5 Surprising Facts About Amazon for Authors

Even if you shop there all the time, there are probably some Amazon secrets you've yet to discover as an author. If you want your book to be more discoverable on the Amazon platform, there are five surprising facts about Amazon that you need to know. If you want to know what they are, then this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers, your fabulous self publishing services team. Amazon is not the only place you will sell books. In fact, in my book Self Publish and Succeed, I have an entire chapter on places to sell books that aren't Amazon. But Amazon is probably where you will sell a lot of books outside of bulk arrangements or large events. So what things do you not know about Amazon but probably should? Number one Bisect codes do not equate to Amazon Categories Bisect codes are an important aspect of your book metadata because it's a way to classify your book by its specific genre and subgenre. If you're looking for a book in a store or a library, you can you usually know where to start your search based on what kind of book it is. You know, poetry collections will be in a different direction than cookbooks, which will be on a totally different shelf than a nonfiction business guide. But if that cookbook gets placed on the same shelf, if that cookbook gets placed on the same shelf with that poetry book, it's probably not going to be found by anyone who's looking to purchase a copy of it. That's where your bisect code comes in. Bookstores and libraries use the bisect subject headings list to to figure out where your book should be listed and shelved so readers can easily find it. You can learn more about bisect codes and how to choose yours in this video right here. Now, Amazon categories also help potential readers search for your book, but naturally, Amazon doesn't do it like the rest of them. They don't play with the same codes that the rest of the bookselling world does. Amazon uses their own category list that does not match the bisect codes or any other industry standard. And in fact, they have different Amazon categories in every country and for Kindle and for Print. But that doesn't mean the bisect code is useless when it comes to selling your book on Amazon. Amazon actually uses your book's first two bisect codes to determine which Amazon categories best fit your book. That's why it's really important to get your bisect codes right because your discoverability on Amazon heavily depends on it lists. You can create one, and so can people in your community did you know that Amazon has a collection of tools and features that shoppers can use to promote themselves and their interests? User curated lists and guides are a great way to share your book with a community of shoppers invested in a particular topic, subject or interest. And when you're included in a list or a guide, it'll be featured on your public profile page. This is a little known way to build your presence, share your expertise, and even discover new experts within your subject matter. If you have happened to or happened to create a list with self publish and succeed on it, please put a link in the comments below because that's definitely a swag worthy move, right? Number three More than half of Amazon book sales are from books you won't find in a bookstore, and the majority of all book sales aren't from bestsellers. What? Yeah, if you've been on this channel enough, you've heard me say that your book doesn't need to be a bestseller to be successful. That's because Amazon sells a ton of books and doesn't rely on blockbuster successes like bookstores do, so you can create success on a different scale. Bookstores have limited shelf space, so the books there need to earn their spot. That's why when you walk in the doors of Barnes and Noble, you see the most popular titles and names right there on the front table. Amazon, on the other hand, takes advantage of what's called a long tail business model. It's called that because the graph of sales versus titles looks like this. On the top left you have your best sellers, a small number of titles with huge amount of sales. Think Game of Thrones, Atomic Habits, and even the Very Hungry Caterpillar. But as you go down the curve, and that's the tale, you have a much higher majority of unique titles, each with lesser sales. But when you add up all of those unique titles together, you have a higher amount of collective sales compared to that spike of bestsellers. It's estimated that book sales represent 10% of Amazon's total revenue, which, according to Amazon's latest release data, totaled a whopping $386 billion in 2020. So we don't have an exact number, but we can guess that Amazon's book sales come in at about 30 $38.6 billion. And a lot of those sales are from that tale, not from the handful of books topping the bestseller list. Number four Amazon ads are run almost exactly the opposite to how you run Google and Facebook ads. With Google and Facebook, you generally set up a campaign around a single keyword, but when you run Amazon ads, you dump 300 or more keywords into a single campaign, and then you monitor, test, and tweak from there. Think of what you type into an Amazon search box when you're on the hunt for the product. Perfect product to solve whatever problem you're having, Running ads for your book go the same kind of way. You want to put together a collection of relevant words that your target audience would plug into Amazon if they were looking for your type of book. This includes descriptive phrases like book to help my kid realize he's not a dinosaur, as well as related book titles and authors that are similar to you and your book. So even if you pick a handful of perfectly fitting keywords, it won't be enough to generate enough impressions for the campaign to impact book sales. You're definitely going to need a lot more than one keyword to get your money's worth for Amazon ads. Lucky for you, I have a video all about setting up and running profitable ads right here. Isn't that nice? If you like how I have so many videos on so many topics, smash that thumbs up button to let me know. Try it. It feels good. All right, Number five Your Amazon Author Central page has NPD Bookscan data for the US Having up to date insights into how your book sales are trending can be essential to crafting your marketing strategy. Your Amazon Author Central page includes visuals that show not only how your book is performing over a period of time, but also where your book is performing. These NPD BookScan estimates reflect about 85% of your print book sales, but it doesn't include ebooks, so it's not perfect. But it does offer insights into your sales, which can also help you tailor and refine your marketing efforts to get the best results. What One of these things was a surprise to you? Go ahead and post it in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you get entered to win some sweet no boringbook swag like our mug where coffee, tea and hot chocolate are all proven to taste better in it. Or our oh so soft journal for writing down all your fabulous book ideas. Okay, here's that video on bisect codes that I know you want to see. And right here is the latest and greatest from the channel so that you can make sure you're caught right up on on all the amazing content we've got here. Either way, click on one of them. I can't wait to see you there.