Amazon Keywords for Authors & Publishing in Different Formats | LIVE REPLAY

Hey, Happy Tuesday, my friends. All right. It is Live Tuesday, my favorite Tuesday. And it's also the week of VidSummit right here in Los Angeles. So I'm so excited to attend Vidsummit. It starts tonight with networking and then goes all day Wednesday and all day Thursday. So fellow YouTubers and video fanatics, we can unite. So if you're watching this and you're going to be at Vidsummit, make sure you come and say hello to me. I will be there all day tomorrow and I cannot wait. And if you're watching, make sure you say hello because Angela from my team will be watching. Who's there? And we're going to have prizes for all of you fabulous folks who join live as well as I am certain you know that we will also have prizes for the folks who comment the day a video is released on YouTube. So that is all right here inside of my fabulous NoboringBooks mug. Hey, Kevin, you stayed up. Thank you. For those of you who don't know, it's midnight where Kevin lives, I believe it's midnight. So thank you very much. Hey, Diana. Hey. I know you're in here. I saw your name in here. And Igli and Darian, welcome. Hello, everyone. So, yes, so this is up for grabs today also for being live joining me. So Angela will be doing a draw, maybe two. If there's lots of people joining us, then we'll do two different draws. And of course, also the notes. The fabulous soft no boring books. Actually, it's not a no boring books. It's just a book launcher's journal for taking all your notes for writing your books. All right, so let's get into it. Hey, Brian, welcome. So today I've got kind of a bunch of random things, but the first thing I wanted to open with was actually about keywords. So Dave Cheston over at formerly Kindlepreneur publisher Rocket, he did a really fascinating research study and you can check it out@kindlepreneur.com seven Kindle keywords. And I'll either Angela won't have this link. I should have given it to her. I'll drop it into the comments afterwards. But you can also find it. I think it's the most recent article on the kindlepreneur.com website talking, just doing research about the seven spots that you can put keywords into on Amazon and just testing because those, each of those little spots also has 50 characters. So is it better to put a single word in there or to maximize the use of those 50 characters. And you know, this is great research that he did. So I want you to go check it out on his website. But I wanted to highlight a couple of things that I thought were really interesting and encourage all of you that are self publishing to check out this. You know, he has some great software. We use it, the Publisher Rocket, we use it for research. Angela uses it heavily for researching for clients. But the one question that he posed on there was, is it better to put my keyword in the title and subtitle or in the keyword box? And this is something we do at Book Launchers with our clients titles. I've done some videos on, there's one at least on creating a great title for your book on this YouTube channel. So check that out. But one of the things that we do with our clients is we want a great title. First and foremost, most important, to meet the criteria of a great title, you know, be something people can remember, they can pronounce, they know how to spell, and it actually spel speaks to the audience of your book. And that's important. And that's the first priority. But second priority is if we can do keyword research and get the keyword in the title and the subtitle, that is gold. So if you can come up with a title that is fantastic, speaks to your audience, even has a benefit in it, and it has that. And it's short. Ideally, you don't generally want long, long titles and you can get a keyword in that title or subtitle that is fantastic. So that's ideal. Oh, hey from Athens, D.T. welco. Hey. Oh, my mom has finally figured out how to comment on YouTube. So welcome mom and Benny. Welcome, Diane. So great to have all of you here. Okay, so this is pretty cool. His research confirmed that it is better to have your keyword in the title or subtitle. And it had a larger effect. So it had. Having your keyword in your title or subtitle has a larger effect than having it in those seven spots. But they also found that the more words or phrases you entered into that box so as to fill up as much of those 50 characters that you're allowed as possible, the better you're likely to do for those things. And it also was interesting to note that if you had a phrase in there like financial independence, retire early. This is something that's been talked about a lot in our office lately because we've had a. We've had a book out recently on this that we've been doing a lot of pitching for and stuff like that. So if you put that phrase in there, Amazon is going to rearrange it and recognize that when people are searching for independent in a different order or just a subset of that, that that will also have an impact and you will still perform better for that. If you only want to be found for a specific phrase and not any combination of the words you put in there, you, you do want to put the quotes on there and then that will kind of lock it down. Just like a Google search, you know, you want to lock it down and not get variations on that. So some really cool research. I highly recommend you check it out. It wasn't a huge sample set, but the research they did was pretty in depth and I haven't seen anything like that out there. So definitely check that out. And everybody can welcome Coach Depp. She is a fantastic video expert. Really helped Book Launchers TV get off the ground. So you guys can say hello to her too. Awesome. So with all that in mind, do say hello and comment as we're chatting because there will be prizes for those of you participating and we usually kind of draw a random number and then we just go down the list and pick whoever that number is. So just keep on commenting and chatting away and we will do a draw shortly. So, okay, so that was the first thing and like I said, I'll make sure we get the link into the comments afterwards and into the description for this video. But it's kindlepreneur.com and I think it's actually the first first post on his website right now. So check that out. And then the other thing I want to talk about was what format should you do a book in? This is something that keeps coming up over and over in my calls with potential clients and even our clients as they're trying to decide whether to do an ebook or not or, sorry, an audiobook. So first of all, we're talking nonfiction, so I know plenty. I know some of you are fiction authors. Welcome. You know, I'm always happy when my tips are can apply to the fiction world, but my focus is 100% on nonfiction. So everything that I'm advising is directed to nonfiction folks. But so when I'm talking, should you do multiple formats? This advice and these are my thoughts for nonfiction authors. So first of all, you must do an ebook and a print book and the cost difference in creating both is minimal. If you're already going to all the work to create that Kindle version or that ebook version, then just go ahead and create a print because it's only a little bit of extra work on the formatting side and cover creation to get both formats. And here's the thing. I always tell people this, but I think a lot of people are still skeptical, but a lot of our clients, their launches, we're seeing 70% of their sales in print. And I'm serious, over time, that tends to drop a little bit. And then the E books pick up a little bit of that space, or if they have an audiobook, it picks up some. Some of that. But the print is super important. And there was some stats out on the Publisher Weekly site just this week, actually, and they were talking about, you know, book sales comparing this year to last year for nonfiction. And adult nonfiction is actually up 4% in print book sales this year over last year right now. So print books are not going away. Everybody loves them. And actually, it's funny because Deb's on here, and Deb will tell you that one of her favorite things to do is smell books. She goes to the airport and smells books. I am not even kidding. You can't make that up. She loves books. Loves those print books, you know, to pick them up. So I'll never forget you telling that story. I'm pretty sure she told that on stage. So I'm not revealing some deep, dark secret. Okay? So the other interesting thing of this was also to note the hardcover versus trade paperback versus mass market paperback. Now, mass market paperback, folks, is typically fiction. It's a cheaper. It's that smaller. I don't have any fiction here, so I can't even show you, but it's your typical little fiction book. Okay? So for most nonfiction books, they're going to be in trade paperback or a hardcover book. And interestingly, hardcover was up 4.8% and trade paperback was up 3.9% over last year. So the volume, if you print books being sold is actually increasing right now. I see lots of comments here, so I'm going to just check up over here. Oh, Angela got the link in there, so thank you. Wonderful. And let's see. I'm not good with keywords. Long tailed should work better if one could master them. Yeah. And Deb said, I'm here for the free mug. Yes. And you know what? This is one of the things, one of the reasons why I do recommend Publisher Rocket, because it really, really helps you. And with Amazon, you guys, if you're not familiar with Amazon ads in particular, you need hundreds and hundreds of keywords. Typically, I think we're starting with 800 keywords. On most of the ads we're running. So it's really hard for you to actually come up with all those yourself. So a system like Publisher Rocket that helps generate those keywords is really important. We also use another one called KDP Spy, and there's another one called K Lytics out there too, which we're not on yet, but it's something that we're going to be adding to our research as well. So there's lots of ways to research this, and you need that research because you don't want a dud of a keyword. And it's also worth doing some Google SEO research too, because if you can get a title that people are googling, that is gold for you too, because Amazon listing is probably going to show up first anyways, so you don't have to be a keyword expert. There's some great tools out there. Spend a few hours and you will. It'll go a long way. Or if you work with book launchers, we do all that for you. Okay. Do we do spiritual, religious topic books? To a point. I mean, our ideal client is someone who is using the book to launch a business or grow a business speaking career, sell a product, sell a service. There's really an intended use for this. They want to get media engagements, those kind of things. So we're really working with people that we're going to have a clear game plan for getting their book out into the world and also helping them become the name people know in this space. So some of our clients have had a spiritual book. Let's see. Sorry to. Sorry to leave you guys. I'm just gonna go to my bookshelf over here. Okay. So let's see. Yeah, we have a couple that kind of have spiritual twist on it. Let's see. So this is one that we worked on, what is enough from Trivial Lynch. And it's definitely got a bit of a spiritual twist, so you could check that out. His goal was a lot of speaking engagements and things like that to come out of the book. And I believe Flourish in a world full of People is another one that kind of has that twist. So, yeah, we have some clients, but. But again, it's about the greater goal and the intention for the book for it to be a good fit. Let's see. Yes, and that is a great point, Deb. I always recommend that just because we're focused on nonfiction, I always recommend you read fiction because it will help you be a better writer, it'll help you tell better stories, make them more interesting. This is especially true for all of you folks who have done multiple degrees. Because there is nothing like a good education to ruin your ability to write in a way that will engage people. I mean, you know, the word furthermore is just not something we use in normal conversation in a book that, you know, you would like to pick up and have, have appeal to the typical reader. So things like that, these words that we padded our papers with to get A's make us sound smart. Those are the things, the exact things you want to get rid of. And so reading fiction is a great way to start getting your mind thinking a little bit differently. All right, maybe I should pull the truck over. I take it, Brian, you're watching while you're on the road. I don't want to know. Just listen. Just listen. Okay, I'll try not to make too many visuals for you. All right. Hey, Margaret, I didn't see. Oh, Margaret, thank you so much. I can't wait. I'm going to shoot a video for you today. But Margaret sent a wonderful gift over, a little handmade homemade gift for my son Jackson, and I can't wait to share it with him and I'll shoot a video for you and so you can see that. But thank you. That was so sweet. I showed the whole team today on our team huddle. Okay, let's see. Tamara. Hey. Here for the free mug as well. All right, well, I will get. Once I'm done talking about the format, I'm gonna go back to that. By the way, you guys, once I'm done talking about the format, I will get Angela to do a draw from everybody who is here. So. Okay, so going back to the. What format is your book in or should your book be in? So again, like, if you're doing nonfiction print, an ebook is a no brainer. There's, you know, that's what you have to do. So the bigger discussion to me is whether you do an audiobook or not. And if you have the budget and your goal is reach and credibility, then I really, really think it's a smart move. If you have a podcast, I really think you should be doing an audiobook no matter what. The thing is though, audiobook production is costly. And in order to have a good standard, you do have to have professionals involved. You don't necessarily have to hire a studio, although it's so much easier and more efficient to do it with a studio. But I did my second book. I recorded the audiobook. I set up a little room in my parents basement, we padded the walls and I Had our audiobook editor and voice coach, she did some tests with me, but it was a pain and I spent a lot of time just getting the sound right when I could have if I was in a different market. Now I'm in la, so I can easily rent studio space here. I'll just go to a studio. But to get that professional sound that will actually reduce the cost of your editing and mastering of the audiobook. You really need studio quality recording and then you need a professional to edit the book. And it is going to be way more expensive than you think. We basically sell our audiobook packages to our clients for cost. We have no margin in these books. We actually raise the prices next year. So we have a little bit of a cushion because sometimes things go wrong and then I'm losing money on them. But it is a very expensive process. So we're typically charging somewhere between 3,000 and $3,500 for audiobook production. So you're going to make and by the way, Audible acx, they don't let you set the price for your audiobook, they determine it. So, you know, if you're lucky, you're making five, six dollars per audiobook sold. So you have to sell a lot of audiobooks in order to make a direct return on that investment. And it's hard to just direct sales to audiobook. So for many authors I don't think it makes sense to especially to launch with an audiobook. But if you have a built in following, you have a podcast already and your goal is really to look like a traditionally published author. So credibility and reach are your highest priorities, then I strongly recommend you invest in doing the audiobook. And over time, the audiobooks are growing way more than print. And ebooks, actually ebooks have been on a little bit of a decline. So print books are increasing, but audiobooks are shooting up. And I think over time you're going to see way more audiobook sales for your books. But I just want to be real with you. It is not easy to get a straight up return on those audiobooks. So there may be other approaches you want to take in creating an audiobook that doesn't cost so much. You just may not want to put them on platforms like Audible where the standard, where the listener standard and even Audible's standards are really, really high. And it does require a lot of professional work to get accepted and to get good reviews. Because there's nothing worse than going to all the effort to create it and then having a whole bunch of people. Even if Audible does accept it to then have a whole bunch of people giving you one or two stars because they can hear a dog barking or there's too much popping in the audio sound. Okay. All right. You guys are commenting so much I can't keep up with you, which is awesome. I love it. So, Angela, let's see. Okay, so I will ask Kevin because Kevin was kind enough to say that if he wins, he's won everything. Kevin is a fantastic supporter of book launchers, always one of my YouTube besties. And Kevin was kind enough to say that he would pass if he won. So what I'm going to do. Kevin, can you pick a number between, let's say, say, 1 and 40? Random number. And then we'll use that number. I won't tell you how we'll use it just yet. Okay, so let's see. You use Furthermore, daily. That's funny. KDP Spy versus Rocket DT is asking that. They're really different. I think it's really hard to say one versus the other. We use them both and I kind of feel like we need them both because they're both stronger for different reasons. But Angela uses them all the time, so I don't know. Angela, if you have any thoughts on which one you think is better. If you're selling print books as well as ebooks, I think probably Rocket. Kevin, you use this, too. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that too. How well does the program work for extreme niches? Survival and preparedness? I mean, it depends on if there's not a lot of sales, there's not a lot of data. And that's just the challenge that you have. So when you're saying extreme niche, I don't know how many sales are happening, but there'll be data in there. But if there's not much sales, there's not much data. Okay, checking out here. Here we go. Okay. Yeah. Deb said, I remember one tip you shared regarding recording audiobooks and how it had to be perfect so the reader could read along with the wor. That is ideal. We have some clients who've done their audiobooks and they ad lib like crazy. Their audience actually likes the fact that they kind of ad lib in it. What will happen is that it won't qualify. Yeah, it won't qualify for the. And I've just forgotten the name of it. It's not the Match program. But there was a program where. I can't believe I'm blanking on this. Where you can switch seamlessly between the ebook and the Audiobook. So if I'm, if I'm driving, I can be listening to the audiobook. And then when I go to bed at night, I can switch over to my ebook and it will know exactly my Kindle and it'll know exactly where I left off on the audiobook and just pick up there. I've forgotten the name of that program. Anyway, so if you're not. If you're not reading the book Precisely, then that program doesn't work. But I actually haven't heard a lot of talk about that program lately, so it may not matter as much. So some of the reasons why you want to follow it along precisely may not apply apply as much anymore because it's certainly not emphasized as much as it used to. But I still prefer to match it as much as possible because like you said, sometimes people are actually looking at the book while you're reading it or they want to pick up where they left off. And if you're ad libbing and adding content, then it won't match and that might be frustrating. Let's see. Okay, Dave's on here. Hey. Okay, do we have a number? I don't see a number. It's not coming up. Okay. I don't use Spy anymore. Rocket does everything Spy does and more. Yeah. Okay. 18. Perfect. So we are going to go from. Let's see. Okay, Angela, let's go ahead and pick. We'll go 18 plus 5. So go from the top and pick number 23. And that will be our winner. Unless it's. Unless it's Kevin, which it could be. That's happened before. And then we will take the next person after that. So let us know who the winner is, please. Okay. Okay. Oh, YouTube Live is clearer than Facebook Live. You can see my pretty pores. Oh, fantastic. I love it. Okay, so let's see. Where's my little list of things that we were going to cover? We hit a million views. Yay. Thank you, everybody. We hit a million views on my YouTube channel and I'm so excited. We're going to have a celebration on November 12th and you are all invited. It's going to be happening right here and we're going to have some really cool swag. If you were Here for our 10,000 subscriber celebration, you know that we gave away lots of extra stuff and I've got even more for the million view party. So I won't reveal any more than that. But it will be November 12th right here at 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time, 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time. Yeah, I'm so grateful. I'm so excited and I can't wait to have another party with you. It'll just be me this time. Last time, the 10,000 subscriber, we had some people from my team, but it'll just be me. But it will be really fun and mostly prize focused. I probably won't do a lot of tips that day. We'll probably just chat and I'll give stuff away because that's really fun. Okay. David Goggins did an interesting thing with his book. He had a pro read it and then after each chapter, they discussed it afterwards in a pod. Like podcast. Like episode. Yeah. So that's something, I think if you don't want to spend as much money on producing an audible quality, that is something that I would recommend doing. Especially if you have a podcast audience. You want to get creative with it, there's other places you can upload it. Other places don't have the same quality standards, quality expectations as audible. And I mean, you could even do that if you're doing it professionally edited and upload it to Audible. It's just, it's got to be professional. If you're going with Audible. Okay. And the physical textbook, it does make you want to have both. That's pretty cool. Okay, let's see. Oh, thanks. Everybody on your congrats. Okay. And DT, you're the winner. All right. Congratulations, DT. So what you need to do, email team t e a mooklaunchers.com Angela will probably put that in the comments for you as well. And email me with what you want to win. You have your choice between a fabulous NoboringBooks mug or of course, the journal. And I'll need your mailing address as well, so let us know which one you want and your mailing address and we'll get that off to you. Okay. And thank you so much for being here. Okay, so now, Manuscript Draft confusion. This was another one I wanted to touch on really quickly. And if you guys have more questions about the format, which format to produce in, happy to answer them. But it really does vary on your situation and you know where you're planning to get your return, because if your return is coming just from book sales, it might be hard to make a return on your audiobook, especially in the short run. Okay. Manuscript draft confusion. This is something that comes up sometimes with our clients. Less so because we've become very process oriented or process oriented since I'm in the US And I just want to mention this because I've seen this happen in a few Situations when you have other people working on your book, or even when you're working on your book, you want to be naming your book with a version and a date, ideally. So when you send it off to your editor, you might want to say, first draft, October 15, 2019. Send it to the editor. When it comes back from the editor, if they haven't changed the file name when it comes in, immediately change it and say first edit. We usually put the initials of whoever the editor was and then date it again. You do not ever want to end up in a situation where you have multiple sections of your book out in different places. That's the other thing people do is they split their book in half and they have the editor work on one half while they work on the other half. If you're doing that, you're going to have to be super, super diligent about having this file name, some sort of a file name convention that you are very consistent and careful with. Now, the other thing I want to mention, because we've had this happen with a couple of clients who insist they only can work on their book on the weekend, for example. And so they say, you know what? I want it back, or I want the section the editor is not working on. And this is where things get really, really messy. Because if you're working on half of the book and somebody else is working on the other half, but while you're working on that half, you realize that such and such chapter needs another section or there's a mistake in another chapter and you go back and you make an edit on that other section that the other person is working on. Now you've just caused manuscript draft confusion again, because you're either going to have to be really good about making your notes and adding it into the next part that the person's just worked on and then letting them know that you made this change or it's going to get messy. So I highly recommend you never, ever break up your book for that reason. And I also highly recommend you have a very clear naming convention, and that name gets changed with the date every time somebody touches that book once it's left your precious little hands. All right? Because I don't want you to ever lose a bunch of work or be confused or not sure if things have been edited properly or added or removed, whatever the case may be. Okay, all right, I'm going to do a prize from you fabulous YouTube commenters, all right? And then we're gonna. I have one more tip, but I'll save it for next Time because I want to make sure we wrap up at the. At the half point. So, Angela, can you post. Let's come up with a random question and not the question you asked today. In today's huddle, every day in our team huddle, Angela posts a question for everybody. Kind of like a team building. And today was like, what's the grossest or most unique or bizarre food you've ever eaten? I do not want to know the bizarre foods you guys have eaten. So come up with some sort of a question, Angela, and then we'll put that out there and we'll get another prize from the folks here because there's so many of you joining today. Make sure you've hit that like button while you're here. By the way, it lets YouTube know you like this content. Makes me happy and of course makes me feel good. Okay, so this is a prize for whenever we have videos come out, every Tuesday and Friday. And if you comment on the day a video is released, you will be entered to to win fabulous prizes like this mug and the journal as well. So the first prize is going to. A drum roll, please. Ta da. Oh, I thought it was blank. It's like, what kind of a joke is this? Mb okay, MB and I know who MB is, kind of. So you know, don't pretend that you're MB when you email me because there's something about MB that I know. Okay, so MB, please email me@teambooklaunchers.com and let me know if you want the journal or the mug and where to send it. Okay. And the next one. Okay, let's see. Can you edit when using G Docs? Oh, by the way, Google Docs, Deb and anybody else, if you're using Google Docs, it is a. I won't say a bad word. I almost said a bad word, but I won't. I won't do that. It is a mess. When you go to convert it over to get designed, the Google Docs takes a bunch of code that now requires another step to clean all that code out in order for it to be designed. Just so you guys know, I'm not saying don't use Google Docs, but just be aware that it does. You know, we generally, unless somebody is really insistent, we discourage our clients from using Google Docs because of this coding issue that will mess up the formatting and add a bunch of weird characters and things like that when we go to design. So just so you know, I won't even get started on the issues with using Google Docs. In the long run. But yes, you could use Google Docs to edit and have everybody sharing the same document. And you know, it would prevent some of that. Those issues that I mentioned, for sure. Okay, so I'm just looking for the. Okay. How many months do we recommend clients use marketing after their book has already been published? That's going to be hard for these folks. Margaret might know the answer if she's still here. But if you haven't done a sales call with me, Ron's saying many. Oh, Scrivener is another one. You have to. Oh, Scrivener. Scrivener works, but you have to export it every time. And then basically once you get into editing, you can't edit in Scrivener. You've got to put it into Word for editing purposes. So Scrivener works for the author writing it. But anyways, okay. It's tough alone. It is tough. Ron, we're still doing the odd thing for you, Ro. So, yeah. How many months post launch do we recommend clients work with us on pitching? And yes, basically I say work with us forever, but there is a minimum amount of time that I encourage folks to work with us. And I don't know if anybody's going to get that if they haven't done a call with me to discuss their book project, but we'll see. Oh, Diana, hey, good guess. Thirteen comes to mind. That's good. Set that in your head, Margaret. You're going to be with us for a year plus 13. No, Diana got it right. Congratulations. So email us@teamoklaunchers.com with your mailing address and then this is for our final prize for the YouTube viewers. And then we'll wrap it up and I'll tell you why I say three months in just one second. Okay, so drumroll number two, please. And. Oh, well, you were absolutely meant to win today, Diana. Okay, I'm going to draw somebody else because you already won once today, but thank you. So tell us if you want a mug or a journalist and let me pick someone else. Another drum roll, please. Okay. All right. Adriana Daskalou, thank you very much for commenting on the day a video was released. And let us know@teamoklaunchers.com what you want to win and where to send it. So I recommend a minimum of three months post launch just because it's actually really funny, there's no way to put predict when pitches are going to come through, but also because we want to start pitching you to bookstores and we can't Start pitching you to bookstores until we have your book out. We've got a little bit of media, we've got a little bit of sales momentum, and then we can start pitching you to bookstores. Typically, there's a few situations where we're pitching bookstores early for events, but in order to get bookstore and retail distribution, your book needs to generally have a track record that they can look up. So that gives us time, post launch to help you get a little bit of momentum, help you get some pitches out there into the world, get some media coverage, and then we can start pitching bookstores. It also takes time and follow up for us to get podcast interviews, media interviews, blog posts, book reviews. There's a whole bunch of things that we want to do. And so a minimum of three months really gives us time to get traction, to start building momentum. But the reality is bookmarking is one of those things where if you stop marketing your book, your book generally will stop selling. Not completely, but you'll lose a lot of that momentum. So the more time you can put into this, whether it's with a company like ours or on your own, the better. And I generally just say, just plan to do at least one thing every single day that will get your book out there and you will build momentum and build results over time. All right, thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful to have you all here. I'm going to wrap it up, but I will respond to any comments after the video is over that come in. So if you're watching the replay, make sure you've chimed in. And we'll be back again on Friday with a brand new video for you and mark your calendars. November 12th, we're going to have a huge live stream party to celebrate 1 million views and I have so many cool prizes to share with you and some special 1 million view only swag for you. So make sure you are here because that will be one of those things that you're only winning if you are live joining in on the party. So thank you so much everybody. Have a fantastic week. And if you're here in LA for VidSummit, let's connect. I can't wait to see you. Bye.