M. Louisa Locke's Blog, page 10

Bloody Lessons on Kindle Countdown

In Bloody Lessons, it is the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, 1880, and the teachers of San Francisco are under attack: their salaries slashed and their competency and morals questioned in a series of poison pen letters.  Annie Fuller, the reluctant clairvoyant, has been called in to investigate by Nate Dawson, her lawyer beau, and the case becomes personal when they discover that Laura, Nate’s sister, may be one of the teachers targeted for attack.

In this installment in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, readers will find the same blend of a cozy mystery and romantic suspense, played out against the historical backdrop of late 19th century San Francisco, that they found in  Maids of Misfortune  and  Uneasy Spirits .  If you are new to this series, you will still enjoy spending time with the lively residents of Annie Fuller’s boarding house and visiting San Francisco when Golden Gate Park was filled with horse-drawn carriages, politics were controlled by saloon-keepers, and kisses were stolen under gaslight.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I have been delighted with the reception to this third book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, but since the book is set in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day 1880, it seemed only appropriate to discount it as a sort of Valentine’s gift of my own. Bloody Lessons will be at 99 cents from February 7 to February 13, through a Kindle Countdown in the UK Store and the US Store. In addition, I have also written a post over at HFeBooks.com about Victorian Valentines that you all might find fun.

M. Louisa Locke, February 7, 2014

Happy Holidays

As I wrap up the last presents (with 5 grandchildren this is not an easy chore), I can’t help but count my blessings. In December of 2009 I published my first book, Maids of Misfortune, with few expectations beyond the satisfaction of knowing my family and friends who had heard about this book for over twenty years would finally be able to see it in print. Four years later, I continue to be astounded at how greatly I have exceeded those expectations. I now have three books and two short stories in my Victorian San Francisco series, and over 300,000 of these books and stories have been bought or downloaded––a number that seems simply unreal. I have also made uncounted number of friends from among fans of the series and the other authors with whom I have shared this remarkable indie author journey. Without all their support, my success would not have been possible and my journey wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. Thank you all!

M. Louisa Locke, December 21, 2013

How to Get your books into the right Categories and Sub-categories: Readers to Books/Books to Readers—Part Three

Introduction:

Two years ago, I wrote a blog piece about the importance of using categories, keywords, and tags (which no longer exist) to make your books visible in the Kindle Store. A year later I wrote an update that expanded on this and discussed how having your book in the right categories could make free and discount promotions more effective. The basic argument I made hasn’t changed––that an author needs to understand how categories work in order to use them to improve the chance their books will be found by readers who are browsing in the Kindle store.

If you aren’t convinced of the importance of categories in improving discoverability—you might want to go back and skim through those two posts or just google “discoverability and categories” to see the multiple posts on this topic. However, for most of you, it isn’t the importance of categories but how to get your books into the right categories that you are most interested in––and there have been a number of significant changes warranting a new update on this topic.

First, the number and kinds of categories and sub-categories in the Kindle Store have increased dramatically in the last year.

Second, the methods of getting a book into the correct categories and sub-categories have expanded, with keywords becoming particularly important.

Third, these changes have made the process even more confusing to authors.

Definitions:

Because these changes have resulted in a good deal of confusion in terminology—I am going to start here. While KDP has generally improved the experience for authors by introducing a whole plethora of help documents, the terminology used in these help documents and by KDP help staff is not always consistent. I will try and delineate some of these inconsistencies and provide some clarity below.

Browse Categories and sub-categories: The term “browse categories” primarily refers to the general terms (and phrases) that are listed under Categories or Departments to the left of the Home page in the Kindle store. In this context the term “sub-categories” is then used to refer to the more narrow terms that show up when you click on one of these categories or on another sub-category.

For example, see how the two terms (in bold) are used in the Selecting Browse Categories help document:

“ Since your book will be displayed in a variety of searches by choosing even a single category, you shouldn’t place it in both a category and any of that category’s sub-categories (for example, selecting both “FICTION > Fantasy > Historical” and “FICTION > Fantasy.”

These two terms are also used in the help document Entering Title Information that describes how to pick categories when uploading the book for publication into KDP.

“Choose from dozens of categories, from Antiques to True Crime and everything in between. Each category also contains subcategories to further classify your content.”  

However, what has become clear through correspondence with KDP help staff is that the single term “categories” is also used when referring to the resulting string of categories and sub-categories.

For example, each of the following strings of terms is called a single “category.”

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery––Historical

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Cozy

As a result, an author who already has listed as her two permitted categories (for example, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Historical and Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Cozy) and writes to KDP and asks if she can now have the sub-category “Animals” added to the “Cozy Mystery” category will get the stock answer that an author can only have two categories so she will have to delete one before this can be added.

What this means is that she would have to go into her KDP dashboard for that book and delete Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Cozy and then add Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Cozy—Animals. 

Not hard to do—just confusing if you haven’t been thinking about these strings as a single entity (a category) but as a category (Mystery, Thriller & Suspense) with sub-categories (cozy mysteries and cozy mysteries with animals in them.)

To add to the confusion, the term “sub-categories” is increasingly being used to describe what is being created when keywords are combined with “categories.”

For example, see the help document entitled Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense Category Keywords.

“In order for a title to appear in the Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense sub-categories below, the title’s search keywords must include at least one of the keywords or phrases listed next to the sub-category.”

Sometimes these keywords are being used to get a book into a “category.” For example an author is directed to use the keywords “heist, robbery, thief, or theft” in order to get a book into the category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction—Heist. 

But keywords are also used to get a book into a new set of what I would call “filters” that now show up within certain categories—and these filters are also called “sub-categories.” For example, under the Mystery, Thriller, & Suspense browsing categories there are lists of sub-categories under three headings: Moods and Themes, Characters, and Settings.

If you go back to the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense page you will see what I mean. You can choose nine different terms (or sub-categories) under Moods and Themes, eight under Characters, and seven under Settings. And, you can choose as many of these different sub-categories as you want at the same time. For example you could check you wanted a mystery that was humorous, had an amateur sleuth, and was set at the beach. And you would find seven books. To see which broad categories have these new kinds of “sub-categories” or filters—go back to the help document Selecting Browse Categories and look under the subtitle Categories With Keyword Requirements. 

Steps to getting your books into the right categories and subcategories.

The really good news is that there has been a dramatic increase in categories, and when you add in these new “sub-categories,” the options for authors who want to make their books visible has gone up tremendously as a result.

Historical Fiction is a good example. Until a few months ago, there was a single Literature & Fiction—Historical category that contained over 39,000 other books. As a result, it was practically impossible to get on the bestseller list or the top 100 of the popularity list without a tremendously successful promotional effort—and even then it was hard to stay on this list after the promotion was over.  Now there are 26 different Historical Fiction “categories,” and there are an additional 9 “sub-categories” (or filters) under the heading Time Period. This is great for readers who might only like biographical historical fiction (853 books) or books set in Scotland (695) or 19th Century United States (162). It is also great for authors of books that fit into these categories because now readers can more easily discover their books.

The bad news is that getting your books into the categories and sub-categories isn’t always straightforward. However, here are the steps you need to take.

 1)  Decide which categories best apply to your book. This means going to the Kindle Store, looking through all the browsing categories and taking the advice given in the help document Selecting Browsing Categories.

To illustrate what might happen when you follow these instructions, let’s consider the Mystery of the American Revolution series (Paper Woman, Camp Follower, Blacksmith’s Daughter) by Suzanne Adair. These historical mysteries set in the American Revolution have a little romance and a lot of thrilling suspense and could possibly be found in all of these 15 separate categories.

Literature & Fiction—Historical—Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Literature & Fiction—Historical—United States

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Historical

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Women Sleuth

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Series

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers—Crime

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers—Espionage

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers—Historical

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers—Military

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction—Murder

Romance—Historical

Romance—Mystery & Suspense

Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure––Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure—War and Military

Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure—Women’s Adventure

Unfortunately, since authors can only choose 2 categories when they upload their books into KDP—choosing the right 2 categories will take some thought and experimentation. Go back to my last post on categories if you want some suggestions of different things to consider when making these choices.

2)  Once you have chosen the categories you want—determine whether these categories are available to you when you upload your book for publication. This process is complicated by the fact that the options available when to an author when they are publishing their book through the KDP dashboard are not always identical or arranged in the same fashion as the browse categories in the Kindle Store.

Go to your KDP Dashboard.
To the right for the book you are working on, click on Edit Book Details.
Click on Add Categories under Step 3 and search through the lists for terms that are related to the browsing category you are looking for.
Click on the one that most closely matches what you are looking for.
Look to see if there is a little + sign next to that term (indicating that there are sub-categories.)
Click on the plus (if it exists) to see what options are available.
As you click through you will begin to see a category string begin to build at the bottom of the page.
If the completed string is close to what you were looking for—then save and go back to find the other category you were looking for.

For example, if Adair looked for the category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Historical she would find that there wasn’t anything called Mystery, Thriller & Suspense in the first list of terms. But if she clicked on the + before Fiction, one of the options that would pop up would be Mystery & Detective. Clicking on that term, she would see listed Historical, and if she clicked on that—at the bottom of the screen it would say Selected categories: Fiction–Mystery & Detective—Historical (which is as close to the browsing category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Historical as you can get.)

The Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers categories can be found in a similar fashion—but not if she expected to find them under Fiction–Mystery & Detective.  Instead, Thriller is one of the main options under Fiction, and by clicking on it, other options appear that will permit her to choose categories like Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Thrillers—Espionage.

However, if Adair decided that the other category she wanted was Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction—Murder, she would run into difficulty. Like Thriller, she is going to find Crime directly under Fiction not Fiction—Mystery & Detective. But, unlike Thriller, there aren’t going to be additional options. Fiction—Crime is a dead end. If she stopped there and saved, she would find her book in the browsing category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction. The problem with this category is its size (23,000 books), making it an unproductive category for most books because it is hard to get to or stay near the top (and therefore visible) in a category that large. She needs to figure out how to get the book into the category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction—Murder.

3)  If the option you want isn’t there in the dashboard, the next step is to figure out if you can get that option using keywords. Go again to the help document Selecting Browse Categories and look under the subtitle Categories With Keyword Requirements.

For Adair, this would mean looking at the document Mystery, Thriller, &Suspense Category Keywords. When she looked at that she would discover that if she chose Fiction—Crime as one of her two categories and added the keyword word “murder” as one of her seven keywords her books would show up in the Kindle Store under Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Crime Fiction—Murder.  She might also add other key words like “kidnapping,” or “serial killer” if they were appropriate, and she would get additional categories. This is one of the few ways that a book can end up with more than two categories over all.

4)  Another way to get a category you want if the specific choice isn’t there in the dashboard can be to choose a combination of categories.

For example, it is my understanding that if an author chooses as her two categories: Fiction—Romance––Historical and Fiction—Mystery & Suspense––Historical for a book it will also show up in the Kindle Store under a third category, Romance—Mystery & Suspense. This will take some experimentation to determine which existing categories can be combined to form new categories. However, this experimentation is worth it because this is another way for a book to end up with more than 2 categories.

5)  Sometimes you are going to have to just ask the KDP to add a category to your book. Do this by asking for help using the Contact Us link at the bottom of your KDP Dashboard or at the bottom of your Author Central page.

For example, one of the browsing categories in the Kindle store that Adair’s Revolutionary war mysteries and thrillers could come under is Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure—War & Military. In the dashboard, there is an option Fiction—Action & Adventure, and it might be that if you simply put in the keyword “military” or “war and military” as one of your seven keywords you would get the full category listed.

But, as of right now, there isn’t a help document that lists what keywords you can use with the category Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure, so this might not work. In these types of cases, you may need to contact the KDP Help support staff and ask them manually to put up the category Literature & Fiction—Action Adventure—War & Military.  Over time a lot of the categories that used to be unavailable without asking for help are now done automatically—so I believe our requests become part of the vast data analysis that has made the Kindle store browsing categories more and more detailed and useful.

6)  Finally, you need to look to see if there are any of those “filters” or special keyword based “sub-categories” that might apply to your book and the category you have chosen. Go back to Selecting Browse Categories and find the general categories that use these sub-categories based on keywords.

Again, let’s look at Adair’s books. Let us say she chose to put her historical mysteries in Literature & Fiction—Historical. This is large category on its own (39,000 books), but she if she had chosen “18th century” as one of her 7 keywords, her books would be in a list of only 208 books. This would help her books be discovered by those who were specifically looking for US history in the 1700s (which would be where someone interested in the American Revolution would look.)

Or if she had chosen the category Mystery, Thriller & Suspense—Mystery—Historical, she could choose to include as one of her keywords “female protagonist,” (one of the sub-categories under the heading Characters.) This would put her books into a list of 508 books where they would have a much greater chance of being discovered.

Conclusion:

Once you understand these steps and the options you have in combining categories and adding keywords to get your book into the right browsing categories (and keyword created sub-categories) in the Kindle Store, you may want to go back and experiment with different categories and keyword combinations to determine which work best to provide the visibility you want for your books. Because more and more of this can be done by the author herself, rather than having to ask KDP staff to assign the categories manually, this experimentation is easier to do.

Whatever you decide, there is a lot less chance you will be condemning your books to invisibility by leaving them in a general category––ike the historical fiction category with 39,000 other books––simply because you didn’t know that you could now get the book into a much smaller and precise category called Literature & Fiction—Historical—Mystery, Thriller & Suspense or assign a keyword that will place your historical fiction in the correct time period.

And, as a result, more of your books will get into the hands of the readers who will enjoy them.

M. Louisa Locke, December 16, 2013

My thanks to Suzanne Adair for letting me use her books as examples. You can find all her wonderful historical mysteries and thrillers on Amazon.com.

Read Tuesday: Give the Gift of Reading for the Holidays

Chris McMullen, an enthusiastic and energetic indie author, has organized what we all hope will become an annual event–Read Tuesday–a day dedicated to the buying and gifting of books for the holiday season.

I am happy to be participating. In my case, I have discounted the print editions of all three of the Victorian San Francisco Mysteries 20% for the day. To get this discount, click on the book’s cover to get to the estore listing. At check out, you can use the Discount Code: GXZNLUK2 to get your 20% off. This will only be available for the next 36 hours.

                                             

In addition, my print editions also remain in the MatchBook program with the bundled ebook versions Free for the rest of December. I am pleased that a number of my fellow members of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative I belong to also have set their ebooks to Free as part of this program as well. To find out how to get these bargains and see all the books that are available, click here. Do it now as another way to support Read Tuesday!

Finally, here’s a secret (shhh). My $6.99 Boxed Set will be discounted to 99 cents on Kindle just for two days, December 12 and 13. A perfect gift to friends and relatives for the holidays.

M. Louisa, December 10, 2013

Holiday Gift Promotions

Thanks to the fans of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, 2013 turned out to be another excellent year for me as an Indie Author. So in a spirit of gratitude I thought I would run a series of different holiday promotions, discounting my books in various ways.

First, at $6. 99, this newly published box set of the first three ebooks in my series represents a greater than 40% discount of the combined cost of the three novels. Nearly a 1000 pages of Victorian romance and mystery and perfect as a gift to give to readers of  almost any age.

My second promotion starts today, as Maids of Misfortune goes on a Kindle Countdown and will be 99 cents in the Kindle store from November 23-29, 2013. Let your friends and family know, or better yet, gift them a copy to read over the Thanksgiving holiday!

In addition, I have entered the print editions of Maids of Misfortune, Uneasy Spirits, and Bloody Lessons, into the MatchBook program, so that throughout the holidays if you buy a print edition you will get the ebook version free. This makes a great gift for those who prefer print but also like to have a digital version (or give one as a gift and keep the other for yourself!)

Finally, on December 10, as part of Read Tuesday just the print editions of all three novels will be discounted 20% for one day. I will announce the links and discount codes for this sale on this blog the night before, and the sale will last 24 hours.

So happy holidays, and may you spend it happily reading!

M. Louisa Locke, November 23, 2013

Readers to Books/Books to Readers-Part Two: How to Sell Books in the Kindle Store with the Search Bar

In my tips for selling on Amazon, I suggested that authors should: “Think about selling from the buyer’s perspective.” In part one of this new series of posts, I addressed that issue in detail by examining the Kindle store from the reader’s perspective. Here, in part two, I describe some of the things that authors can do to make their books more visible to readers who use the Kindle store Search Bar to shop for books.

How to make the Search Box work for you

Just as authors have no control over which books vendors display in the front windows and on the display tables of their physical bookstores, so authors have little control over what books Amazon displays on the main Kindle Store Page. The one part of this first page that authors do have some influence over, however, is the search bar (found at the top of the screen.) Since many consumers have been trained by their use of Google and other web search engines to search for stuff using keywords, this is probably the most important place to start if you want to maximize a book’s discoverability.

Readers looking for a specific book or author:

For the reader who shops in the Kindle store and has a specific book or author in mind, their first step is to type in the author’s name or the book’s title into the search bar. Even when they don’t have the complete name or full title (or even the correct name or title), Amazon’s search engine is very good at finding the best possible matches. In fact, one of the things that distinguishes Amazon from other online retailers is how good its search engine is at delivering good matches even when the user searches using incomplete or inaccurate information. For example, if a reader is trying to find my book, Maids of Misfortune and puts “Maids” and “San Francisco” in the search bar, my book will show up. Or, if they put “Locke” and “Maids” into the search bar, my books will be the first match offered.

What the author can do to help ensure their books are found:

It is important for the author to realize that, as clever as Amazon’s smart search engine is, it can only work if it has good author-provided information to work with. Authors should therefore be consistent in how they provide Amazon with information when they (or their publishers or distributors) add their books to Amazon and the Kindle Store. For indie authors this means when they enter the information as part of the process of uploading a book into the Kindle Store through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

It is particularly important to be consistent in how you enter your own name and the titles of your books. For example, if you use a middle initial for your author name on your book cover, use that middle initial on all of your book covers (and all editions). Make sure all editions of a book have identical titles. For example, don’t drop the subtitle from the print edition of your book, and don’t include a volume number for one book and omit the volume number for other books in the series. If you are consistent this will strengthen the chances your books will be found—and you won’t run the risk of confusing the reader—particularly if there are authors and books with similar names and titles.

You should also set up your Author page through Author Central, making sure that all of your books in all formats are listed on that page. Doing this correctly will ensure that, when a reader searches for your name, they will get a link to your Author Page as well as links to your individual books. By making sure your Author Page is complete––with a picture, short biography, and a list of all your books––you will make it easier for readers to identify that you are indeed the author they were looking for, and make it easy for them to see all your books––not just the specific books they know about.

Readers who are simply browsing for certain kinds of books:

Readers will also use the search bar to find books on specific topics or books of a particular type. Again the Amazon search capabilities are very helpful. Say, for instance, a reader is interested in a novel about the “Knights Templar”—and they put the words “Knights Templar” into the search bar. A drop down menu will come up with a list of suggestions. If they click on Knights Templar––historical fiction, they will see 147 books, all fiction.

What an author can do to ensure their books are found:

An author who has written an historical novel about the Knights Templar would obviously want to make sure that their books showed up on this list. There are two sure-fire ways to do this. First, put the words “Knights Templar” in the book’s title. Second, use “Knights Templar” as one of the 7 keywords (actually, key phrases) Amazon permits an author (or their publisher) to enter into the keywords field when uploading the book into the Kindle store through KDP.

There is also evidence that using keywords in the book’s product description helps—although using the keyword only in the description does not seem to help as much as entering it in the Keywords field. For example, I use the word “clairvoyant” in my product descriptions (but not in my titles or keyword list) and my books don’t show up if you put the word “clairvoyant” into the search bar. However, having a keyword in the product description in addition to having the same keyword in a title or among the designated keywords may push the book higher in the search-results list, which is ordered by “relevance.”

So, do what writers do best: chose your words wisely as you devise your title, write your product descriptions, and pick what 7 keywords you attach to your book when it is uploaded into the Kindle store. But, in the Kindle store context, this means doing some work to determine which keywords will most effectively match how your target audience will search for your book.

To do that, experiment by doing your own searches. Search for the keywords you think a reader might use if they were looking for a book like yours or books on a similar topic to your book. As you type in the search box, notice that Amazon provides “search suggestions” just below the search box. Look at those suggestions in the drop down menu below the Search Box and try clicking on options to see what you find.  Does your book show up? Are the books that do show up similar to yours?

For example, if I search for the phrase Victorian mysteries (words that are in my title, keyword list, and product description), my books show up in the top 25 books in the search results list. But, perhaps more importantly, the other books that show up near the top of list are very much like my own. They are also the books that usually show up in my “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” list of books (and my books show up in their “Customers Who Bought” lists as well). Since over 500 books show up in the search results for “Victorian mysteries,” readers who like Victorian era mysteries will find this a productive set of keywords to use each time they look for a new book or a new author to try, and I can feel confident that the keyword, “Victorian mysteries” is effectively targeting my audience.

Contrast this with the phrase “Gilded Age mysteries.” While this is an historically accurate term for the late Victorian era in the U. S., when you search the Amazon store using that phrase, the search results in a list of only 10 books, and a reader probably won’t bother to reuse that search. Therefore, I wouldn’t want to waste any of my 7 author-supplied “keywords” on that term.

Another example of the importance of testing keywords is what I discovered when I searched for the phrase  San Francisco mysteries. My books show up in the search results for that phrase because all three of my novels use the subtitle “A Victorian San Francisco Mystery.” So, even though I didn’t use “San Francisco” as one of my 7 keywords, my consistent use of the same phrase as a subtitle does mean that readers interested mysteries in that setting will find my books in this search.

However, most of the other books in the search results for “San Francisco Mysteries” are contemporary mysteries. And none of the books at the top of that search results list ever show up in my “Customers Who Bought” lists (nor do my books show up in theirs). This means that it doesn’t make sense to designate San Francisco as one of my precious 7 keywords. Does it mean I should get rid of San Francisco in my title? No, because I know from my reviews that the setting of the book is one of the things that attract readers once they see my book listed among the other historical mysteries.

A final piece of evidence for the importance of keywords is revealed by what books are missing from the Victorian mysteries search results list.

Anne Perry is the founding mother of Victorian mysteries with her Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series and her William Monk series. She is still publishing books, she is still selling well, (four of her books are currently on the historical mystery bestseller list) but only two of her books (out of her more than 60 Victorian mysteries) show up on the list that comes from putting “Victorian mysteries” into the search bar. Those two books are Christmas books that have “Victorian” and “mysteries” in their titles. Apparently, her publishers didn’t attach the keywords Victorian mystery to her books. When I discovered this, I then tried searching for “Victorian Crime” and “Victorian London” (terms that are used in some of her product descriptions), and “19th century mysteries” and “historical mysteries” to see if her books would show up in the search results, but none did. You can find her books if you search for the names of her protagonist—but that is because those names are in the books’ titles.

Now one could argue that an author like Anne Perry (whose books are publicized by her publishers, show up in the front of physical bookstores in the New Release tables, and are recommended by store clerks) doesn’t need to worry about whether or not her books show up when a reader puts “Victorian mystery” into the search bar on Amazon. But as more people do their shopping online, as more of the younger generation of readers get used to “browsing” online by using the search functions of Google or Amazon, then Anne Perry will be losing potential new readers because her publisher hasn’t bothered to attach the most obvious keywords to her books.

And what if you aren’t Anne Perry? Can you afford not to care if your books don’t show up when a reader looks for books like yours using keywords and the search bar? I wouldn’t think so.

As indie authors we may not have the clout of a publisher behind us to get our books listed in the Daily Deal and we may not have easy access to physical bookstores, but we do have the power to ensure that readers find our books when they put keywords into the search bar.

We also can use those keywords to help get our books into the right categories, which is the other main way readers discover books in the Kindle store. But that will be the subject for Part Three of this series on how to get readers to books and books to readers.

M. Louisa Locke, November 21, 2013

Readers to Books/Books to Readers––Part One: How to find Books in the Kindle Store

I have spent an enormous amount of time on this blog giving advice to authors on how they can get their books discovered by readers. But the other day, as I read a post by Mike Shatzkin entitled Finding your next book, or the discovery problem and fumed over his statement that looking for books online is more difficult than it is in a bookstore, I had an epiphany. If this man, who spends his life giving publishers advice on how to sell their books, doesn’t know some of the fundamentals of how readers can find books in an online bookstore, why am I assuming that the average reader has any better understanding of how to discover books in the Amazon Kindle Store? Maybe I have been preaching to the wrong group. Maybe, I should be directing my advice to readers, not just writers.

Even though research suggests that nearly half of all books (print, ebook, audiobooks) are bought online, the process of browsing in an online store is still new for most of us and it can be confusing. Except for the very young, most people who buy books are familiar with how to find them in physical bookstores. So I will begin by describing the experience of browsing in a brick and mortar bookstore—say my local Barnes and Noble––and then I will compare that to the experience of shopping online in the Kindle store.

In the process I will demonstrate that all the methods of finding books to read in a physical bookstore (staff recommendations, display tables, and shelves of books organized by broad categories) exist in the online Kindle store. However, in the Kindle store there are a variety of additional methods of finding a new book to read that don’t exist in physical stores, providing the potential for a shopping experience that can be much faster and more productive.

Not surprisingly, for the authors of books, understanding the different methods of discovering books in the Kindle store is the first step to figuring out how best to make sure their books will be discovered by these methods––which is what I will address in Readers to Books/Books to Readers––Part Two.

I will be focusing on browsing (rather than on looking for a specific title or author in either kind of store since this is an entirely different matter and much easier to do.)

Finding books in a physical bookstore:

As I come up to my local bookstore, I see books placed cover-side-out in the window––ready to catch my eye. These books tend to be newly released bestsellers or seasonal holiday books. When I get into the store (and ignore all the non-book items now for sale––items which are taking up an increasing amount of floor space), I immediately see display tables with labels like New Releases, Best Sellers, Discounted, Best Young Adult, Holiday Picks, etc.

What most customers don’t realize is that publishers pay for the right to get their books in the front window and on these front tables. So, by and large, these are the books publishers and bookstores think will most attract readers. They have literally invested a lot (of money or floor space) in making these books easy for everyone to find.

The next place where books are very visible is on the shelves around the walls of the store. These books are typically popular non-fiction and Literature and Fiction—the largest single category of books in the store. The back of the store is devoted to a children’s section with a mix of fiction and non-fiction books along with games, stuffed animals, and other merchandise for kids. I have noticed that my local bookstore has been devoting more space to this section over the past couple of years. Perhaps this is because children’s literature has proven more resistant to the move to ebooks than other literature.

The rest of the store (again not counting the Nook center and the expanding shelves of other non-book items) consists of standing shelves with numerous non-fiction headings (Travel, Humor, Self-Help, History, etc) and a few fiction headings (Teen and Young Adult, Mystery, Romance, and Science Fiction/Fantasy). Within these different categories, most of the books are shelved with their spine out (with just the title and author’s name visible) and are arranged alphabetically by author––although sometimes the new releases in a category are shelved together at the start of their category.

Unless I am on a mission to find a specific book, I will first browse the books on the front tables, which have books displayed so I can see the full cover. Although many people may find plenty of books to interest them on these tables and not venture into the rows of shelves, I generally move on past the tables fairly quickly since I am usually looking for paperbacks and trying to discover new authors; (the tables tend to be hardbacks and well-known, bestselling authors).

The first shelves I visit are the mystery shelves (my major form of light reading). I look at the new releases (which are hardbacks—so I don’t usually buy anything) and begin to browse these shelves. The only problem is I only like certain kinds of mysteries, for example, historical mysteries, British police procedurals, and mysteries with women sleuths. And if I want to find a new author, I have to guess by the title on the spine which books to pull out and see if the book might be in one of my preferred sub-genres.

When I find a book whose cover suggests it might be to my taste, I still need to read the blurb or the first few pages to be sure. This is time consuming and, as I try to go methodically through the shelves from A to Z, I seldom get through all the books in this section before I get frustrated because most of the books I have pulled out appear to be of sub-genres that I am less interested in: the talking cat, the serial killer, the hard-drinking private detective. I also notice that, as I age, bending over to check out the books on the bottom shelves gets harder and I am less inclined to do so. On a good day, I might find at least one book before I give up. As a result, the books on the bottom shelves and at the end of the alphabet never get a decent chance of being discovered by me.

The problem of finding a new author I like in a physical bookstore is even more frustrating with historical fiction––one of my other preferred genres. I can hope that I run across an historical mystery when I was making my way through the mystery shelves. Or I can go to the romance section—and try to figure out by the titles which of the books are historical romances. To make matters more difficult, most of the historical romances shelved in this section are strong on sex and weak on history, which means they aren’t what I am looking for. Covers or titles alone won’t tell you which is which because the cover of a sedate Georgette Heyer (my favorite) looks identical to a racy romance.

As a result, I am forced to go to where most straight historical fiction is shelved––in the large Fiction and Literature section. In this very large section there are no sub-genres identified and books are just shelved alphabetically by author’s last name. Gad Zooks! The work it would take to find a previously undiscovered work of historical fiction here is mind-boggling, and I simply don’t try very often.

I could ask a clerk for a recommendation, but in my experiences in large chain stores, the staff is most likely to know only the more popular bestselling authors in any genre––the ones I already know about. The clerks in small independent stores may be more able to make useful recommendations—beyond the bestsellers­­––which might be one of the reasons that in the past several years independent books stores are holding their own and even expanding compared to the chain stores.

In short, there are limited and often inefficient methods of finding new books to read in a physical bookstore––in stark contrast to the multiple ways of discovering books in the online Kindle store that I will expand upon below.

My description of how to find a book in the Kindle ebook store is based on the experience of shopping online on a computer using a web browser (in my opinion the best way to find books.) If you are using a Kindle device, the experience is slightly different but it is similar enough so that once you have the process down using the computer/web-browser approach it is pretty easy to figure out.

Finding books in the Kindle book store:  

When I first approach the Kindle Book store, the center and the right of the screen are filled with book covers under different headings, like New and Noteworthy, Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi, and Recommended for You. This is very similar to the front window and the display tables in a physical store and the specific categories change from time to time the same way a brick and mortar store window changes.

But, when I am logged in to Amazon, many of the groups of books displayed online have been selected by the fabled Amazon algorithms to catch my particular eye. Amazon uses my past visits to the Kindle store and my past purchases to determine what kinds of books I might want. This is different from a physical store’s window and better, in my opinion. Today the first books I saw were a book by one of my favorite science fiction authors, a book on self-publishing, and a work of historical fiction.

New displays of books will also appear magically if I move away from this screen and come back to it. For example a group of books entitled A Salute the Classics just appeared, and when I came back after lunch, there was a group labeled Popular Romance for under $2.99 and the Post-Apocalyptic display had turned into Dystopian Sci-Fi. It is as if a bunch of clerks, worried they hadn’t been able to find any books to tempt me, scurried around pulling new books off the shelves onto the display tables, hoping that when I came back to the store that I would find something this time I wanted.

These algorithm-inspired listings aren’t perfect––I share an account with my husband—so the recommended list also included a hard-boiled detective novel and a travel book. But I do find that they are more likely to strike my fancy than what I find on the tables of a physical bookstore.

If I am looking specifically for discounts, bestselling books, or experimental forms of fiction (short stories, fan fiction, etc), I have another list across the top of this first screen to choose from labeled “Big Deal,” “Daily Deal,” “Bestsellers,” “Editors’ Picks,” “Kindle Singles,” “Kindle Worlds,” “Kindle Serials.” Click on each of these and you get a whole new display of books to browse. As with the “front of the store” displays in physical bookstores, some of these books are on these lists because the publishers paid to have them featured, others are there because the Amazon editors have chosen to feature them.

For each of these books I can also see the price of the book, the number of reviews and average number of stars rated for each. Each of these bits of information can help me determine whether or not to click on the book to find the product description, reviews, or read the first pages of the book (the next step in deciding whether to buy.) This information, plus the sheer variety of books displayed at the “front of the store,” means that there are actually more chances that I will find a book to buy at this stage than when I browse in a physical book store display tables.

But what if I am looking for a particular kind of book—like a mystery or a work of historical fiction––and I don’t want to be limited to what the Amazon editors, publishing houses, or algorithms have picked out for me in the front of the Kindle store?

Well, as in the physical bookstore, there are shelves and shelves of books under different subject headings or categories. And these shelves can be found to the left of the first screen in the Kindle Store under the heading “Categories.” The headings are familiar to anyone who is used to looking in a physical store. There are broad non-fiction categories like Business and Technology, Religion and Spirituality, Travel, as well as the familiar fiction categories of Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, Romance, Teen and Young Adult, and Science Fiction/Fantasy, and that broad category, Literature and Fiction. However, when you click on any of those category links, the experience changes dramatically from browsing in a physical bookstore.

Let’s take mysteries. Remember how in the physical bookstore I only had the choice of a section of newly released mysteries and then everything else was shelved alphabetically by author’s name? Online in the Kindle store, when I click on Mystery/Thriller/Suspense, I get all kinds of new ways to find books.

1) I can look at the center screen that has changed to offer up different displays of books—all within the broad Mystery/Thriller/Suspense category of books––all chosen by the algorithms, Amazon editors, and publishing houses to tempt me.

2) I can go to the listing on the left of this screen and click on browse all, and I will get a list of all 124,218 books in the general Mystery/Thriller/Suspense category. (How do I know how many books are in this category? It says right at the top, just above the first book—but the number keeps just getting larger every day I check!) The books are initially ranked by a formula that determines those that are “new and popular.” In a drop down menu on the upper right I can also change the sorting of the books to order by price, average customer review, or publication date.

3) I can go back to the first screen and again look on the left, but instead of clicking Browse All I have a number of sub-genres to choose from, including: British Detectives, Collections and Anthologies, Cozy, Crime Fiction, Espionage, Hard-boiled, Historical, International mystery and crime, James Bond series, Mystery, Paranormal, Police procedurals, Private Investigators, Series, Suspense, Thrillers, Technothrillers, and Women Sleuths.

When I click on any of those sub-genres I get a list of books in that sub-genre. For example, since one of my favorite sub-genres is historical mysteries, if I click on Historical I will get a list of just under 4000 historical mysteries (again sorted by the “new and popular” listing). Today, Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life is listed first. Or I could sort by price (choosing low to high––with the books that are free in this group coming first.) Or I could sort by customer review, where a self-published book, To the Grave, with 412 reviews and a 4.7 out of 5 stars, is listed first.

Some of those sub-genres even offer you additional categories to choose from. For example, clicking on the category Cozy, you get a list of cozy books, but the category list on the left side of the screen now also shows cozy sub-genres: animals, crafts and hobbies, and culinary. Some of these sub-sub genres repeat categories. For example, if I click on the Mystery sub-genre link on the main Mystery, Thriller & Suspense page, I get some categories I have already seen––like Cozy or Historical––but I also see a couple of new ones like African American, Gay and Lesbian.

With each list of books, you again have the option of also sorting the list by price, average customer review, and date of publication. But that isn’t all. You can also “filter” books by moods and themes, characters, and settings. This filtering functionality is available on the left side of the screen below the categories; you will see various filters with check boxes beside each one. For example, looking at the list of historical mysteries—I can use the “filter” function to narrow the nearly 4000 books down to 500 that have “female protagonists” (listed under “Characters”). And I can filter using more than one filter at the same time. For example, I can check both “female protagonists” and “British Detectives” and get a list of 64 books with female protagonists and British Detectives. Needless to say this list is filled with books I have read and new authors I plan to check out!

4) At any point, with any list of books, I can also refine my browsing further by putting keywords in the search box at the top of the page. For example, if I enter “Ancient Rome” in the search box when I am looking at the main Mystery/Thriller/Suspense page, I will get a new list of 43 books; but if I enter that same search term when I am looking at the historical mystery list I will get 27 books. If I enter it for cozy mysteries I discover that there are no books categorized as Ancient Roman cozies (surprise, surprise). But if I enter the search term “quilts” while browsing the cozy mystery page, I get a list of 34 books that are cozy mysteries that feature quilts.

5) Finally, you can use most of these same browsing features to browse just Bestsellers (those books that have sold best in the Kindle estore in the past hour).  To do that, you start back at the beginning in the Kindle Store at http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-eBooks/ and click the “Kindle Bestsellers” link on the left side under Popular Features. You can then go through the same process described above to narrow your browsing to Bestsellers in a category such as historical mysteries. Here you only see the top 100 books in any chosen category. You cannot narrow your browsing within Bestsellers by using filters and searches, but you probably won’t need to since you are only seeing lists of 100 or fewer books. I have also just discovered that you can do a similar search if you click on the new Kindle Countdown Deals or Kindle Monthly Deals features. (Will Amazon never stop giving us more ways to find books?)

Conclusion:

This may seem overwhelming at first. But the bottom line is that if readers take the time to explore the browsing options available in the Kindle eBook store, they can learn how best to find the kinds of books they like to read, at the price they can afford. In the process they can discover books they would never have found in a physical bookstore.

I tend to start at method #5 above, searching Bestsellers (and there the list is divided between paid and free lists). I then click on Mystery/Thriller/Suspense then Mystery, then Historical. Then I look first at the free books to see if there are any to tempt me. (I recently discovered Donis Casey’s Alafair Tucker series and Priscilla Royal’s Medieval Mystery series this way and they have become two of my favorite series.) Then I go to the paid list. It seldom takes me more than a minute to find several books I want to download or buy, and I am done.

And here is something else: the books in these two series, although published by the reputable Poisoned Pen Press, are not found on the shelves of my local Barnes and Noble store. Even if the latest book in each series showed up on one their shelves (for the usual six weeks a mid-list book gets before being returned), and even I had found them (browsing alphabetically by author), it is unlikely that the first book in the series would have been available. Since I like to start reading a series at the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have bothered to try them. I didn’t have this problem when shopping online in the Kindle store. In the Kindle store, when you find a book that is part of a series, you can just click on the author’s name to see all their other books listed—and buy the book you want instantly. In a physical bookstore I would have had to go to the cashier and order the first book in the series—something I wouldn’t usually do for an unknown author.

In summary: All the methods of finding books to read in a physical bookstore (staff recommendations, display tables filled with NY Times bestsellers and books paid to be promoted by publishers, and shelves of books by broad categories) exist in the online Kindle ebook store. But in the Kindle store there are a variety of other methods of finding a new book to read that don’t exist in those physical stores, and you can design a strategy that works best for your own tastes.

In Readers to Book/Books to Readers-Part Two: Selling Books in the Kindle Store, I will discuss how writers, if they understand Part One, can do a better job of getting their books discovered. Meanwhile—go sign onto the Kindle store, try out your new tools for browsing, and buy a few books!

So, was all of this information new to you? If not, what strategy do you use to find the books you want in the Kindle store?  Do you find shopping online less rewarding, as rewarding, or more rewarding than shopping in a physical bookstore?

I really want to know!

M. Louisa Locke, November 5, 2013

Last Stop on Bloody Lessons Tour: Review and a Giveaway

If you go on over to Christy’s Cozy Corners you will get one last chance to win, in this case a copy of Bloody Lessons!

Next to last stop on Bloody Lessons Blog Tour: An Author Interview

Today I am being interviewed over at  Cozy up with Kathy,  revealing all my deepest, darkest secrets!

What’s Love got to do with it?: Guest Post on Romance

Today I am over at Books and Kisses,  writing about the use of romance in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. Do come over and visit.