Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "optimization"
12 x 3 = 36
Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to have 12 books on KDP. I'm amazed that I've written 12 books to be honest. And two more in the works.
But today, I worked with Eric on improving my keywords and book categories. He'd read, and I'd read, about optimizing those choices to improve the likelihood of your book being found.
I did a little sleuthing on Amazon for other authors whose books I've read and who write similar kinds of books, and I had some ideas about new keywords to use as a result. Eric had also done some research, and he had some of his own ideas. And unfortunately, this led to one of our rare disagreements. I took a lot of his suggestions. But not all of them. And he argued that I was trying to make my books more searchable, and that's what his words would do. And I said I didn't want to change some of the keywords I already had. And he said some authors spend weeks and months picking their keywords. And I agreed. And said this wasn't the last time I would change them. So, let's not fight about it!
But...one thing we did agree on was that I needed to fix the categories associated with my books in KDP. Unfortunately, Eric thought there were more options than there actually are. But many of my books had been categorized in either Fiction: General. Or Fantasy: General. Neither of which are particularly helpful in getting noticed, as there are millions of books in those categories.
Instead, we changed the fantasy series and Finding Magic to Fantasy: Epic and Juvenile Fantasy: Magic and Sorcery. I agreed with Eric those were good categories. My books are definitely not children's books. But juvenile worked, I thought.
Interestingly, the Kindle algorithms didn't like that combination. They wanted me to pick either an adult category OR a juvenile category. But fortunately, they let me ignore this suggestion. Weirdly, however, only the Kindle edition of each book was flagged for this.
Which brings me to the title of this blog post. The way KDP works is that each book and each format is an entry. So, for my 12 books and three formats (Kindle, paperback, and hardcover), that's a total of 36 entries.
The three entries for each book are "linked" in that they are on the dashboard next to each other. But if you make a change for one format, you have to make the same change (or a different change if you want) for the other two formats. The only information that has to be consistent across each format is the author's name and the title. Beyond that, you can have different descriptions, categories, keywords, etc., for each format for the same book.
I suppose some authors might use that flexibility to continue to optimize for searches. In fact, Eric and I talked about having different keywords for different formats for the same book. But I had enough trouble coming up with seven keywords or phrases for each book, much less 21! Also, I'm AR enough that I wanted the keywords to actually be the same for all three formats. Which meant writing them down for each book and then replicating them across all three formats. I also wanted each series to have mostly the same keywords. So, I kept five of the seven keywords the same for each book in the series, varying only slightly from book to book. We'll see if that makes any difference in searching. Or if we can even tell!
Likewise, I changed the categories for my fictional biographies to be mostly consistent. Each one is either Fiction: Biography or Fiction: Contemporary Women, or both. A couple are Romance: Contemporary. And Gift for Michael is under Fiction: Occult or Supernatural, because of the time traveling.
Bottom line, I had to redo the keywords and categories for each book and each format.
12 x 3 = 36.
But today, I worked with Eric on improving my keywords and book categories. He'd read, and I'd read, about optimizing those choices to improve the likelihood of your book being found.
I did a little sleuthing on Amazon for other authors whose books I've read and who write similar kinds of books, and I had some ideas about new keywords to use as a result. Eric had also done some research, and he had some of his own ideas. And unfortunately, this led to one of our rare disagreements. I took a lot of his suggestions. But not all of them. And he argued that I was trying to make my books more searchable, and that's what his words would do. And I said I didn't want to change some of the keywords I already had. And he said some authors spend weeks and months picking their keywords. And I agreed. And said this wasn't the last time I would change them. So, let's not fight about it!
But...one thing we did agree on was that I needed to fix the categories associated with my books in KDP. Unfortunately, Eric thought there were more options than there actually are. But many of my books had been categorized in either Fiction: General. Or Fantasy: General. Neither of which are particularly helpful in getting noticed, as there are millions of books in those categories.
Instead, we changed the fantasy series and Finding Magic to Fantasy: Epic and Juvenile Fantasy: Magic and Sorcery. I agreed with Eric those were good categories. My books are definitely not children's books. But juvenile worked, I thought.
Interestingly, the Kindle algorithms didn't like that combination. They wanted me to pick either an adult category OR a juvenile category. But fortunately, they let me ignore this suggestion. Weirdly, however, only the Kindle edition of each book was flagged for this.
Which brings me to the title of this blog post. The way KDP works is that each book and each format is an entry. So, for my 12 books and three formats (Kindle, paperback, and hardcover), that's a total of 36 entries.
The three entries for each book are "linked" in that they are on the dashboard next to each other. But if you make a change for one format, you have to make the same change (or a different change if you want) for the other two formats. The only information that has to be consistent across each format is the author's name and the title. Beyond that, you can have different descriptions, categories, keywords, etc., for each format for the same book.
I suppose some authors might use that flexibility to continue to optimize for searches. In fact, Eric and I talked about having different keywords for different formats for the same book. But I had enough trouble coming up with seven keywords or phrases for each book, much less 21! Also, I'm AR enough that I wanted the keywords to actually be the same for all three formats. Which meant writing them down for each book and then replicating them across all three formats. I also wanted each series to have mostly the same keywords. So, I kept five of the seven keywords the same for each book in the series, varying only slightly from book to book. We'll see if that makes any difference in searching. Or if we can even tell!
Likewise, I changed the categories for my fictional biographies to be mostly consistent. Each one is either Fiction: Biography or Fiction: Contemporary Women, or both. A couple are Romance: Contemporary. And Gift for Michael is under Fiction: Occult or Supernatural, because of the time traveling.
Bottom line, I had to redo the keywords and categories for each book and each format.
12 x 3 = 36.
