4 Ways Publisher Rocket Helps Indie Authors Thrive on Amazon

By Dave Chesson, @DaveChesson

Part of The Indie Authors Series

JH: Traveling the publishing path alone requires indie authors to wear a lot of hats and do a lot of tasks. One of the more daunting tasks is marketing. Dave Chesson visits the lecture hall today to share some tips on making that easier. 

Dave Chesson is the founder of Kindlepreneur.com and creator of Publisher Rocket, a software that helps authors market their books more effectively.

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Take it away Dave…

Being a self-published indie author can be one of the most rewarding experiences. However, it can also be one of the most difficult.

When you self-publish a book, you’re more than just a writer. You’re also responsible for marketing, editing, designing, formatting, and the list goes on. That’s a lot of legwork, which is why I’ve made it my mission to give indie authors a leg up — at least when it comes to book marketing.

A few years ago, I developed Publisher Rocket. It’s an easy-to-use software for authors that makes is easier to sell books on Amazon — so you can give yours the fighting chance it deserves.

There are four main areas Publisher Rocket is designed to help you out with:

1. Kindle Keyword Selection
2. Category Placement
3. Competition Analyzing
4. AMS Ad Keyword Selection

Let’s dive deeper into each of these 4 areas so you can learn some crucial book marketing lessons and see what’s possible with Publisher Rocket.

 

Get Readers Attention with Kindle Keywords

The first area we will look at is Kindle Keywords. Keyword choice has the power to decide whether your book is a hit or a no-show.

There are millions of books available on Amazon. In fact, there are over 1,000 results when you search for Mexican cookbooks — crazy! And each and every one of those books is there for one main purpose: To sell! That means you’re going to have competition. Nobody ever said a writer’s life was going to be a cakewalk.

Thankfully, variety is the spice of life, and not every reader in the world is looking for the same thing. When readers head to Amazon to get their new page-turners, they don’t just start digging through the digital shelves blindly. Instead, they type a word or phrase into that little search bar at the top of the page. These phrases entered are actually your Kindle Keywords and Search Phrases!

So let’s say you set one of your keywords to be “sci fi colonization” for your science fiction novel, and the reader types in that keyword... There’s a good chance your book is going to pop up.

With Publisher Rocket, you can find the smartest potential keywords within seconds, which is a real gift for writers. Just type your topic into Rocket’s keyword search tool and you will have a large list of potential keywords at your fingertips, along with data to help you determine which could actually attract the most eyeballs and book sales. Pretty cool, right?

Up Your Odds of Becoming a Bestseller by Picking the Right Category

Amazon separates its library of available books into categories. Some are similar to classic genres; however, they can be much more specific.

Categories are very important for a couple of reasons.

First, some readers will browse a category searching for a new book. This makes it worth your time to make sure your book is ready and waiting to be found.

Second, Amazon bestseller tags are category specific. So, putting your book in smart categories is a huge step toward becoming a bestseller, which can lead to even more book sales.

Most people think you can only pick 3 categories per book. But you can actually put books in up to 10 if you know the strategy I teach. The tricky part is knowing which categories make the most sense for your book and give you the best chance of becoming an Amazon bestselling author.

This is where Publisher Rocket comes back into play. Inside the software, all of Amazon’s categories are instantly available for you to research, along with data to once again help you find the categories that can attract more eyeballs and sales for your book. 

 

Learn from Your Competition

First things first: I understand that many authors write out of a love for the craft, and I totally respect that. If you have a story you’re dying to share, do it.

But what if you aren’t sure what to write about? What if you have more than one idea? What if you want to make money from your writing so you can do it full time?

In that case, I recommend researching your competitors to find out what books are selling right now. You can learn from their concepts, their cover design, their titles, their book descriptions — even their sub-genres. But how do you know what books are actually making sales?

Publisher Rocket makes this easy. By simply inputting your general topic into Rocket’s competition search, you can pull up a list of your top competitors and their books. Rocket will tell you just how well each is doing — from their time in the top spot all the way down to the dollar sign on their daily sales.

This gives you some great insights for how to market your book more intelligently and helps you decide which of your book ideas might be most successful on Amazon. 

 

Level Up Your Sales with Smart AMS Ads 

Determining whether to use AMS ads is one of the biggest decisions an Independent Author needs to make when it comes to publishing on Amazon. Running an effective ad campaign can bring your book much desired success and catapult it into places unattainable before. Or it can slowly (or quickly) drain your entire marketing budget and leave you for naught.

So, do you take that risk or not?

Before we get into how Rocket can help you with AMS, let me preface this by saying:

AMS is not as easy as set-it-and-forget-it. It requires dedicated monitoring and adjustment — and the knowledge on how to do that. But a successful campaign can definitely bring in rewards, including more sales per day and a much better chance at becoming a bestseller.

I would definitely recommend at least looking into AMS Ads before bypassing them completely. If you’re confident in the magnetism of your writing, cover, and book description, AMS Ads just might be what launches your book into the stratosphere. For those of you looking for more info, I’ve actually created an entire free course on the subject.

And as you might guess, Publisher Rocket makes it much easier to establish quality AMS ads. Just like when publishing your book onto Amazon, you need to select keywords to place your advertisements in the right spot at the right time for maximum books sales and the lowest ad cost.

The thing is this though… AMS Keywords often follow a different strategy than Kindle keywords. Rocket accounts for this in its specialized AMS Ads keyword search, helping you find smart keywords faster. 

Publisher Rocket is the Indie Author’s Sidekick

Self-publishing is tricky enough already. So why not utilize every possible tool at your disposal to help ensure your book gets its day in the sun?

Rocket can help you do that — no matter what kind of book you’re writing. It’s a one time purchase at $97, and that includes all future updates, our marvelous support crew, and tutorials on how to use the software. Plus, there’s a 30 day, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. You’ve got nothing to lose!

However, Publisher Rocket isn’t for everyone. If you’re not looking to be serious about your Amazon self-publishing, it’s not worth it for you. Plus, Rocket isn’t some miracle program. It doesn’t write the book for you. It’s not a marketing service. But it can save you weeks (or even months) of tedious work and instantly provide you with helpful, real-life data for marketing your books.

For those of you who want to tackle book marketing head-on and give your book the best shot at success, give Publisher Rocket a try. Remember time is money. And if you can cut down on your time spent on marketing and efficiently use it elsewhere… it seems like a no-brainer investment to me.

Cheers!