I am new to that business and have a lot of problems with my keywords on kdp - also I am German and think Germans maybe think different. I am just playing with my keywords and always try new combinations. Thank you for your fantastic video it helped me a lot.
I watched this video in the background when if was first put out but came back today and actually PAID ATTENTION! LOL So much gold in this video, thank you!
Hi Katharyne. I just stumbled on your video, and I must say, you did an excellent job on keywords! No fluff, very succinct and straight to the point. I really appreciate it and you got yourself a subscriber!
I was wondering if I could request another video from you on how to use the Trademark Tool. I tried using it and I have to admit I wasn't sure I was using it right or not. Thanks.
ES Hart we already have one :) the only thing that changed since this one is we added a checkbox to just check the books/stationery category ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-jHMK_WzZaJo.html
Thank you for these tips. I wish I had your coaching before I launched my Createspace booklet! I think my title will save me, considering my lack of using good keywords. "Imagination Journal for Doodlers". You may have addressed it before, but how do you encourage buyers to leave reviews?
This is a good question as reviews really do help push a book up towards the top of search results (along with sales) but Amazon have made it very difficult to solicit them 'legally.' Any 'incentivized reviews' (in return for payment, free copy, discount etc.) or any reviews from friends and family are against their policy. You can focus on generating sales and wait for reviews to happen organically, or you can include a page at the back of your book that says, "Please consider leaving an honest review of this book" along with instructions. I tend to accompany this with some blurb about appreciating feedback and my own contact details so if they have a problem with the book, hopefully they'll contact me first. If you have a website or other promotional space where you sell your book, you could also encourage reviews there. Just make sure you specify honest reviews, not positive :)
Thank you. I like those ideas. Great. Do you host book giveaway/promotions? I wasn't sure if I should do it on my IG profile or through Amazon. Where I would get most visibility.
Question: When you say the title has to be on the cover. . Is that the front cover -- or is back included? I like it when no words are on the cover. So if I put it word/info on the back cover can that go into the title?
Hi Nana, it has to be on the front cover or spine. You can use the cover creator in CreateSpace to add the title to the spine easily and that leaves the front cover clear :)
Hilda Zolezzi Thank you for asking this! Beautiful Japan is the brand I picked for this book :) CreateSpace does allow brand or pen names. However... there is some debate about keywords in author names triggering rejections. I’m working to discover more about what CS considers keywords in the author name. I’ve mostly heard of very generic search terms like gift, girls and birthday triggering rejections. I've actually put a note about this in the details of the video above as I know I didn't address this in the video itself.
One issue that has come up for me already, and trust me to find new issues, I like to put a quote on my notebook covers, and Createspace wants an author name and I have gotten feedback that indicated my person name was mixed up with the name of the person that I was quoting on the cover. I am not sure what to fill out or not fill out to prevent that from happening. I got away with it for one sketchbook but it has other problems and I will likely have to pull it down...but I think leaving some of the author info off should be allowed and it is stupid to have an author of a a notebook. I suppose author in such cases really means designer.
Hello Barbara, I often don't put an author name physically on my books and I can't find this requirement in Amazon's policy, although it may be buried somewhere - they're not very navigable :) You do need to enter an author name in the listing but it can be a pen name. I'd be really interested to see the feedback that you received. Maybe you could email me screenshots at hi@katharyne.com so we can figure out what's going on. The thought I have is that it could be that if you include a famous person's name like 'Mark Twain' on the cover that Amazon's reviewers could think this was somehow confusing or misleading because it implies it's a Mark Twain book. It would be good to learn more about why this happened to you though.
Ok, I've found where CreateSpace address it. They specify the author name does NOT have to appear on the book but if it does, it has to accurately match what is in the listing (no nicknames, initials etc.) so it looks like they're confusing the quote author with the author of the book. I guess you could try appealing it with them, but you may need to find another way to attribute the quote author (perhaps inside the book).
I know . That is so annoying as with some types of photos and art, a quote on the cover looks so good. It is yet another arbitrary detail to have to deal with. I also wonder why for things like blank books a back cover is often demanded, because when you look at the back of most notebooks and sketchbooks, unless they are very expensive as in leather bound or some such, the backs are usually blank cardboard. But this is an ongoing experience.
Also I have at least one instance of a photo I am trying to use in a cover, and it has writing in it, and I am now worried that the computer that evaluates this stuff will see that as book title or author info. What it is, I have a photo from the Betty and Barney Hill Museum, and one photo is of an alien, and the caption reads First Alien Encounter on the Date, 1961 etc. And I fear that might be mistaken for author and title stuff. So I am wondering if I need to cover it up with the name of the Journal?
Can you find the book by ISBN? It may be taking time for the keywords to index. Or is it possible there is a lot of competition for your keywords and your book is further down the search results? Remember Amazon only indexes the title, subtitle, author name and back end keywords. It doesn't index the description. Sometimes controversial keywords or trademarks may be suppressed too.
