D.E. Haggerty's Blog, page 16

How to find keywords for #Amazon ads #WriterWednesday #AmWriting #BookMarketing

The current thinking is that you need 1,000 keywords when you run an Amazon ad. Yes, you read that right – 1,000! How in the heck do you come up that many? Well, I’m not sure. But, by using the techniques below, I was able to come up with well over 500 keywords per ad. (Although I’m unsure why 1,000 is necessary as my hits seem to be concentrated on five or six words, but that’s a blog for another day.)

Each of these methods is free, but they do take time. I spend about four hours per Amazon ad searching for keywords.

Auto suggestions. Open incognito mode in Chrome and go to Amazon.com. In the kindle store, slowly start typing in words that relate to your book [think setting (e.g. Victorian age, character types (single dad, veteran, etc.), character roles (strong female lead), plot themes (coming of age), story tone (dystopian, feel-good)] Amazon will give you auto suggestions. Auto suggestions exist because these are words readers search. You can also do this in the Google search bar.

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Google ads. Google ads will help you find keywords. Just type in anything related to your book (perhaps words you gathered from auto suggestions) and google will come up with a ton of suggestions. Google will also let you know the competition for each word. More competition translates into a higher bid price.

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Top 100. On your Amazon book page, scroll down and see what categories Amazon has sorted you into. These don’t always match the categories you’ve chosen! Now, check out the top 100 ebooks in each of these categories. You should add the title and author’s name to your keywords.

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Also Bought. Under the description of your novel, you’ll find a handy list of books ‘customers also bought’. (Note: For new releases, this will only pop up if you’ve had some pre-orders.) Be sure to include the title and author’s name for each of these ‘also boughts’.

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Also viewed. Below the ‘also boughts’, you’ll find the ‘also viewed’ products. These titles and author names should be added to your list of keywords.

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Sponsored Products. Scroll even further down and you’ll find the ‘sponsored products’ related to your book. These titles and author names should be added to your list of keywords.

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Yasiv.com This site is the bomb! You plug in your book and it gives you all books that ‘point’ towards yours. This is better than ‘also reads’ and ‘related products’ because it points to all the books readers bought that are one or two books removed from yours. But watch out! You can go down the rabbit hole with this one. If you click on each book, at the bottom you’ll see “Customers often buy this product with…” You can click on each one of those ‘also boughts’ as well. See? Rabbit hole. Totally.

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Goodreads. On Goodreads, navigate to the genre under which your book falls. In addition to a list of books and authors to add as keywords, on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll find related categories. Check those out as well.

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The Not Obvious. Maybe it’s obvious, maybe it’s not, but make sure to include your name (or pen name), the book title, and the series name as keywords. This may sound counterintuitive. Why pay for an ad if people are searching for your book anyway? If your novel has a common name, it will be hard to find. If you search Finders, Not Keepers, for example, you’ll get a list of novels entitled Finders Keepers but not my novel.

Using these techniques, you should be able to come up with hundreds of keywords to add to your Amazon ad. Good luck!

My review of The Goldfinch, the 2014 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction #TuesdayBookBlog #PulitzerPrize #PulitzerPrizeChallenge #AmReading #BookReview

A popular topic of discussion while I was at a writing course this summer was reviewing classic and/or prize-winning literature and how most of us felt unqualified to do so. Oh sure, it’s easy to review literature when you love it. When you don’t? Eek! How dare I say I didn’t like a novel that has won one of the most prestigous literature prizes for the English language? Who do I think I am? My inner voice can be quite insecure.

[image error]With those thoughts in my mind, I will endeavor to review The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I have never been a Donna Tartt fan. But I’ve previously blamed that on language as – for reasons too boring to go into – I read The Secret History in Dutch. Let me assure you, I did read The Goldfinch in English. Unfortunately, reading in my native language did not improve my view of the novel. (Perhaps I should have read it in German?)

Reading The Goldfinch is like watching a train wreck happen – in slow motion. What’s slower than slow motion because this novel creeped along at the pace of traffic in Istanbul on a Sunday afternoon? Unfortunately, I’ve never been one for rubbernecking at accidents. Everything and anything that could possibly go wrong in the narrator’s (Theo) life did. It was painful to watch. I know this is literature and a saga to boot – but couldn’t Theo have something go right in his life?

[image error]There is no doubt that the characters were well developed, although there were so many that I sometimes lost track of who’s who. My goodness does Theo know a lot of people! And some associates disappear for hundreds of pages before coming back. I had to flip back and forth a bit at times, although that’s probably my fault as I took freaking forever to read this book. Personally, I want Hobie to adopt me. I don’t know anything about antiques, but I’m willing to learn. I also loved Boris’s character. I wouldn’t trust him any further than I could throw him, but it was fun to watch the guy wiggle his way around. That said, I don’t think I’d trust Theo either.

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The actual Goldfinch hanging in the Mauritshuis down the road from me. 

Disappointedly, the novel fell apart in Amsterdam. The unfortunate part of knowing a foreign city intimately is that no one who is not native to the city can write about it well enough. I could write a list of mistakes, but only I care about that, so I won’t bore you. Suffice it to say that I had an incredibly hard time not throwing the book across the room. At least my husband found my snorting at the book amusing. (Although as a native Amsterdammer, he did sympathize with me. Or at least he pretended to – he’s not stupid.)

Nobody said I had to prize-winning literature, right? I’m giving the novel three stars as it is obviously well-written, the character development is unrivaled, and the story is unique.

 

 

How to make your #Amazon book page compelling #WriterWednesday #AmWriting #BookMarketing

Last week I discussed how you can use Author Central to make the landing page for your books on Amazon look awesome. (You can read the blog here.) That blog was all about the mechanics of the page. This week, I want to discuss how to make the actual contents of your book page compelling enough to make a reader click buy.

First, a disclaimer. By no means am I an expert in marketing. I recently attended a conference about making your goals happen. As a follow-up, I set a goal to earn more royalties per month. (The goal is way more specific than that, but I won’t bore you with the details.) One of the steps to meet this goal is to research how exactly I can sell more books. What I discovered is that you can do all the marketing in the world, but if your book page isn’t appealing, no one’s going to buy your book.

How do you make a book page appealing? There are basically four aspects that influence whether a reader buys a book.

Cover
Price
Blurb
Reviews

Cover. There is a lot written about covers. Some of it may have even been written by me. In short, your cover needs to be catchy, look professional, and match your genre. I recently redesigned the cover of Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker. I loved the original cover, but readers were turned off by it. At first, I ignored them. I knew my book better than them! How dare they try to tell me something’s wrong with me cover? One thing I’m learning to accept with marketing my books, however, is that what I like and want is not important. What is important is how readers view my books. So, bye-bye old cover of Never Trust a Skinny Cupcake Baker.

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Price. Of course, price is important! No one’s going to buy a book that’s too expensive. But no one’s going to buy a book that’s too cheap either. There is a lot of research claiming consumers won’t buy books that are priced too low as they assume the book is crap. I ended up raising the prices on all my books. Only time will tell if I’m made a grave mistake. I’ll let you know. (N.B. If you use Amazon ads, you may be forced to raise the price to cover the cost of the ad.)

Blurb. This is the meat and potatoes of your book page and the bane of every writer’s existence. No one likes to write a blurb. I’ve now become obsessed with blurbs and am re-writing the blurb for each of my books. I’ve listened to many a podcast while at the gym about how to write a compelling blurb. From what I can tell, it boils down to ensuring you use (1) a hook to grab a reader’s attention, (2) a synopsis to tell the reader about the book, and (3) then a call to action to get the reader to buy the book.

Original blurb for Searching for Gertrude:

While growing up in Germany in the 1930s, Rudolf falls in love with the girl next door, Gertrude. He doesn’t care what religion Gertrude practices but the Nazis do. When the first antisemitic laws are enacted by the Nazi government, Gertrude’s father loses his job at the local university. Unable to find employment in Germany, he accepts a position at Istanbul University and moves the family to Turkey. Rudolf, desperate to follow Gertrude, takes a position working at the consulate in Istanbul with the very government which caused her exile. With Rudolf finally living in the same city as Gertrude, their reunion should be inevitable, but he can’t find her. During his search for Gertrude, he stumbles upon Rosalyn, an American Jew working as a nanny in the city. Upon hearing his heartbreaking story, she immediately agrees to help him search for his lost love. Willing to do anything in their search for Gertrude, they agree to work for a British intelligence officer who promises his assistance, but his demands endanger Rudolf and Rosalyn. As the danger increases and the search for Gertrude stretches on, Rudolf and Rosalyn grow close, but Rudolf gave his heart away long ago.

How far would you go to find the woman you love?

This is the updated blurb:

How far would you go to find the woman you love? 

 

Nazi Germany. While growing up in Germany in the 1930s, Rudolf falls in love with the girl next door, Gertrude. He doesn’t care what religion Gertrude practices but the Nazis do. When the first antisemitic laws are enacted by the Nazi government, Gertrude’s father loses his job at the local university. Unable to find employment in Germany, he accepts a position at Istanbul University and moves the family to Turkey.

 

Eight Years Later. As war rages in Europe, Rudolf arrives in Istanbul to search for Gertrude. With Rudolf finally living in the same city as Gertrude, their reunion should be inevitable, but he can’t find her. During his search for Gertrude, he stumbles upon Rosalyn, an American Jew working as a nanny in the city. Upon hearing his heartbreaking story, she immediately agrees to help him search for his lost love. Willing to do anything in their search for Gertrude, they agree to work for a British intelligence officer who promises his assistance, but his demands endanger Rudolf and Rosalyn.

As the danger increases and the search for Gertrude stretches on, Rudolf and Rosalyn grow close, but Rudolf gave his heart away long ago.

Obviously, I’m still not there with this example, but it’s getting there.

It’s also important to include any awards or reviews from well-known resources at the start of your blurb. For example, I changed the blurb of Fat Girl Begone! to include the following:

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Reviews. There are two ways reviews add to the appeal of a book page. There is the overall star rating just under the author’s name. There’s not much you can do to change the rating even when a reviewer admits the review is based on the synopsis! (Trust me, I’ve tried.) But you can highlight the good reviews you receive by adding them to the editorial reviews section of your book page.

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This is the editorial review section for Searching for Gertrude

These are the steps I’ve taken to ensure the landing page for each of my books on Amazon looks as compelling as possible. Any other tips?

#BookReview of Tossed Into Love by Aurora Rose Reynolds #Romance

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Title: Tossed Into Love

Series: Fluke My Life

Author: Aurora Rose Reynolds

Genre: Romance

~ Blurb ~

Libby Reed is over it. Or that’s what she tells herself. She’s lusted after one of New York’s bravest for years, but firefighter Antonio Moretti has doused her interest for the last time. As much as she wants the arrogant jerk (in a bad, bad way), they can’t even be in the same room without setting each other off…which might be a problem now that she’s volunteered to help out in his family’s restaurant.

Antonio’s been burned before. Now he knows better than to trust a pretty face and follow another pair of long, beautiful legs into heartbreak. But while Libby might rub him the wrong way, he can’t deny the heat between them. And it only burns hotter when she steps up in his time of need. The closer they get, the more he realizes he may have misjudged her. Then again, he doesn’t know the secret Libby’s keeping that could send their relationship up in flames before it’s even begun.

~ Review ~

I nabbed this book from NetGalley as I’m a fan of Aurora Rose Reynolds’ Until series. I do love me some instalove. I don’t care how unrealistic it may seem. I was somewhat leery about this story as the description makes it clear this is not an instalove situation. Antonio actually sounded like a jerk from the description. I decided to give it a try anyway.

Although I liked Libby, I didn’t love her. I didn’t care for the descriptions of clothing, and Libby’s life is fashion. Something I’m not interested in – at all. I also found her successfulness at her age unrealistic. The details about her new business endeavor were missing. How in the world did she manage to do a renovation in so little time? I need her construction crew!

I liked Antonio more than I thought I would. He did have a reason for his judgmental behavior. He could have opened up his eyes a little sooner, though.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. It’s a quick, fluffy read for when you just want to relax. Nothing wrong with that. But figuring out a star rating wasn’t easy. Although the story is exactly as advertised – a light love story with a guaranteed HEA, there were quite a few things that annoyed me and the story followed a typical romance formula making it feel somewhat cliched.

~ About the Author ~

Aurora Rose Reynolds is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author whose wildly popular series include Until, Until Him, Until Her, and Underground Kings.

Her writing career started in an attempt to get the outrageously alpha men who resided in her head to leave her alone, and it has blossomed into an opportunity to share her stories with readers all over the world.

 

 

 

Two countries separated by a common language ~ #ExpatLife #WritersLife #amwriting

[image error]The worst part about being a full-time writer (besides lack of funds that is!) is not having colleagues. I don’t miss dressing up to go to work. PJs are just fine for me! I definitely don’t miss having to be in an office. The idea actually makes me feel ill now. But I do miss seeing other people, grabbing a chat over coffee, having lunch with human beings (had to add humans as my dog is feeling left out now), and – my favorite thing! – having a beer on a Friday after work.

So, how do you solve this problem when you are an introverted writer who finds the idea of writing at a café unappealing (and how am I going to remember to take all my crap with me?)? A writer friend (a real writer who has a book deal and everything!) suggested I take a seminar or course. Having just attended the London Book Fair where I managed not to throw up with anxiety at having to talk to strangers because – duh! – they’re writers, too, I decided to follow her advice.

Living in a country that speaks a different language than the one in which I write, I was forced to look abroad for a course. I ended up choosing the Swanwick Writer’s Summer School in England. There are many reasons I chose Swanwick, but the main reason was the language – English – of the course. Once I arrived, however, I was reminded – often! – of the following quote:

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I’m fairly certain that at least 200 of the 300 attendees commented on my accent. Why did I still have an American accent, they couldn’t seem to help themselves from asking. At first, I tried to explain that, although I’m obviously a native American, my accent and word usage is international. (My editor loves to use her red pen to cross out any English sayings in my manuscripts.) No one was really listening, which meant it was time to bring out Snarky Dena. Snarky Dena’s response? Why would I have lost my American accent? I speak Dutch to Dutch people, German to German speakers, and crappy French to French people. And when I do speak English? It’s often to non-native English speakers who – it must be said – are more accustomed to American English. (Snarky Dena tends to go overboard.) The week ended with my pulling out my Dutch passport as we were boarding the bus and shouting: “See? I’m not an American!”

This is life as an expat.

 

 

 

 

How to make your #Amazon book landing page look awesome #WriterWednesday #AmWriting

How your book landing page looks is vital to book sales. In a bookstore, potential buyers spend an average of eight seconds looking at the cover and only fifteen seconds reading the back cover before deciding to buy. These times are even shorter when it comes to browsing at an online store such as Amazon. Can you say EEK? Today’s blog concentrates on the actual look of the landing page and not how to make the actual text compelling for readers. (Stay tuned for that)

Have you ever seen a book description on Amazon full of different fonts and bold and wondered how in the heck it was done? I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried to make my blurbs exciting with different bells and whistles, but the changes never were visible. Until now. My first mistake was changing the blurb via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I’d go to my bookshelf in KDP, click on edit eBook details, and then wait a day or two for the changes. Not only was it a pain in the butt, but changing details in KDP makes me nervous. What if accidentally hit unpublish (not possible by the way) or change the price to $2,000,000 (probably impossible as well)?

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Luckily, there’s a simpler way to change your book description. Author Central. Just log into your author central account and go to the book tab where you’ll find all of your books listed. (N.B. I self-publish and have automatic access to Author Central. If you are traditionally published, you may need to ask for access.)

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Click on the book you are changing. This will bring you to the book’s landing page. In order to make changes, click on editorial reviews.

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This is one of my older books for which I have yet to update the product description and add reviews.

You can now make changes to the book’s description to make it POP by using bold, italics, and underlines, etc. Click on the edit box next to product description and a box will pop up. You can compose or edit html. I’ve found that only by using html am I able to use bold and italics and special fonts. As I’m not a programmer, I use a word to html converter (this is the one I use).

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If your novel has different formats (kindle, paperback, hardback, etc.), make sure to change each version as the changes do not automatically carry over to each version. You may find you have several paperback versions. Don’t curse out Amazon (as I do), but take a deep breath and change each version.

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That’s it, folks! Now, I’m off to make revisions to my books. All sixteen of them. Pfff…

 

 

 

My Review of The Beast of London #fantasy #bookreview #TuesdayBookBlog from L.D. Goffigan

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Title: The Beast of London

Series: Mina Murry Series

Author: L.D. Goffigan

Genre: Fantasy

Published: April 17, 2017

~ Blurb ~

An electrifying retelling of a classic tale, THE BEAST OF LONDON is the first book of the Mina Murray series.

Mina Murray once lived an adventurous life, but after a tragedy in the forests of Transylvania, she left it all behind. Now she has settled into a quiet routine as a schoolteacher in London, engaged to the respectable solicitor Jonathan Harker, attempting to fit into the stuffy upper class London society to which he belongs.

Her dark past comes careening into her present when Jonathan is abducted by a group of vampires from a society ball. Determined to rescue him, she teams up with her former paramour Abraham Van Helsing and his colleague, Scotland Yard Inspector John Seward.

As they pursue Jonathan’s abductors from England to the Low Countries and beyond, Mina realizes that Jonathan’s abduction is tied to a larger threat against humanity…

~ Review ~

I was given a review copy of this novel from the author a while ago, and I finally managed to read it this past week while I was looking for something light to read. Although the novel started off slow, once the characters are introduced the action grows and it became hard to put down. I have forgotten the novel was a re-telling of a classic tale and didn’t know what I wasn’t getting myself into.

The story is told from Mina’s point of view. I enjoy reading novels written in first person and Mina was likeable and relatable. She was strong, yet damaged. I’m not sure how believable her character is for the era (would a woman in that time period gone off with two men on an adventure???), but this is a fantasy novel after all. I think I’m in love with Abraham and hope Mina opens her eyes to see what he has to offer her. *Fingers crossed for the next book in the series*

Although I enjoyed the story and would continue to read the series, I had a few problems with the novel itself. My biggest problem was the Dutch. No one would have spoken in informal Dutch in that time period, and the word choice was often incorrect. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what university she’s referring to as the Municipal University of Amsterdam (The University of Amsterdam, The VU, I don’t know). There were also quite a few editing mistakes.

I hate cliffhanger endings! I didn’t realize this book was the first of a series. I am not a big fan of series that are composed of novels that are not standalones.

All in all, an enjoyable read. I’ll definitely continue with the series.

~ About the Author ~

L.D. Goffigan writes paranormal fantasy novels. She studied film and dramatic writing at New York University. She grew up on the East Coast but now resides in a large city by the sea on the West Coast. When not writing, she enjoys traveling and dreaming of new fantastical tales to tell. Her novel, THE BEAST OF LONDON, is the first book of the Mina Murray series.

Things To Pack For Your Next Writing Course #WritersLife #Swanwick70 #AmWriting #MondayBlogs

Here I sit at my computer to write yet another #MondayBlog in which I must admit that I have not yet finished my Pulitzer Prize book for the week. *hangs head in shame* I planned to enumerate the various reasons why I’ve failed to finish reading The Goldfinch, but, let’s face it, not one wants to read a blog post of me whining for 300 to 400 words. (If I’m wrong about that, please let me know as I could pretty much do that nonstop and no longer kill my brain cells trying to come up with blog ideas!)

As I’ve just returned from the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, I’ve decided to instead assist other writers in figuring out just what the heck they should pack when running off to their next writing seminar/school/etc. So, here it is, the all-important writer’s packing list.

Things to Remember

Number 1 on the list. You will find these necessary when you decide you can party (read = drink wine) all night long and make it to a 9:30 a.m. lecture.
These come in handy when you realize there is no way in hell you can make it to breakfast (for reasons why, see above).
Notebooks, pens, pencils, highlights, etc. Whatever you need to write and take notes, needs to go in your bag. If you’re traveling by plane, make sure these are in your carry-on because who knows where in the world your check-in bag will end up.
Your age. Yes, you should remember your age. Unlike myself, who thinks she can dance until 3 a.m. with people who are young enough to be her children. At least I said children and not grandchildren, right?

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Not money. Cash. Apparently, there are still taxi drivers in the world who don’t take cards. P.S. It’s also handy to bring cash that is not outdated and thus no longer valid currency. Trust me when I say that idea of just popping into a bank will never happen. Never.
Reusable water bottle to ensure you don’t end up preaching about the environment nonstop for two days when you realize the vast amount of plastic cups that are being used.

 

Things to leave at home

Any idea that you are actually going to get any writing done at a writing course. Between meeting new people, socializing with friends, attending classes, and listening to lectures, there isn’t much room in your brain left for writing.
Thick literary books. You won’t have time (let alone mental capacity) for thick tomes. If you want to read to relax, bring some guilty pleasure books. Don’t be embarrassed. I believe the ereader was invented for just this situation. (If you are just bringing that thick literary novel to show off, by all means, drag the thing around for a week.)

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Don’t they look pretty sitting on my bedside shelf where they stayed all week?

 

As you can tell, I had a fun time at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. Like the nerd I am, I always did like going to summer school.

 

Updates from an introvert attending a week-long writing course #MondayBlogs #Swanwick70 #writerslife

I know I said I’d be offline this week while I’m at Swanwick Summer School, but I’m skipping breakfast this morning to quickly write a blog post because I’m an introvert (a loud-mouthed introvert, but an introvert nonetheless) and I could use a break from the other 300 plus delegates. So, I’m hiding in my room and drinking a coffee and eating a meergranen biscuit I brought from home for breakfast. Do I know how to live or what?

Between preparing for summer school and working on the marketing to launch Finders, Not Keepers next week (whose brilliant idea was it to launch a book days after returning from an intensive course, anyway?), I haven’t managed to finish The Goldfinch yet. To be perfectly, painfully honest, I haven’t made much progress at all. I planned to read in the plane on the way over here, but we had a 3 ½ hour delay due to a bird strike. Normally, that’s lots of extra reading time, right? Um, not if you are Dena. Dena heads to the Irish bar and has a pint (or 2… no one’s counting, right?). BUT the book is on my nightstand and I will try to get a few chapters in here and there. I will finish this book eventually. I will.

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Actual evidence

In the meantime, a quick update on The Writers’ Summer School. So far, it’s living up to my expectations. I went to two courses yesterday: crime doesn’t pay and sitcom writing. I’m not sure I can use much from the crime doesn’t pay lecture as I don’t get into forensic evidence much with my cozy mysteries, but it did get my creative juices flowing on the next book in the Not So Reluctant Detective Series. Melly is in for some serious trouble on that one. Sitcom writing is not something I’ve considered doing, but I went along to get some tips for writing funny stuff. I do try to write funny stuff, after all. The lecturer was quite good. I must admit I didn’t enjoy the group writing activity. When you’ve only just met someone, it’s awful hard to work together. #NotATeamPlayer

On the agenda today is another lecture in the crime doesn’t pay series and a short course in creating characters. I may even put on my dancing shoes and go to the disco this evening, although after last night’s horrible result in the quiz (resulting in that second ill-advised bottle of wine), I’m unsure.

Signing off …

Off to Summer Writing School @swanwickwriters @writerslife @amwriting

[image error]I’ll be offline for the next week as I’m off to the Swanwick Summer Writers’ School. Eek! Nervous and excited all in one.

Although I love working at home and having the freedom to work whenever I want, I do miss having colleagues. When I complained to a fellow writer friend, she suggested taking a course. I’d just come back from the London Book Fair and I was bubbling over with writing and marketing ideas. I’d also made tons of connections with bloggers and other writers. A course sounded like the perfect idea.

I did some research and quickly discovered courses primarily fell into two categories. The first category is a writers’ retreat where the main goal is to get away from the world and write. That didn’t appeal to me. If I want to do that, I’ll book a vacation somewhere I want to go. The other category is writing courses for those who don’t write professionally but who would like to get started. These courses are primarily set in wonderful locations and half of the time is spent going on excursions. Not what I was looking for.

[image error]Via Wikipedia (they should really pay me for marketing), I discovered The Writers’ Summer School at Swanwick, a week-long summer school. The agenda is packed full of interesting courses. Some are longer over a few days and some are seminars. Specialist courses such as “Making Crime Pay” and “Secrets of Sitcom” sound right up my alley. There’s also tons of evening entertainment, which kind of freaks me out.

I’ll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, have a great weekend.