
Why Book Marketing Matters
It’s never been easier to publish a book. It’s also never been more difficult to find people interested in reading your book. That’s not to suggest there aren’t plenty of people eager to read what you’ve written, but with thousands of books published every day, marketing your book is just as important as writing it; assuming you wrote your book to be read. So what can you do to stand out in a crowded marketplace and help your readers find your book? There are so many tactics and strategies, but let’s begin with the foundation: optimizing your book’s discoverability.

1. Keywords
Keywords are words readers use to search for books. Your goal as an author should be strategically using the seven backend keyword boxes Amazon provides to ensure your book shows up in searches containing your keywords. If your book appears in a search for a book, there’s a good chance people will end up on your book’s sales page, buy it, and make you money.
Wondering how to choose the right keywords for your book? We thought you’d never ask. Here’s an Amazon algorithm hack in three easy steps.
Select “Books” as the Amazon category and begin typing a word relevant to your book in the search bar. Pay careful attention to the word or words that auto-generate as you type.
Once you find a phrase that fits, add a letter of the alphabet to the end of your word or phrase to see what Amazon predicts you’re trying to search. For example, if you begin your search by typing “weight loss,” type “weight loss a,” then “weight loss b,” and so on. Then, make a list of all relevant words and phrases.
Search each keyword you recorded and review the top three books that come up. Then scroll to each book’s Amazon Best Seller Rank (ASBR) and copy and paste it into this sales calculator. (You’re welcome) If the book you searched doesn’t generate much income, either it’s not a highly searched keyword, or the book did not meet the needs of those who search the keyword.
It can be a bit of a tedious process to repeat seven times, but keywords are, well…key in making your book discoverable on the biggest book retailer site in the world. We get it, not everyone has the time (or patience) to do this. That’s why we’ve invested in software that does all this work for us and we use it to generate the best possible keywords for our clients. Not only are these keywords used on the backend, we use them to place your book in 3 of Amazon’s 16,000 book categories, and organically incorporate them into your book’s description, and metadata.
2. Categories
While it may sound trivial, placing your book in the appropriate Amazon category could mean the difference between best-seller status and showing up on page 200 of a search. As we mentioned

earlier, Amazon allows you to place your book into three categories. Each category needs to be carefully selected based on your specific goals and audience to generate sales.
Let’s be clear, becoming a number-one bestselling author on Amazon won’t necessarily make you a millionaire. It could quite possibly make you $20 a week. One thing the bestseller status does is drive traffic to your book’s sales page. Because Amazon has so so so many categories, some of them are relatively easy to rank for, while others require you to outsell authors like James Clear and Joel Osteen–hard pass. The bottom line is, all it takes for you to become an Amazon bestseller is to find a category that has a number bestseller with sales you can beat. For example, if you choose a category with a bestselling book that sells 3 books a day, all you have to do is sell four books a day to become the category’s new bestseller.
Easier said than done, but possible nonetheless. Remember that list you made when researching keywords? Provided you made one and didn’t promptly close your laptop at the thought of it–take it out. Then follow these steps.
Use the list to generate a list of books similar to yours and check their categories.
Follow the link for each category to view the list of bestsellers in the category and scroll down to its ABSR.
Copy and paste the ASBR ranking into the sales calculator to see how many books you need to sell in a day to become the number 1 bestselling author in that category.
Of course, you could completely skip this process and have us do it for you. Shameless plug.
3. Cover
As important as it is to employ the best keywords and categories, it’s all in vain if your cover is boring, confusing, or uninspired. Imagine doing all the work above to successfully rank for your keywords and earn bestseller status, just for readers to see your book cover and promptly hit the back button.
Despite the old adage, literally everyone, even your mom, will judge your book by its cover. It’s one of the most important investments you can make. Tons of authors have had to find this out the hard way. Please believe us when we tell you, it’s best to hire a professional. Not only do they have an eye for what looks good, they know what makes a good cover. It may surprise you to learn the two are not synonymous.
Covers that sell well have three things in common:
They grab attention
The title is easy to read and located in the top third of the book
Readers can tell what the book is about in three seconds or less
Now if you’re a celebrity or a world-renowned author, you can ignore all of these rules and still sell millions of copies, but then it begs the question, what are you even doing here? Even though you’re going to heed our advice and hire a professional to design your cover, unless you’ve mastered telepathy, you’ll need to provide them with a cover concept.
1. Create a book cover inspiration
You can use Pinterest, Google, or any site you frequent to find inspiration. We also highly recommend you browse the Amazon best-seller list in relevant categories for inspirational covers. Take about 5-7 of your favorites and compile them for your designer.
(KCP Cover Inspiration Template)
2. Communicate your ideas as clearly as possible
List any core elements, as well as the style, and tone you want the cover to have, and describe your audience. If it helps, you can write this as if it's for one specific person. It's easier to write to one person than it is to write to a crowd. Some examples of words that help describe style and tone would be:
minimalistic
modern
fresh
bright
airy
whimsical
professional
This is the first step to ensure your designer loves you and you love your design.
4. Sales Copy

Last, but certainly not least, is your book’s sales copy. After your book shows up in a search and your cover piques their interest, the next thing a potential reader will do is read your sales copy. Sales copy is best written by a copywriter. Not all writers are skilled copywriters. It’s not that they can’t be, just that they haven’t put much thought or attention into writing that sells.
Your sales copy is not a summary or synopsis of your book, it’s a pitch stating why readers should buy your book. It’s a sales tool, not a homework assignment. For non-fiction books, the description should convey three things:
✓ Who the book is for
✓ What problem it solves
✓ The results they can expect
Start with a hook, something that draws the reader in and entices them to keep reading. End with a strong call to action, a line that compels them to buy now.
Lastly, the text should vary to make it scannable for the reader. Use bullets, bold and italicized text, and spacing to engage readers.
You may have noticed most of our advice centers around making your book more discoverable on Amazon. That’s because Amazon accounts for 50-70% of all book sales in the US, making the platform a valuable way to spend your time and attention. We’re also big fans of selling your book directly to the consumer and leveraging Amazon as a way to add new leads to your marketing funnel. Find out more about that here, or shoot us an email and we can tell you more about it.
This is not an extensive list of how to increase discoverability, but we’ve outlined the most crucial factors. If you can master these four areas, you’re well on your way to getting more eyes and hands on your book. We hope this was a helpful tool for your self-publishing journey. If it caused more overwhelm than peace, the team at Kingdom Copy Publishing has you covered. Whether you’re getting ready to publish or already have, and it’s not going too hot, we’ll help get your book in front of people who want to read it. We can tackle the whole process for you, or you can book a strategy call with us where we can tell you what to do and how to do it. Whatever your next step may be, thanks for reading!
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