Self-Promote and Succeed Chapter 9: Pricing Strategies and Keywords

Chapter 9 let's get meta Imagine you're at the grocery store looking for bananas. You look everywhere in the produce section but you can't find them. When you ask, an employee says, oh, we display the bananas next to the cheese on the other side of the store. Huh? Now imagine there's no one to ask. You still want bananas, but while you're browsing you see some mangoes and you grab those. Then. Then you think you would like some grapes. There's a display of delicious looking apples so you buy a bag and then you leave. You never even knew the bananas were there because they were over by the cheese. Ridiculous? Maybe. But now imagine your book was classified as dairy when it is actually fruit. Or imagine you have to search for cheese to find bananas. That is why metadata is so important. It tells retailers where your book belongs to fruit versus Dairy and also lets search engines know which words should make your book appear Fruit and bananas versus Dairy and cheese Metadata includes your title, subtitle, price, page count, ISBN, author name, genre, keywords and categories. It also includes the format of the book and information like who wrote the forward, your book description and reviews. Other details, like whether your book takes place in a certain time period or region of the world, are worth considering. For instance, if you're writing a memoir set in London during World War II, or a true crime thriller about a serial killer set in a certain decade or a specific city, those details should be in your metadata. Metadata impacts discoverability of your book first, but some elements of metadata will impact sales directly, including your pricing choices, book description and reviews. Of course, your title and subtitle are essential for discoverability and selling your book to your reader too. And as noted above, the classification of your book is vital. To do this right, you need to know about bisect codes and Amazon categories. Of course, Amazon doesn't use bisect codes like everyone else, they have their own system. This chapter will cover the ins and outs of how to maintain fresh, relevant metadata over time to keep your book in front of new potential readers, as well as pricing strategies for both domestic and international markets. This is relevant to every bigger picture strategic reason you've written a book. The right metadata is vital to your book, supporting just about every goal you have. That said, if your number one goal is to make money selling books, this is probably the most important thing you can invest time, energy and money into getting right. This chapter is going to set you up for success, although a deeper dive into some elements like keyword research may be required to truly succeed. Finally, we'll look at the pros and cons of free ebook giveaways and 99 cent ebook promotions. The good news about metadata is everything else can be changed besides your title and author name. Some things are easier and cheaper to change, like keywords or prices than others, like details on the COVID or pricing if you're putting it on the book. But even after your book has launched, you have opportunities at any time to tweak your metadata and try to boost your sales. Ready to dive in? First, let's make sure we unlock the mystery and importance of metadata with an explanation of the all important BISAC Code the Basics of BISAC Codes Try saying that three times fast. Basics of BICEP Codes Basics of BISAC Codes A BISEC code is a nine character alphanumeric code that identifies booksellers, buyers, genre libraries, retailers, and search engines. In other words, it's a method of categorizing your book. Make sure your readers can find you and that retailers know where to put you by choosing the best BISEC code for your book. BISEC stands for Book Industry Standards and Communications. It is a nine character alphanumeric code that is used to sort and search your book. It is used by retailers, libraries, databases, and buyers to categorize your book. Make sure your readers can find you and that retailers know where to put you by choosing the best bisect codes for your book. Let's say you're Mark Magna, the author of Dream Big Never Quit. You are totally fine with being number one in football biographies, which he was Nice work, Mark, but you don't want to see your book sold as fiction or personal finance. The people looking for those books aren't interested in your inspirational true life football story. When you upload your book to a system like IngramSpark or KDP print, only one bisect code is required, but it's important to know that you're better off selecting three. It's unlikely your book is about only one thing and and you can definitely appeal to people in more than one category. The first code you input should be the most accurate and ideally the most specific. To begin, go through the list of codes and find the one with which your book most closely aligns. To find the list, there are paid services, but www.bisg.org maintains a list that will work for you to get this done. As an example, for a book like Rob Berger's Retire before mom and dad, you'd start off by looking at categories under the broader topics of business and economics. Next, you would narrow things down by looking for the category under that topic that most closely fits your book in this next level of categories, Rob's book would fall under Finance and Wealth Management. Because his book is specifically about personal finance, you want to keep looking for that exact category. Which one is next? Well, he focuses on retirement, so the most specific category would be Personal Finance Retirement Planning. That category is going to be our first bisect code. Now you repeat the process, starting at the top and working your way down for the next two next best categories. To help you with this process, here are some additional tips. Double check that this is a good category for your book by searching a retailer like Barnes and Noble or your local library for the bisec code and see if other books with that code are similar to yours. Select categories that apply to your book as a whole, not just a single chapter. Try not to use the general category as it's, well, general. Be consistent with your bisect codes across different formats. So the bisect code for your print book should be the same as Your ebook, audiobook, etc. Bisect code information is valuable for all authors, however, Amazon does their categories their own way three Surprising Facts About Amazon Categories despite all of our hard work on metadata, some of our clients at Book Launchers still end up in weird categories on Amazon. That said, Amazon made some major category changes in 2023 that will hopefully dramatically reduce or eliminate this from happening. Amazon has different categories for each format and each country. First, it's important to know that the Kindle Store, which is for ebooks, the Amazon Bookstore and ACX all have slightly different categories. To complicate things more, Amazon Canada has different categories than Amazon Australia and Amazon us. I know that sounds like a lot to process, but even just knowing about these differences is half the battle. You can view a specific regional store's categories by reviewing its bestseller lists. All you have to do is navigate via the sidebar. When you search bestsellers, you'll see that they compile all the formats. So then you click into each store to view categories. To find sub subcategories, you click on the sidebar and scroll down. Then you just keep on clicking until it stops offering new subcategories. When you've done that, you've reached the deepest sublevel. Prime positioning is in the deepest categories, the deepest sub level, that is prime positioning. You want to list your book in a deep subcategory because all the books in a subcategory will show up in its parent category. For example, listing a book on leadership strategies for millennials in business and Money would be a huge waste of time. You'd miss out on the greater visibility offered by categories like management skills that are more specific to your book. Once you've found all the categories that make sense for your book, it's time to analyze them. You want to get a sense of how competitive they are and how much visibility they bring. Publisher Rocket is a fabulous helpful tool. You can also do it manually on Amazon by looking at all of the top five to 10 books for each category you've selected. Compare them to see which categories have the majority of books ranking higher than the others. Rocket makes it easier because the software shows you the competitive nature and sales success of each category in an easy chart. When you do this, you'll see some subcategories are really competitive, but there are some other categories where you're likely to rank even with minimal sales. One of the neat features of Publisher Rocket is this handy column that shows you the number of sales required to hit the top 10 in the category. That said, you don't want to use only niche categories with low sales because they're not likely searched very often. The key thing here is to find a good balance. Using one of these easy win categories is good so long as the parent category is relevant. Then you'll want to find and use higher volume categories as well. Now, if your book's already out and you're trying to figure out what categories you're already in, you'd think Amazon would give you a list. But they don't. The tool you can use to determine this is bklnk.com backlink.com you can choose three categories. Here's where things really changed in 2023. You used to have to choose bisect codes and then Amazon would map your categories from there. You could then email someone at Amazon to get listed into up to 10 categories. It was a really inefficient system and it caused books to be ranked in categories they didn't belong in. As authors gamed the system and algorithms made mistakes. Now you choose your three categories right inside the KDP dashboard. Price is part of metadata and it matters too. One thing many people in the US may not know is that Canadians are jealous of how cheap books are in the us. I experienced this especially as a kid and a young adult before Amazon came along. When I bought a lot of fiction and nonfiction books, I devoured the Babysitter's Club Nancy Drew in the Hardy Boys series at a breakneck pace. You see two prices are shown on the back of every book above the the US price and the Canadian price. The difference wasn't insignificant. For example, a book that costs $14.99 in the US would be nearly $20 in Canadian dollars. Even at times when the currencies were close to par, the book prices diverged dramatically. This is due to import fees and hedging against major currency fluctuations by retailers and publishers. Things have changed, but people still pay more for a book in Canada than in the US as an author, you should know the international market differences so you're not forfeiting opportunities and are able to make sales in every market where you have readers. If your book is available on KDP, you already have access to 13 different international markets without needing to go through additional work to license your rights. Convenient, right? On Amazon, you get to choose your primary marketplace, the main market for your book. Your options include the U.S. canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, China, India, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, the UK and Germany. Amazon uses your book's language to determine your main market, but you're not stuck with that as your main market. If you're hoping to optimize your book for increased international sales, there are many ways to do that. You can contact Amazon and ask them to update your browse categories in each market. You can also select keywords for international markets to increase your book's discoverability. For example, words can be spelled differently in English depending on the location. For example, Brits and Canadians spell words like traveler, Czech, and catalog differently than the U.S. consider the variations of your keywords if it's relevant to your book and to finding readers in other countries. Likewise, there may be phrases common in other countries for your topics, and you can use one of your seven keyword spots in Amazon to translate your top keywords for foreign marketplaces. But you still need to think about pricing. There are only three things that really matter when it comes to setting your book price. One, perceived value of what you offer in your book, two pricing of comparable books and three your expenses. First things first. Take that category research you did and head to Amazon for your chosen market. Review the prices of books, including print and ebook formats in that category. Pay attention to their format and other details similar to your book pricing to similar books or even the same ones marketed on Amazon US under that category and word count. Write these down or put them in a spreadsheet. Exclude the ones with an ebook discount or pricing that is obviously off when Amazon clears out stock, a hardcover sells for dramatically less than a paperback. That's not a pricing strategy by an author. Now that you've got your range or average for your Amazon US Market you can figure out international pricing. Typically, books in Canada and Australia are priced higher than the US books even after taking currency exchange rates into account. In Canada, they're often about 30 to 40% higher, and in Australia they're almost always 50 to 70% higher. You may not care about a dollar or two, but keep in mind cheaper is not always better. There's a perceived value factor that you need to keep in mind. If you are dramatically cheaper than top books, then readers may consciously or subconsciously believe you are offering less value. On the flip side, if you're selling in a country that prices books much lower, you'll be setting yourself up to collect dust instead of royalties. This means you need to do a currency conversion for your book price and also correct the price for that local market, which is an option on every book selling platform. Currency conversion is a great tool for determining a benchmark. Check the numbers though. If your US dollar price converts to a funky number in a different currency, it's a good idea to round it up or down. Weird numbers can actually have an effect on buying decisions. So if your price converts to something like $15.34, you can go in and round it to a more common figure like $15.49 or $15.97. So it seems more palatable to your readers. Weird, I know, but true. When you're setting international prices, you want to consider your competition and your compensation. You can use calculators on IngramSpark or KDP to determine your profit, but you have to keep in mind that if you want your book to sell, it's ultimately more about the competition and the category you're in than what you want to make per book. What about giving your book away for free? Used strategically, free books can be a very effective tactic based on your bigger picture goals. For example, to generate leads, free books to the right people can be incredibly effective to get your book into the hands of influencers. Free books distributed with tact and targeting can be intelligent marketing tools. It can also be an incredibly high value gift to give new employees, contractors or clients. As part of onboarding, you'll showcase your expertise and what you do as a company in a format that has more perceived value than a brochure or a training video. But there are downsides too. Do you remember the book Bomber at the conference I told you about? He gave away his book without any targeting whatsoever. Handing books to total strangers also didn't set his book up to have a strong perceived value. I've given away thousands of copies of self publish and succeed. Maybe you met me or someone from my team at a conference and got a free copy yourself. That may be what led you to connect with us and buy this book. Then again, possibly you got this book for free. There is an important distinction between free books we give to strangers and free books that are gifts and meant only for people who fit the criteria of an ideal reader. We aren't standing at the conference table shoving a book in every person's hand. We have a conversation and then offer it to people who will benefit, almost always in exchange for contact information. We've also done partnerships with organizations like the Exit Planning Institute where we gave them copies of our book for each of their VIP clients. Their clients are a great fit for our service, so giving them a copy of our book adds value to their gift bags and connects us with new people who may hire us to help them write, publish and promote a book. You can do the same with ebooks. If you run ads, someone who sees your ad is targeted and you get their contact information in exchange for the download. Your nonfiction book needs to have value and perceived value. Making your book readily available too cheaply or for free doesn't allow you to easily leverage its value for partnerships and connections. You are putting years of your expertise, education and experience into this book. It probably took you tens of thousands of dollars or a lot more and thousands of hours to gain that expertise. If you want to be a speaker and sell your book as part of your speaking package or you want to sell your book to corporations, you need to price your book so it has value in these negotiations. One of the best deals I ever made was with a national real estate magazine in Canada. They needed a giveaway for their readers who subscribed to three years of their magazine. I needed exposure for my book. I got a ton of high value exposure in exchange for giving them 250 copies of my book. If my book had retailed for $2.99 or $9.99, it would not have had the same perceived value to them in this arrangement as the $24 book did. Even more than that, depending on your industry, your clients probably spend a lot of money to work with you. That's true whether you're a dentist, a mortgage professional, or a team member at Book Launchers who helps people write, publish and promote books. Your book price may reflect on your other offerings. If you give the book away for free on Amazon or price it at 99 cents, what do you think your clients are going to think not only about the book, but also potentially about your services. Free in exchange for a promised review or free when someone opts into your newsletter. Or are different things because you're getting something important in exchange for your book? Being strategic and leveraging your book for value, whether the value is money, ad space or a review, is being a smart author Killing it with Keywords Keywords are about discoverability. The goal here is to make sure you are found when your reader searches for a solution to the problem you solve or for a book just like yours. We tend to focus on Amazon, but keep in mind this is also about search engines in general and anywhere books are sold. This is why we also do Google Keyword Research. How should you actually go about doing your keyword research? Step one Think Like a Reader I love playing poker, but I've barely been able to play since I became a mom and launched book Launchers. I realize this sounds funny because I live in Las Vegas. When I get back into it, I might want to refresh my skills with a few books on the latest poker strategies. To find a good book, I'd probably go to Amazon and search using the term Texas Hold'. Em. I'm not a poker pro, but I've played way too many games to read a beginner's book explaining straddles in terms like under the gun. If I see results including beginner's books, I might change up my search to include the word strategy or even advanced. My new search might be Latest Texas Hold' Em Strategies or Advanced Texas Hold' Em Guide. That's what I mean when I say think like a reader. You have to know what your reader is looking for so you can align your keywords to their thought process. When you understand that, then you'll understand which words they are more likely to use. To search for the books they want. Use logic. Some people get really creative and try to grab every random search that might come up. Realistically, your reader is not searching for Texas Hold' Em Win. Far more likely, they're looking for something simple like win poker tournaments or or how to win money with poker. Don't just string a bunch of words together in the hopes that readers will find your book. Think about what they're most likely to search and the simplest combination of words using logic. With your reader in mind, you're ready for step three. Step three Test the search. Go to Amazon and see if the search works. For example, does Texas Hold' Em get a lot of results? Does adding specific keywords such as beginner make a difference? Does changing your search to another phrase. Like poker strategies help narrow your search and give you better options. When you type your test keywords, consider whether your book belongs with the search results. If not, keep trying until you get search results that are a better fit. Step 4 Research keywords using a tool like K Lytics, you can start to get a sense of the most popular search terms. At Book Launchers, we use publisher Rocket, KDSPY and SEMrush to get a clear picture of what readers are searching. Then we use that data to make key decisions. These tools are really valuable, especially when first assessing if your idea is an actual term people use, then you want to look at the competition. Ideally, you want a term that is highly searched but not highly competitive. Publisher Rocket makes it easy to identify these terms with color coding, but you should also use your own logic because sometimes a red coded word meaning it has a lot of competition is still one you absolutely want to use. Step 5 Make a list It's a good idea to have keywords in both your title and your book description. But not the same ones. Use different ones. This improves the discoverability of your book in all the places readers might look for it. In addition to this, inside the KDP Print Dashboard you can you'll find seven keyword boxes that you can use to further clarify the relevant keywords for your book. As Amazon states on their website, your keywords should capture useful, relevant information that won't fit into your title and description. This includes setting, plot, highlights, themes, or key locations where the book takes place. If your book discusses a topic in the context of a specific location, or if your target reader is a divorced person, a single mom, or a veteran, or or has another particular identity, those might be useful to put in your keywords. Tip Here's a pro tip for searching keywords on Amazon While you're doing your research, do all your searches in a private browser. That way your past search history doesn't impact your suggested search results and you get a cleaner search. A Friendly Warning Avoid including words like best seller in the keywords or in your book description. Making any sort of claim about your book, like bestseller or award winning, could cause a lot of problems with Amazon in particular, even if it's true. If you use those words in your keywords or your description, Amazon may remove your book. You can always dispute this if you are in fact a New York Times bestseller or a Pulitzer Prize winner and you want to put that information in your description. But if it's not a particularly prestigious label and it can't verified be, I would just skip it because Amazon really is sticky about this. All keywords must comply with the terms and conditions of Amazon. Other warnings Straight from Amazon's KDP list of things to avoid information common to most items in the category like book spelling errors that you think readers may make or common misspellings, time sensitive terms like New on sale or available now and words like Amazon, KDP or free. Here's what you can and should do. Consider longer phrases each of the seven spaces to enter your keywords on Amazon has 50 characters, so you can input a longer phrase and all the words will be considered keywords. For example Winning no Limit Poker Tournament strategies that has less than 50 characters and you can fit it onto one line. Every single one of those words would be considered a keyword. Use those 50 characters if you can, but don't repeat words in each box or try different combinations. They are already going to be indexed if they are in one box or in the title and subtitle. Update your keywords and descriptions as often as you like, but if your Amazon ads perform well, I'd leave them alone. More on that soon. Periodically research what's relevant and use it as a benchmark. Example we do a keyword refresh and update our author's books every three to six months. Keep your description consistent across formats. Don't put a different description or different keywords in your audiobook versus your ebook versus your print book. At the end of the day, researching keywords is a huge can of worms and we've only just scratched the surface. Here to give you an overview. Publisher Rocket Authors like David Goughgren and and organizations like the Independent Book Publishers Association, IBPA and Ally all have great training options to get you current and skilled on keyword research, which is always evolving. I also highly recommend you read Del Roberts book, the Amazon Self Publisher as he talks about this and so much more. Now you know everything you need to know about where and how to sell your books, how to use keywords to find your target audience and and how to price your book for any market, including how to offer special promotional sale prices. Next up, we delve into why book reviews are crucial to your success and how to get the reviews you want. Key elements of an effective book description. Your book description is the sales copy for your book. If your book isn't selling, it's the easiest thing you can change to try to give your book sales a boost. Your book description is not a book summary. It's not there to highlight all the cool things you've done or all your Amazing Stories Its job is to sell your book. It needs to speak directly to the reader and you need to layer in well researched keywords. This is copy, not content. The description needs four important elements to hit potential readers where it matters and make them feel compelled to buy your book. 1. Author information which establishes your credibility and expertise. 2. Call to action which asks them to buy your book. 3. Hook, which appeals to readers curiosity and interest. 4. Outcome which defines your unique approach and what they'll get from reading your book and only your book. Here's Matthew Harmon's book Marijuana Hater's Guide to Making a Billion Dollars from Hemp the Next Disruptive Industry as an example, the hook teases the massive untapped potential of the hemp industry from an investment perspective. Matthew argues there is more profit potential in hemp than other industries. To establish his credibility and expertise, Matthew cites outlets that have featured him building third party credibility and makes it clear that he's traveled the world studying hemp. Bullet points spell out his unique approach, outlining specific investment opportunities such as medical hemp, opportunities for the science based entrepreneur and including skin care and pain management that could benefit readers. Finally, it may seem silly to tell someone on your book page that their next step is to buy the book and read it so they can enjoy the benefits, but that is exactly what you need to do. The Amazon Description for Matthew's book get this guide and plant the seed for an organic ground floor opportunity with limitless potentials. It's also important to know that the first sentence is the most important sentence of your book description. Is your description specific or could it be used to sell any other book in your category? Look at every sentence and ask yourself, does it sell the hook of your book? Will your ideal reader imagine their life differently and be curious or committed enough to buy your book after reading that description? How does it stack up against your competition? How is your book different and is that captured in your book description? And finally, when it comes to the digital version, layer in those traffic attracting Keywords Chapter Summary There are a lot of things to know about metadata, but here are the key takeaways from this chapter. 1. Categorizing your book with related books ensures your reader can find you. 2. Pricing your book requires understanding your competition, your book's perceived value and and your publishing expenses. 3. Take advantage of international sales opportunities by checking to see if your pricing makes sense in those markets. 4. Keywords are not just highly searched words, they are words that your ideal reader uses when trying to find solutions to their problems. You need to think like a reader when choosing keywords, and then use various tools and searches to identify that they work and are most applicable to your book. 5. Giving your book away for free can have negative consequences if you don't keep your bigger picture goal in mind. Free books should move you closer to achieving that goal. Oops.