle. I don't know if it's the most, but the benefit with science fiction here is that you can have a ton of different tropes and different things that apply.

289
01:01:30.580 --> 01:01:49.869
Hank Marcacci: So, for example, you have science fiction that occurs on other planets. You have science fiction that's occurring here. You have all sorts of characters in it. You can mix in all sorts of different things that fit within Science Fiction. So it's a very wide genre. So if you have those tropes or they are available in Science Fiction and you are using them in your book. You want to make sure you call them out in your keywords categories, because that will help your book out online.

290
01:01:50.290 --> 01:02:12.579
Hank Marcacci: So even though it's not the most freestyle. Necessarily, you can absolutely call out tropes. They're very common in Science Fiction, and people know what they tend to look for. There's certain people, too, that just love to read about certain Science Fiction scenarios. I have a friend, for example, he loves reading about emp apocalyptic. So there's an apocalyptic story with an emp in it, I can guarantee you he's picked it up and read it. So there are people that definitely stick to their tropes in Science Fiction.

291
01:02:14.040 --> 01:02:27.840
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Perfect. Thank you so much, Hank. We have a question from Brian. Brian asks, how long in weeks or days do you have to be number one in your category to earn the best seller symbol.

292
01:02:28.420 --> 01:02:42.680
Hank Marcacci: So we have good news here. You only have to be best seller for an hour to get the best seller signal. So any point where you sell more books, you're the number one. That category you get it. Now the problem is is when you fall out of that bestseller position. Amazon can take that badge away.

293
01:02:42.680 --> 01:03:00.210
Hank Marcacci: So again, you only have to show up in position number one once to get it, but once you fall out of position one. They can actually remove that from your book. So that's why it's so important to find categories that are smaller, the ones that are less competitive because the benefit there is you can stay up in that best seller position longer, and people can see that your book is a bestseller. There.

294
01:03:02.210 --> 01:03:03.989
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank.

295
01:03:04.010 --> 01:03:10.400
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Another question. Does it matter what order you put your keyword into the formula.

296
01:03:11.280 --> 01:03:18.850
Hank Marcacci: If you're looking at the 7 keyword boxes, you can put them in any box. It doesn't matter if you choose. Box one or Box 7. You just need to include them all over there.

297
01:03:20.170 --> 01:03:41.650
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thanks. We have another anonymous question. When you have a book that has a sexually explicit content, Amazon will only allow you to search within a specific category. But you have to match the category that people are looking for. Are there other venues for making it easier to search for books? With this limitation.

298
01:03:42.190 --> 01:04:03.689
Hank Marcacci: So it is hard when you have very explicit content. And the reason why is that Amazon doesn't want, for example, kids to find the book when they're just going through the store. So if you have sexually explicit. And again, the way to consider this is, you're rated like R, like, you are very explicit in these type of things, and that's where you should mark that box that says it's extremely explicit. But again, you really have to be extremely explicit.

299
01:04:03.690 --> 01:04:33.239
Hank Marcacci: And the reason why, again, Amazon kind of puts that behind a wall or hides that a little is to make sure the general market or kids aren't stumbling upon content. That really isn't meant for kids. So if you do have that, what I recommend is that you can do a lot of outwards marketing. So if you're reaching out to your groups or no people like it, they can find it directly on there. And when you're using your keywords. I wouldn't recommend using very sexually explicit keywords, because Amazon does tend to ban those, or you just don't show up for those. So if you are using keywords that way, you don't want to use the super sexually explicit ones.

300
01:04:33.240 --> 01:04:36.040
Hank Marcacci: because if someone puts it in search, it's not going to work and show your book.

301
01:04:37.950 --> 01:04:43.567
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank. That makes perfect sense. We have another question.

302
01:04:45.120 --> 01:05:02.069
Emilio at ProWritingAid: let me see. Does Amazon share? I I believe, the author date under clicks per keyword. So show the author date under clicks per keywords. Can you then change the keywords at any time? If they don't seem to be getting clicks.

303
01:05:02.930 --> 01:05:32.469
Hank Marcacci: So Amazon does not show the clicks per keyword. The best way we can get that number is back into there from sales, so we can see that people how much sales people are making on Amazon and publisher rocket has a whole bunch of data that it takes in to show you the searches per month, and the amount that people are buying. So we can get a really good estimate again on the searches per month, and how much people are actually earning off that book. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't share the clicks. I wish they did. If they did, I would be so happy to see how many people click my book and then decided to buy an extremely powerful tool. But unfortunately they don't give it to us.

304
01:05:32.500 --> 01:06:00.099
Hank Marcacci: Now. The other good news is that we were asking, How often can I use keywords? And the answer there is, you can try or change them as often as you want, but if you change them too much, you might confuse the Amazon algorithm. So what I like to do is I like to change them, and I let them go for a couple of weeks, and I see how they do, and then, if they're not doing good after a couple of weeks, I'll go back and change them again. But what you don't want to do is like, change them every day, or something like that. It takes time for these to settle in, and it takes time for the Amazon algorithm to really figure out what your book's good for.

305
01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:06.512
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much. Thanks. Sorry. My dog started barking.

306
01:06:06.940 --> 01:06:07.970
Hank Marcacci: No worries

307
01:06:08.246 --> 01:06:18.430
Hank Marcacci: Amelia. I just want to say, too. I'm reading through the comments on here, and they have me laughing with space marine. Thug hunt. I just want to say I cracked up whoever said that it's brought smile to my face so.

308
01:06:20.820 --> 01:06:27.589
Emilio at ProWritingAid: It's yeah. The the comment section was really alive. During the

309
01:06:28.140 --> 01:06:35.540
Emilio at ProWritingAid: which is what we like to see. We have another question. Well, 2 questions from Laura.

310
01:06:37.340 --> 01:06:51.449
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Would you use the keyword, dystopic or dystopia, or how would something be listed if it was a dystopia plus fantasies, sci-fi, or fantasy sci-fi plus something else.

311
01:06:52.160 --> 01:07:17.790
Hank Marcacci: Great question. So if we look at dystopic for dystopia, what I would do is I'd apply either the manual process, or if you have rocket, I'd use it with both those keywords. So find out. Does dystopic sell well? Or does dystopia sell well which one's really getting pushed? And what ones are Amazon recommending when you put it in the box, and that's gonna help you understand what's gonna be better for your book. I can't offer off the top my head like I don't know which one works best off top of head, because we gotta do that research and find out which one's driving more.

312
01:07:17.790 --> 01:07:38.589
Hank Marcacci: And then, in terms of, if you should list your book as sci-fi or sci-fi fantasy, it really depends upon what category fits. So what I would do is figure out what niche categories are good for your book, and which ones have the lowest sales, and put your book there. But make sure again. These apply to your book a couple of years ago. There's a lot of trouble with authors that would go through, and they put their books in areas that didn't belong just to show up as a bestseller.

313
01:07:38.690 --> 01:07:55.900
Hank Marcacci: Please don't do that. It's not ethical. It's also could get you in trouble with Amazon. Readers aren't going to enjoy your book if it's in the wrong area. But if it's a niche that strongly fits your book and has low competition, that's where it can really help you, and readers are grateful because they want to find these books like your own that match with this niche, and they're showing them new books that they might really enjoy.

314
01:07:58.320 --> 01:08:10.209
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank. We have, quite a few questions. But I'm going to ask a couple of questions about publisher rocket. Specifically, we have one from Mark.

315
01:08:10.632 --> 01:08:15.169
Emilio at ProWritingAid: How can publish a rocket be used for traditionally published books.

316
01:08:16.120 --> 01:08:42.250
Hank Marcacci: So mark one of the big things you can use for traditional books, because typically traditional books aren't gonna let you go in and enter keywords, categories. It's great for research. So you can go through. And if you're trying to think, what is the next book I want to publish, especially if it's science fiction. Are people excited again about post apocalyptic? Are they excited about 1st contact? If it's a end of the world scenario, do they like an emp. Do they like something like again aliens coming down? What is it that people are trying to read? Where are the trends going?

317
01:08:42.250 --> 01:09:09.249
Hank Marcacci: And if you use publisher Rocket. You can understand the things that people are looking to read, and where that general interest is going. So when you write, your next book is a far better chance of becoming a best seller because it lines up strongly with the market. So if you are traditional, or, again, if you're trying to catch the eye of a traditional publisher. You want to write these trends with books that have a high chance of success. So if you're doing trad, make sure you research before you write your book, to know if your topic is something that's going to be interesting to traditional publishers and to the readership.

318
01:09:11.970 --> 01:09:17.877
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank. And then the last questions about publisher rocket.

319
01:09:18.720 --> 01:09:21.869
Emilio at ProWritingAid: So we have a question from

320
01:09:22.290 --> 01:09:35.129
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Katherine. Well, 2 questions from Katharine is the 109 a yearly subscription, or one time purchase? And does it include the the kindle calculator that you showed us?

321
01:09:35.220 --> 01:09:42.316
Emilio at ProWritingAid: And also, Linda is asking if this is for a term limit, or if it's

322
01:09:43.080 --> 01:09:47.460
Emilio at ProWritingAid: if if it's recurring, if it in in case that

323
01:09:48.130 --> 01:09:49.020
Emilio at ProWritingAid: yeah. So.

324
01:09:49.020 --> 01:10:10.120
Hank Marcacci: For life. So if you pay one to 9, it's a 1 time payment. It's not a subscription. So you pay for life. You don't get billed again next year. So again, it's that one time payment of 199, and the benefit here is you get all the future features of rocket for free. So when you go through, for example, we just released a brand new advertising feature that everyone who bought the rocket in the past.

325
01:10:10.260 --> 01:10:40.249
Hank Marcacci: Got it for free. It downloaded automatically on our computer. So Rocket gets better after you buy it right? So we didn't charge them extra to get that additional feature. It's something that automatically loads on. I know some really cool features that we have coming up soon as well, that you want to want to have rocket now, so that they automatically download for free into your rocket device. So that's the benefit there again is that it's 199 or life, and anytime you come up with a new feature, it automatically comes down to the rocket installation on your PC. And you don't have to worry about ever buying it again.

326
01:10:40.300 --> 01:11:08.009
Hank Marcacci: Now something else I saw is, where is that kindlepreneur calculator? And is it in rocket? So the good news is, rocket takes a step farther when it's showing you the sales per month. That's the kindlepreneur calculator, but it's more accurate. So the calculator itself, while that you know visual, is in rocket. It puts all the data there in an easy table for you. So it's way better than the calculator and rocket, because you get it all in one column. You can see it right away if you want to use the calculator, though all you need to do is Google kindlepreneur adsr. It should pop up right away, and you can use it. There.

327
01:11:09.780 --> 01:11:15.099
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you so much, Hank, sadly. The this is all the time that we that we had of.

328
01:11:15.100 --> 01:11:15.890
Hank Marcacci: No worries.

329
01:11:16.230 --> 01:11:44.042
Emilio at ProWritingAid: The presentation was was really really great, and we we received many questions that unfortunately we couldn't answer. But if you have any questions you can. You can share them in the community space at Circle, and we'll pass them on to haunt. So we can. We can answer as many questions as as we can. So thank you so much, Hank, for joining us again.

330
01:11:44.580 --> 01:11:57.779
Emilio at ProWritingAid: And thank you everyone for for joining us in this session. Remember that we have more sessions later today and for the rest of the week. And yeah,

331
01:11:58.310 --> 01:12:06.630
Emilio at ProWritingAid: thank you all for for joining us for the Science Fiction writers week have a lovely rest of.

332
01:12:07.590 --> 01:12:18.100
Hank Marcacci: Thank you all so much. We really appreciate it for having us. And again, best of luck with publishing. Use these tips. Help your book out in the store, whether you own rocket or not. So thank you all again, and best of luck.

333
01:12:19.470 --> 01:12:20.880
Emilio at ProWritingAid: Thank you. Bye, bye.