Amazon Book Page Review plus Create Space to KDP Print Conversion Issues

All right, good day. Hello and welcome to the First Look Book Review show with your host, Julie Broad. So today we don't have a book review, so I always love calling it the First Look Book Review show when I don't have a book to review. We do, however, have a book description and book page on Amazon that we will be reviewing. So that's probably even more useful to many of you would be authors who are watching or already authors who are watching. So there'll be lots of good tips and stuff that we'll cover when we get to that part. So thank you so much for joining. And if you're watching the replay, say hello, just give a hello shout out, let me know that you're tuning into the replay and play along just like you were live. Because I still comment, I still check back, we can still pretend. But I love it when you tune in live. And I'm going to be giving you guys extra special prizes on December 11, which is going to be our next livestream. It's going to be our holiday extravaganza. We are going to have a whole bunch of prizes. And if you head over to Book Launchers TV and check into the hello. I love it when there's hearts and thumbs up because it flashes across the screen and it just makes me happy. So thank you. Head over to Book Launchers TV and there's a community tab there now where we can hang out and chat. And I put up a poll and in that poll you can tell me what prizes you want to see during the holiday extravaganza. So head on over there when you get a chance. Oh, hello. Hey, Marty. I love the thumbs up. Thank you, thank you. And head over to that poll and tell me what prizes you want to see. And the holiday extravaganza, you have to be live to win these prizes. And we're gonna have some wicked prizes and if things work out, it might even be a bunch of people from my team. We'll all be here live and answering questions, chatting, having fun, having a party and giving away lots of cool prizes. So look forward to that. Okay, so hello, everyone. Welcome. See more and more people joining. So just so you know, say hello, give me a thumbs up. A heart makes me happy. And if you're watching the replay, make sure you say hello and play along too. Okay? So I just want to give a massive shout out to. Hey, Amber, welcome. I just want to give a massive shout out to Sa Bradley for the launch of his book yesterday, screaming with pleasure. And this book, I mean, I'M proud of all the books that come through Book Launchers. You know, the authors work so hard and until you write a book, you truly don't know all that goes into creating an awesome, awesome book. But this was super cool. I think somebody just put an angry face up. You're angry. Are you angry because you can't stay? Are you angry because I'm giving someone else a shout out? Anyways, so the director of the movie Gremlins, I think his name's pronounced Joe Dante, he actually reviewed this book and he said this about the book. He said, where did it go? Oh, there it is. In a world drowning in movie books, this one stands apart and should become part of any film fan's library. That's a pretty huge, huge endorsement. So anyway, super proud of this book, super pumped for it. So check it out. If you have a horror fan on your list, definitely get them this book because it is a fantastic read. So again, that was screaming with pleasure from SA Bradley and it's available everywhere books are sold. Okay, so today, again, it's the first look book review show. Hey, Greg, welcome. And we're not doing a book review. Life, you know, life throws you curveballs. And the curve ball that we got from this past weekend was first my husband got sick and then my almost 2 year old got sick. I spent a few days taking care of them, was totally exhausted. And then guess, guess who else gets sick. Yay me. So, yeah, if you're looking at my eyes going, she doesn't look as perky as usual. That's why. So no book review. But we do have an Amazon book page that we're going to be reviewing and there's going to be lots of, I think valuable tidbits in there. And of course, if you guys have questions, just go ahead, type them in and I will answer them as we go along. Okay, before we do that, I do have a bit of a warning for you. If you are one of those folks who previously was in CreateSpace and as you know, CreateSpace is gone. Bye, CreateSpace. And you're now moving or moved over to KDP Print. I highly recommend you order proof copies of your book. Don't assume that just because the conversion went seamlessly, which mine did for both my books, seamlessly, was able to convert them over, don't assume that everything is hunky dory. I ordered a proof copy here, there, and I just wanted to show you guys what the issue is that I found. So this is the ugly print, the proof copy they have not for Resale across it really ugly. They made me pay money for this. But anyway, the issue is everything looks fairly normal. Sorry, I'm just trying to make this line up for you guys. Everything looks fairly normal except on the back. And this just bugs me, so. Sorry. It's mirrored. So this right here is cut off. Okay. Oops, sorry. Going the wrong way. Other way. There we go. That's cut off. So I'll show you what it should look like here. We like this maybe. Okay, so you see what it should have looked like down. Down here, right there should be the ISBN number. And this got cut off. So I have to get my cover reformatted and re upload a new cover for that book into KDP print. It's a small thing, but it's. Those little things are really important to me. And if somebody buys my book, you know, that looks funky on the back. Ingramspark is where most, most of my books get sold anyways. Lightning Source is actually who I use, but IngramSpark would be the one that most people would upload to and everything goes fine through them. So not a huge issue, but just a warning because I think a lot of people are skipping the proof thinking, ah, the conversion looked like it went okay. And so they just. They just assume. And so there could be bigger problems than that if. If your book has more complications or more complicated graphics on the COVID Okay, so besides the fact that we do have prizes for commenting on the every Friday when a new Book Launchers video comes out, we do have prizes for you for anybody who comments on the video on the day it was released. And right now, our current prize is this fabulous Book Launchers mug. No boringbooks, which is kind of our mantra around here. And I've got all the commenters in here. There's quite a lot. I didn't bother folding them all because there's a lot of people. So thank you everyone for commenting on my videos. Makes my day. And that makes it a whole lot more fun to shoot videos knowing that people are going to comment afterwards and have conversations. Unless you're that hater that I've got right now. If you follow me on Instagram, you've been seeing this not so charming person has been posting rather mean messages about my videos. His latest message was, your videos suck. Change careers. Yeah, and then he posted something about me being so insecure that I have to make up stuff. Except for he had a swear word in there. Yeah, some people are really, really, really, really mean. Thank you, Dave. He says your videos are amazing and I'm sure he's not just saying that because he's my husband and he helps me shoot them and he often does funny cameos in all of them. I'm sure that's not why he's saying that. Okay, so CB interviews. A regular commenter on my YouTube channel. Thank you. Of course. Has asked me to review his book description page on Amazon. And because I didn't have a book review today, I thought this would be a great topic for us to chat about. Oh, Scott, you missed the hater. Well, pop on over to Book Launchers TV after this, of course. Or for those of you watching the replay, you're already there. And by the way, hi, Scott. Welcome and congratulations. Yay. We have a very successful author in the house, everyone. But, yeah, so pop over there. You'll see him commenting, telling me that my videos suck. And, you know, you guys can all. You can all tell him how wrong he is. Right. And how not insecure I am, which was kind of funny. Okay, so here, because I can't. Because I'm not using zoom with this, I can't show you the page, but I'm going to show you printouts of the page that we are talking about. So it's called how to be Successful at Interviews. And so a couple of key things right off the bat is, and I talk about this all the time. The title is critical. This title is not bad. I did some keyword researching on it, and successful interviews isn't a keyword that people are searching for. So that's a challenge. But it's not a, you know, not a deal breaker. An in depth guide to interviewing. That was good. Answering questions? No, like, you really got to go into something. People are probably more worried about. Putting your best foot forward. Nobody's really searching for that. So for me, right away, I would have dug deeper into this title and really thought about what's the core benefit of this book? It's getting that job. Getting the best offer possible, getting paid. Right? Getting, you know, those are some of the things that people are actually going to be worried about. And possibly, you know, the new landscape is that there's a lot of video interviewing going on. So how do you handle that? How do you get set up for video interview? How do you prepare if you're not comfortable on video? How do you not be nervous when you're staring at this green light on your computer screen? You know, so some of those fears and anxieties and some of those desires, like, let me get that job faster and get a Better offer and get more pay and get better benefits. Like that's going to be some of the desired outcomes, not best foot forward and answering questions. So right away, I would have dug a lot deeper into the subtitle to get to something that's stronger and ideally have a few more keywords into it. Like I said, interviewing certainly was a key word that comes up. And it's decently, you know, it's a decent keyword to have in there. But I would have improved upon that. The COVID I compared it against the other covers in your category. It's not bad. I love Katie Weiser's book. Actually, it was a book I reviewed, I think, back in April, maybe, I don't know. But Katie's book, her cover is great. It's still in the top 10 in the interviewing category on Amazon. It was a really practical guide. I really liked it. And I think that that's worth looking at. Books like that, she has a few things that draw your eye in. And one of them was kind of like a blast, right? Like a red, you know, like those award symbols or something like that. It draws your eye in. It's a black and white cover, but it's got splashes of red that really draw your eye in. So cover's not bad, but I think you could do more to make it stand out. The interview scenario. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to say. Like, I would almost be painting a picture of success for the interviewee because it's focusing on the interviewers, the picture on your cover. Okay, a couple other things. So I'm just checking here for comments. And so pricing, that was the other thing I want to say. So you have it priced at 14.99 for a paperback, and I think it was $2.99 as a Kindle. So $2.99 Kindle, that's fine. Paperback. Way out of whack in my view, because this is like an 86 page book. So I think that your paperback pricing should be $9.99. With the Kindle pricing of $2.99, that probably seems more realistic. But I know you really focused on selling this as an ebook, so at $2.99. Okay. With regards to the description, it wasn't edited. It needs to be edited. There is a sentence in here that immediately threw me off. And I think that this is where you have to be. If not having a professional copywriter write your book descriptions, you need, at the very least, copy editors editing it. This book is designed to give you the secrets behind the crazy questions that will be throwing your way. No. So there's some issues right there with that. And also, it starts off, first impressions are never more important than when you're interviewing for that dream job. Again, like, go for it. Go for the throat. Like, what do you. What is. What does the person actually care about? Again, they care about like, making the most money, getting a job that they don't know. Maybe they bombed their last 10 interviews. They're like, this has to be the one. Maybe they have interview anxiety or something. Depending on who your ideal person is, it seems like it's students. What are their biggest fears? Let's tell them how they're going to conquer it. Or what are some of the biggest misconceptions or things they aren't expecting. I know one of the things that I had gone through in a job interview was like this massive personality test. And then once the personality test was done, I had to go through a. I got three questions where I was asked questions and it got recorded. So it was kind of like a video interviewer, except that there's no person on the other side. And then it was a phone call. Like, that was the interview process. It was really funky. And so me, if I'd gone through that once, I'd be kind of afraid of future interviews. So let's hammer that home and really like dive in right in the beginning. Like, what is this book gonna give them? Start your book description off with that. And I think other pieces of this book description that work is how to showcase your skills, aptitudes and strengths. But again, you can dive a little deeper, carefully avoid pitfalls and trap questions. Okay, that's pretty common. Okay, so a couple other things. So I've covered key things. Your cover, your title, your pricing. Those are all important. Getting more reviews. You have two five star reviews, which is the start. But you really want to be getting 20 or more reviews. That would be ideal. And keeping it above four stars. The next thing is double checking your look inside. So hopefully you can see this. But that's how it looks on my screen, which doesn't look very good. So I'm not sure if you just did an easy conversion, but. Or how you created your epub file to upload it. But you know that right away doesn't look very good on the look inside. So I would fix it. I'm sorry, people are going, whoa, she's harsh. If you ask me to review, I am honest. If I like stuff, I'll tell you. If I think it can Be better. I'll tell you. And I think there's a lot here that can be improved. Even the table of contents, interview success secrets, which is fine. Different types of interviews. Okay. Skill building. I'm reading this, and even if I try to think back to what it was like, you know, when I graduated, I feel like there's nothing here that I don't already know. So I would dive a little deeper and try to make people curious and feel like they need to know, you know, how does appearance aid? I would say, you know, something more like dressing, you know, what not to wear or what to wear to make more be. To get a better offer. What should you wear to get the best offer possible. Something like that would make me go, oh, okay, cool. I got to know that. So that's kind of where I would take that. Hey. Oh, I see. I don't know what happened. I see my husband say, yeah, try living with her. I'm sure he's talking about how awesome it is to live with me. I'm sure. Okay, so that's the table of contents. And I won't spend too much more time on these pieces, but I wanted to mention one other thing. I have a video on YouTube on Book Launchers TV, which is the Book Launchers YouTube channel on the four ways to start a chapter. And this is one of the chapters I think I'm going from the look inside. And it starts off chapter titled Interview Success Secrets. And then it says a few things to keep in mind during an interview include. And then it has a bullet point. I would recommend looking at changing up how you even start these things, because again, the look inside is critical. This is how people decide if the title has got them, the reviews or the COVID is enough that they click to see what's inside. This has to sell them. And then when your reader's reading, it has to sell them on continuing to read. But I would say a few things to keep in mind during an interview. I'd be like, I would start with a story of how an interview went completely wrong or how an interview went completely right and start with that. Or throw a surprising fact like, did you know wearing brown is really only the best thing if you're going for an accounting job? And that was a fun fact for you. When I did my mba, I think it was my MBA or was my under. No, I think it was my MBA or my undergrad. I did, you know, I did a bachelor of Commerce. And then, you know, to change it up, I did an mba. Regardless, they used to teach you how to prepare for interviews. And if you were going for a first interview, you wore a blue suit. If you were going for a second interview, depending on whether it was consulting or finance or accounting, you wore a different colored kind of attire. And I think brown was the accounting attire. I'm not kidding. This was years ago, you guys. I mean, I know I look really young and spunky, but yeah, I graduated from both universities well over a decade ago, so. But that's, that was how they did it. So you could say if you have stats or facts or research on this, you could say the surprising fact about wearing Brown to an interview. Okay, that's what I would do. I would start off like that or I would really tease the content. Or I would say, after you read this chapter, you're going to have the interviewees begging you to take the job before you even leave the room. Those are some of the things that would sell me on reading that chapter and buying your book. Okay, cool. So hopefully that helps. Oh, good, Scott, that's good. I haven't checked your look inside yet, so I'm glad you took a look at it. You can't grow without constructive criticism. Doesn't sound harsh when you're applying insight and feedback to what you're pointing out. That's great. Thank you, Amber. I appreciate that. So there you go. I'm sure that there's a lot there for you to digest and I hope everyone listening and watching got some cool tips as well out of it. I think we've got some things we can improve on. Scott's book already, which is great. I love making improvements, especially early on, because when you, and this is something we talk about a lot at Book Launchers. There's so much emphasis in the publishing industry on having a huge launch. And if you don't have a huge platform of people supporting you, then a huge launch is really, really tough. And it's probably not a realistic goal. A better goal for you is to come up with a 90 day and then even a 12 month plan on what you're going to do to consistently gain momentum, gain supporters, build your platform and get your book out there. And you're going to be looking for partnerships with people who do have your ideal readers in your audience. You're going to be looking for opportunities. You know, for example, hopefully Scott doesn't mind me sharing this. I've already posted it once. But you know, colleges and universities have professors have expressed interest in his book for their curriculums. So continuing to pursue that angle and finding More places with similar programs, because now he might be able to have his book carried there for years to come. And then it becomes mandatory that every student taking that class buy his book. Those are kind of opportunities that you can build on and grow from. And who knows where that could lead, right? You never know, Scott. We could be calling Scott Professor Scott soon or Professor Bradley, whatever you prefer. So there's, there's things like that that you have to look at your book launch and really figure out, okay, am I going for that big splashy launch? And if so, do I have the resources to pull it off, or am I going to go for that 90 day to 12 month plan to just create a ton of momentum and try to sell, you know, 5,000 or 2,000 books over the course of a year, whatever it is. So I think it's really important because there's so much emphasis, and I've talked about this a lot, but there's so much emphasis, too much emphasis on being a best seller and blah, blah, blah. And truthfully, you know, to be a bestseller in some categories, if you just choose crappy categories, you can be a number one bestseller with as little as 14 sales. And I know that for a fact because I have seen it happen repeatedly with even less than 14 sales. But in this current year, I have seen it happen with 14 sales. So it doesn't take a ton of sales to be number one in some categories for some books. And so is that what you want? You Want to sell 14 books to say you're a number one bestseller? Or do you want to have a long lasting impact and have a book that grows your business, builds your brand, and even grows your platform so that if you write a second book or want to do anything else from there, you can grow from there. So, yeah, there you go. Lots of important things. And with that, I'm gonna say, unless you guys have some questions. So thank you so much for the thumbs ups and the comments and the chatter that's been going on on the side here, but I do have prizes. So this I'm only doing today. I'm only doing prizes because Jacqueline's away on holiday. So isn't that luck? Right? 50% of the energy and 200% of the workload because I'm taking Jacqueline's work. Jacqueline's our client care specialist for those of you who don't know. So, yeah, when life really feels like throwing you curve balls, they really throw you curveballs. So, yeah, we're not doing prizes for those participating live today. But I do Encourage you all to go to Book Launchers tv, go to the community tab, participate in the poll, because on December 11, I'm gonna make it up to you with a ton of prizes. We have lots of cool ideas of what we're gonna do for our holiday extravaganza. Okay, so here is the prize for the Friday commenters. Again, thank you so much. Like I said, there were so many, I didn't want to fold them. You can kind of see, can't get these angles right. But yeah, there was so many commenters, I didn't feel like sitting here folding all of them, so I just threw them in. So. So you guys can see I'm not looking when I choose. Okay, here we go. So this is for a book launcher's mug. Ta da. Drumroll, please. Crystal Fontenz Fontenay. I'm not sure how you pronounce your name, but I know you comment pretty much on every single video and I think this is your first time win. So thank you so much for your ongoing support. Send us an email@teamooklaunchers.com with your mailing address and as long as you are in North America, we will ship you one of these beauties so you can be the proud owner of a book launcher's mug. NoboringBooks. And of course, when you do get your mug, please do post it on social media and tag us so that we know you're enjoying your book launcher swag. All right, everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. Marnie says you're helpful even when you're sick. Thank you, Marnie, I appreciate it. And I did try to bring the energy for you guys, even though I have been really, really run down life, right? What a jerk. Oh, speaking of jerks, go say something to that guy on YouTube channel. You'll see him. I won't name his name, but you guys will know him when you see him. He commented on the most recent video. Just, you know, tell him to go take a hike. I could delete his comment, but why bother? All right, thanks everyone. We'll see you here again December 11th for our holiday extravaganza. And make sure you vote in the poll on Book Launchers TV to let us know what prizes you think we should give away at that holiday extravaganza. Alright, thanks everybody. I really, really appreciate, appreciate you tuning in. And if you're watching the replay, saying hello and commenting while you're watching the replay, I'm so grateful for that too. All right, take care, guys. Take care, guys. Bye.