5 Tips for Publishing on Amazon in 2020 with @DaleLRoberts

What does video have to do with publishing on Amazon in 2020? Stick around. I've got a special guest here that's going to give you that. And we're going to give you four other tips for publishing on Amazon in 2020. Stick around. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad with Book Launchers, a fabulous self publishing company that will help you write, publish, and sell nonfiction books that build your business. And I am here with Dale Roberts, Self Publishing with Dale.

Yes, Yes.

A fabulous YouTube channel that I will make sure you subscribe to if you haven't already. So many amazing tips and their live streams. It is what I aspire to in live streams, so you have to check that out. All right, so today we have five tips to help you publish your book on Amazon in 2020. And I'm just gonna kick it right off. I'm gonna send it over to Dale for tip number one.

Tip number one is if you're publishing on Amazon, you really need to further index your titles by utilizing Author Central. I've been saying this for years. Right now, this is one of the best ways to take your entire catalog on one page. And rather than just sending someone to one specific product, you can send them to all of your products. And here's the beauty of it. On Author Central, you can actually put an RSS feed for your blog. You can put videos there. You have your picture, you have your bio. There's so much that is still lying over in the Author Central area that's untapped. And I think a lot of you are missing out on that opportunity. So get on it like yesterday, at least by 2020.

In 2020, for sure. And yes, I totally agree. Amazon Author Central is underutilized. So it also means that if you do a good job on Author Central, I think you'll really stand out amongst. Amongst authors. And a lot of publishers ignore this one, too. Like traditional publishers.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. So this is a great opportunity. I love that tip. All right, so I'm going to take tip number two. And I'm actually stealing this from some research that Dave Chessen over at Kindlepreneur publisher Rocket did recently about the seven keywords that you get to put for your book. And there's. You may not know this, but there's 50 characters in each of those seven keywords. And so his research revolved around is it better to just go with a smaller keyword or is it better to maximize those 50 characters? And the research, although it wasn't a huge sample size which he was quick to point out in his article. It showed definitively that you were better off to maximize the use of those 50 characters and put in phrases. And Amazon will rejig the phrase to put it in a different order as it suits your audience. It does give priority to the order that you put the words in, but it will move the words around. So using that 50 characters will be an advantage to you in ranking for certain keywords particular to your book. So I thought that was an awesome tip from Dave Chessen, so I'm stealing that for 2020.

Big shout out to you, Dave too. And I don't think I can add anything else to this one right here just to know that you may want to read that specific article because it will clarify a bit more. Because you don't want to make it Alphabet soup.

Exactly. So I'll actually link to that in the description down below so you guys can check that out. All right, so I'm going to send it over to Dale for tip number three.

Tip number three, right here. Now this one's a simple one. Obviously common sense though, isn't always common practice. Amazon advertising it is the most dead simple way and sometimes a slightly cheap way of actually advertising your book natively on Amazon. And I see a lot of people unfortunately thinking they've got to spend $1,000 per day, 75 cents cost per click. And this is not true. In fact, I tell some people, if you're going to start into it and you haven't done it before, consider starting at a loss. Get it to where your cost per click is low. When I say low, 10 cents or less. And do it a dollar per day, something you can afford and use it to learn how to use Amazon advertising. Because going into 2020, it's going to turn into a fist fight and more people are going to be aware that Amazon advertising is nothing to sleep on.

Yeah, and I've actually got a couple follow ups and a question for you on this. So Amazon ads, interestingly I'm seeing Amazon is if you're not paying, they're not showing like they used to. You know, the Amazon recommends, it used to be also. Used to be also bots. A lot of times that stuff's not there and it's all about paying to play. So Amazon ads are going to become even more important. So that's great. Now I'm curious, do you find it hard to actually get to your spend on Amazon ads? Because we'll put $5 a day and so a lot of people are afraid of spending money on Amazon, I gotta tell you, it's actually hard to spend money. At first. I wanted to see Dale's perspective on that.

So what ends up happening is sometimes you're not burning through your budget on a given day. It's probably because your specific keywords you've selected. Your cost per click is probably way lower than what it's supposed to be. So if you increase your cost per click, you will definitely meet that. I've done that like numerous times because having fitness books when I was advertising, I said, you know what, let's just see what happens. And I would move my bids up to 75 cents a dollar and I was easily burning through my daily budget. So that's why I say, be very careful, don't go real high. And here's the thing is there's numerous keywords right now on the marketplace that nobody's bidding for. You can get them for 2 cents up to 8 cents cost per click, which the ROI is insane on a 299 ebook or a 9.99 print book.

Yeah. And since we've already mentioned Dave Chesson, I mean, having a software program like Publisher Rocket makes finding all those keywords much easier than manually coming up with them all yourself.

Oh. Oh, yeah, absolute. I don't spend time going anywhere else. I just grab Rocket. I'm sure you can just drop a link down in the description below, right? Yeah, go get it. I'm on her channel, but I'm going to tell you, go get it anyways, because Rocket is phenomenal. This is one of those tools I do not go without. And for the primary reason of utilizing it for Amazon advertising.

Yeah, totally. All right, so tip number four, I'm going to go basics. It's still going to be applying in 2020. We're talking a fantastic cover, a title that speaks to your audience and making sure you have keywords in your book description and that that is not written for the boss. That is still written to sell your book. But you have keywords in it. It's not going to change. It's absolutely not going to change. But in 2020, that was still going to be super, super important.

I feel like I'm in self publishing church. I'm like, praise, Amen. These are some things I always just try to say to people, like they don't understand the power of what you can do within your metadata to make yourself more discoverable. And not only that, to validate the customer search. When they come to your book, they can go, oh, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Exactly. It's so, so important. And I've done some other videos on your cover, so make sure you check those. I'll put a link to the one cover video down below because that is essential. Having a cover that stands out, but is also something that tells them they're at the right book. You can stand out by having a sci fi look and cover in your nonfiction category, but that's not standing out and giving them what they expect. So there's an art to this.

Absolutely.

All right, so back to Dale for tip number five.

So here's one that actually had her raising her eyebrows as soon as I recommended it. This is going to be taking you a little off of Amazon in order to drive traffic to Amazon. And it's through video marketing. Now we can think of video marketing. One of the simple ways you're already on the space. YouTube. It is free to upload videos. It's free to build a following on YouTube. You can do it on Facebook. You can do it on Periscope. You can do it on Twitch. By the way, don't sleep on Twitch. There are tons of authors there. And here's the nice thing is you build this up. When people can see the whites of your eyes, there's more trust. And what ends up happening is as you start to build that know like and trust factor, they're going to go, okay, I got to go check out their stuff. And now, naturally, head over there. One of the strangest phenomenons is I'm doing a channel on self publishing, yet I still get fitness sales. And I believe it's all coming from the YouTube channel. It's nuts. So this just goes to prove that if you could get on video, step outside your comfort zone and start to really leverage this. Because right now we're in a new age. And including video and audio in your marketing plan for your books is going to be the thing that sets you apart from the rest.

I love it. I mean, Obviously I love YouTube and I love video marketing, live streaming, all these kind of things, and it all goes back to building that platform. But it is. People are more likely to buy from you if they feel like they know you. And there's no faster way for people to feel like they know you than video. I truly, truly believe that. So, yeah, I love that tip. But it did. I was like, that's going to be one of your Amazon tips. But I love it. Yep, Those are our five tips for publishing on Amazon in 2020. Have you got a tip for 2020. Go ahead and share it in the comments below. And make sure you smash that thumbs up button. It feels good, I promise. Try it and then head over and check out Self publishing with Dale. Absolutely. A must watch channel for all authors. While you're here, Dale, what's a video they should check out on your channel?

You need to take a look at this very next playlist series, actually, where I talk a little bit more about selling more books. So take a look at it. Follow her direction. Don't listen to me. I don't know what I'm talking about.