You may remember my recent post, Don’t Advertise With Amazon Until You’ve Read This. I mention there Kindlepreneur’s free AMS tutorial and KDP Rocket. Imagine my surprise when Dave Chesson, aka Kindlepreneur, contacted me shortly afterward to offer me a review copy of KDP Rocket. This was roughly at the same time that I was finishing his AMS tutorial, so I thought it would be a good idea if I reviewed both here.
Before we start, though, here’s a little extra to whet your appetite:
Amazon Book Description Generator
Dave offers a lovely freebie called Amazon Book Description Generator. This is a free tool that allows you to format your blurb in a way that makes it pop out. As Dave explains on his website,
Ever wonder why some book descriptions look nicer, have bigger words, and stick out more?
That’s because many self-publishers are using Amazon approved HTML in order to make them look that way. Sounds crazy, right? Well, it turns out that making your description stick out can also help to increase your book’s sales conversion rate…meaning you can get 15% more sales…which is nice.
Use it whenever you want a book description that stands out.
Dave’s Free AMS Tutorial
Usually, the words free and tutorial are enough to send me packing, as they signify poor quality and are often no more than a few hastily slapped together web pages with a video or two thrown in.
Not in this case.
Dave’s free AMS tutorial is the best I’ve watched so far on the subject: clear, all-encompassing, with a friendly tone and plenty of notes at the end. The only surprise is the price: completely free. Granted, Dave does mention KDP Rocket (which is the bread-earner behind this), but he doesn’t shove it down your throat or suggest you can’t run an AMS campaign without it. On the contrary, he goes out of his way to make sure that you can. He just makes also sure that you realize how much more work it is if you don’t invest on KDP Rocket.
Which brings me to…
KDP Rocket
I have now been using KDP Rocket for a couple of weeks, and have found it to have a bit of a split personality. On one hand, it’s ideal for Kindle entrepreneurs: people who see books as just another way of making money. KDP Rocket allows them to easily test the market for book ideas, check out the competition, and even figure out how much they can be expected to make if they write a book on a specific subject. In that sense, it is KDROI and KindleSpy rolled up in one easy-to-use bundle.
You can see how it does all that in the video below:
However, there is a second side to it; a side that appeals to the more “romantic” authors who believe we want to tell a story without necessarily performing a market research first. We just need a tool that will allow us to best market whatever story we already have written.
Thankfully, KDP Rocket can help with that, too, through its powerful keyword search. On one hand, this allows us to choose the best keywords to grow our organic sales for our books. On the other, it can automatically generate the hundreds of the keywords necessary to ensure the success of your AMS campaign, thus saving you hours of work. This becomes even more important if you have plenty of titles out there, like me, and need to create campaigns for all of them. To understand the importance of keywords, check out his post on Kindle Keywords, or this one on Fiction Keyword Strategies.
You can see how KDP helps you pick the best keywords here:
https://youtu.be/you-yE-R6LM
I apologize if all this sounds a bit too enthusiastic; it’s just rare that I find a free tutorial that I can recommend to anyone who’s interested in running AMS campaigns, plus a piece of software that does what it promises.
Check out Dave’s KDP Rocket and his free AMS tutorial on his website.
Important Note
I am using affiliate links above. But I’d hate for you to think I’m giving Dave a positive review because of that, so, if you’d rather use non-affiliated ones, please click below:
Tweet This
Hi Nicholas,
I assume you are still using KDP Rocket after over a month since this was written. I know you have several books that you market. Since you have more marketing plans to watch, it would make since using the Rocket. I’m using the AMS keyword strategy my two books. Although I watch daily for trends or changes, I still feel it is a hit or miss strategy. Would you recommend investing in the Rocket software for someone like me with only two book? Is there enough collected data to analyse and adjust the plan to make it worth the purchase?. Neither of my book will be big sellers, but with the marketing program I am selling 2-4 books per day. Thanks for your advice.
It’s not so much a question of how many books you have; out of 16 titles of mine, only 3 are money-makers. It all boils down to cost/benefit. Rocket costs $99 and helps a lot with finding keywords, thus saving you precious time. If you feel your sales justify it, then yes, it’s a great piece of software. 2-4 sales per day is pretty good, actually, but I don’t know what that means in terms of the time you need to spend to make it work. As I said, Rocket will help with finding the right keywords, but it’s no magic bullet: getting the keywords right is still a hit-and-miss affair. That’s where it has proven useful to me; it makes running A/B tests much faster 🙂
Thank you ?
Thanks, Nicholas for this helpful information. 🙂 — Suzanne
Thank you, Suzanne! I’m so glad you find my musings helpful 🙂
Will have to take a look at this in time. Right now am working on getting one book ready for printer and working on the next book in the seriesl. Thanks for keeping informed and up to date on various writing and author tips and tools, Nicholas.
A pleasure! Thanks for reading, Mary, and best of luck with your books!
Lots of great info here, Nicholas, and thanks for the links. I’m saving this post for some leisurely viewing. 😀
Good to hear you found it useful 🙂
Very!!
Ah for a hundred dollars. Looks good and thanks for the vid link.
Lol – that’s why there’s plenty of free stuff in there, too 🙂
This all went completely over my head, but I am sure it will be of great help to those who have books being sold on Amazon. Phew, is it any wonder I really don’t want to publish and market a book? 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
Lol – you know it’s just a question of time 😀
🙂
Wow. Great timing on this blog post! I was reading about Kindlepreneur a couple of weeks ago and saved the stuff I found, knowing I’d refer to it again later. How ironic you’re posting about the very thing I’ve been researching!
Lol – looks like Dave’s everywhere 😀
Haha….I try to be 😀 Which btw, one marketing trick that helps me to be every where is using Google Alerts. Google tells me any time someone says “kindlepreneur” on the internet. But authors can use this free service to track any mentions of their author name or their book title. Always good to know what’s going on in the internet. 😀
Indeed! Thank you for the visit, omniscient one 😀