Is Amazon Hiding Your Books? No, You Are Hiding Your Books On Amazon!

Some readers of this blog may already have heard of David Gaughran. On YouTube he has a lot of “How To” videos on self-publishing and the marketing of self-published books. I’ll provide a link to one of them at the end of this review, because what he has to say is based on solid research and first hand experience.
 
Which is why I have given “Amazon Decoded: A Marketing Guide To Kindle Store” 5 stars (hereafter referred to just as Amazon Decoded).
 
Many of us feel that our books just aren’t getting a fair shake on Amazon. When we do incognito searches for them they appear so far down the search results that we know that no reader is ever going to scroll that far and discover our book.
 
Which is the problem this book aims to rectify

---

"turn an ad that yields 10 sales a day into an ad that yields 100 sales a day"

Now, neither I nor David Gaughran would claim that this book will propel your book into the global best-seller category overnight. But what it will do is make your book more visible to readers and if it is more visible, there is a greater chance of the book being bought.
 
When you couple that increased visibility with advertising, there is the potential to turn an ad that yields 10 sales a day into an ad that yields 100 sales a day (but please note the use of the word “potential” - nothing is guaranteed).
 
But what is great about this book is that all the things David talks about doing are FREE.

"the way Amazon can make your book visible to readers is as good as advertising it."

That’s right. You can make your book more visible without having to pay a penny. In fact, you can get Amazon to do your advertising for you for FREE.
 
Amazon doesn’t call it advertising, of course, but the way Amazon can make your book visible to readers is as good as advertising it.
 
David refers to this as “Visibility Marketing”, because it is all about making your book more visible amongst the 8 million ebooks (and counting) that are on Amazon.
 
First, a little bit about the author in order to establish his credentials for writing this book.

Author David Gaughran

David Gaughran. has been in the business of self-publishing for several years and he writes fiction as well as this sort of non-fiction. But, importantly, he is a very successful self-published author because he understands the marketing side of the self-publishing equation.
 
But David also used to work for Google, which means he has a lot of insider knowledge on how Google’s search engine works. This is crucial, because Amazon’s search engine works pretty much the same way because Jeff Bezos went to Google to ask them to show him how their search engine works – and Google showed him.
 
You may think that the Amazon search engine just scans the search words that are typed in, looks for matching words in books' metadata and then lists what it finds. Of course it does that, but it then selects the order in which the results are displayed based on a whole lot of other factors.
 
And equality rules on Amazon. Your book, if it meets the right criteria, can appear in the search results right below – or even above – those of the big name trad published authors.
 
Yes, really.

---

Your book will also appear in “also bought” and “recommended for you” lists, which are a great way to sell books. That is what “Visibility Marketing” is all about.
 
And making that happen is what this book is all about.
 
Some of the things David talks about you may be familiar with already. For example, one section covers keywords and if you don’t know how important having the right keywords for your book is by now, then you must have been living on Mars.

---

"Some of the things he suggests are so simple"

​Some of the things he suggests are so simple that it left me with my mouth hanging open thinking “Why haven’t I heard of this before?”
 
(Answer: because I hadn’t read this book before)
 
I don’t want to spoil David’s sales, but I’ll give you just one  example, as a teaser. It relates to books that are set up as a series.
 
When you link your book to Amazon from a non-Amazon ad (eg a Facebook ad), don’t use the link that takes the reader to the Amazon page for Book 1. Use the link that takes the reader to the Amazon page for the series.
 
Why?
 
Three reasons (but there may be more):
 
1. There is less competition on that page – it is reserved for the books in your series and if there are any “also bought” or “recommended for you” lists they will appear below all of your books. Which is probably well below the bottom of the screen where readers won’t see them unless they scroll down.
 
2. If someone is on the series page, they may buy not only book 1, but possibly book 2 as well. So, you get two sales for one ad click. You may get lucky and they buy book 3 as well.
 
3. Holy of holies, they may buy all the books in the series in one go (series readers love to binge), because that is an option on the page.

"I’ll email you back a photo of me eating my hat."

​So, when I was saying that an ad that sells 10 books a day could sell 100 books a day, this is one of the ways that it might happen (if there are 10 books in the series).
 
You see how simple that idea is, and how simple it is to implement. And it appears very early in the book, so you know there is a lot more to come.
 
This book is full of stuff like that and if you don’t find something that you can implement straight away then email me and tell me and I’ll email you back a photo of me eating my hat.
 
But that is the simple stuff. The real secrets are a lot more complicated.
 
If I were to ask you what the difference is between best-seller lists and the popularity of your book, what would you answer?

"it is the popularity of your book that decides how visible it is on Amazon"

Obviously I can’t hear you, but I’m guessing you said “there is no difference”.
 
You could not be more wrong.
 
And it is the popularity of your book that decides how visible it is on Amazon, not the best seller rankings (or the book's sales rank).
 
OK, the two things can be the same, but a lot of the time they aren’t.
 
Popularity, rather than best-seller rankings, drives what Amazon puts into “also bought” and “recommended for you” lists which are crucial for selling without having to advertise. They also drive recommendations for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, which is something I covered in a last week’s blog (you see, all these things join up).
 
I won’t try to explain the differences, because that is David Gaughran’s job. All I can say is that once you have read the book you’ll be wondering, as I was, how you didn’t know that before.
 
(Answer: see above re not having read this book before).
 
It is this insider knowledge and the intensive research into the subject that makes this book (a) worth the £3.99 you paid for it (UK price) and (b) a good investment because the purchase price will be repaid very quickly.
 
And this concept comes before we’re even halfway through the book!
 
David provides links to free resources on his website so that you don’t have to remember everything he says in the book. These resources will help you to implement some of the ideas within the book.
 
Towards the end of the book, David also provides marketing plans that you can tailor to match your own needs and then implement. He is well aware that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to book marketing and therefore he understands the need for flexibility.
 
There is some use of jargon within the book – the word “algorithm” is used a lot, for example. But if you aren’t technologically minded, you don’t have to understand how the guts of the Amazon search engine work. You only have to understand what you have to do to make it work for you, which is what this book is all about.
 
As you can guess, I highly recommend “Amazon Decoded” by David Gaughran and if you want to find out more about the book, click here.
 
If you want to take a look at David Gaughran’s videos on YouTube, I recommend you start with “How To Sell Books” but there are many others.
 
If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.

newsletter