Amazon Makes Huge Change to KDP Book Categories
By: Ginger | Posted on June 9, 2023
If you’re a self-published author relying on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform, you need to be aware of a recent change that can significantly impact your book’s visibility. The publishing giant has revised its category selection process, limiting authors to just three KDP book categories instead of the previous ten. While this simplifies the process and addresses abuse, it also raises concerns about your book getting lost among the vast sea of titles. As Ginger describes in his analysis below, there are a variety of implications to these changes and potential ways you may be impacted. Authors that don’t take action soon may find their existing books recategorized automatically, and leaving something that crucial to an algorithm or poorly trained rep is unlikely to do your career any favors. By proactively fixing them yourself, you’ll ensure you are placed in the best categories possible for your book, leading to maximum… Read More >
Increase your book sales by increasing your categories!
By: Ginger | Posted on February 26, 2021
By default, KDP only allows an author to select two categories for their self-published book, from a list that only exposes a limited number of very generic choices. Yet readers have much more varied and specific category options to browse through, with many using those lists as their main source for discovering new authors and titles. The good news is that Ginger is here to tell you how you can get your book into up to 10 of those more specific categories, and why it’s in your best interest to do so! If successful self-published authors have discovered anything by putting their books for sale on Amazon, it’s that readers really do judge a book by its cover. But not just the cover – also other seemingly imperceptible things that make a big difference. In my own experience, I’ve seen that a nice, shiny bit of flair over an… Read More >
Are You Getting Your Categories Right?
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 29, 2019
Which category your book is listed under can have a massive influence on how well your book sells, so it’s worth making sure you get it right. Understanding how Amazon organizes their virtual bookstore – and more importantly what factors they use to determine what goes where – can help increase your sales by making sure more of the right customers are seeing your book. Before I write any author blogs, I’m always struck with a dilemma: Is what I’m going to write about too obvious? Does everybody know about it? Normally, if I take the plunge and write the blog anyway, it all becomes worthwhile when I receive an email from a reader saying: “Thank you! I never knew that before.” I face a similar dilemma with this blog post – which addresses the topic of categories. Categories are the silo your self-published book falls into in Amazon’s systems… Read More >
Can the Hugo Awards Recover Their Credibility?
By: Ginger | Posted on March 15, 2024
For science fiction and fantasy authors, winning a Hugo Award signifies the pinnacle of achievement in the genre, a distinction historically bestowed upon literary giants such as Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ray Bradbury. However, recent controversies involving allegations of bias, censorship, and manipulation in the voting process have tarnished the Hugo Awards’ credibility. Today, Ginger discusses the storied history of the Hugo Awards, tracing their evolution from their inception in 1953 through the genre’s golden ages, and confronting the present-day challenges that threaten their esteemed status. He examines the complex dynamics within the Hugo Awards and the debates these controversies have ignited among authors and fans, and considers the potential for the Hugos to reclaim their role as the definitive standard of excellence in science fiction and fantasy literature. If you’re a fan of science fiction or fantasy, you’ve undoubtedly heard of The Hugo Awards. Presented at… Read More >
The ONLY Four Ways to Sell Books
By: Ginger | Posted on October 20, 2023
The distinction between marketing and selling is crucial, as many self-published authors have discovered the hard way. The best promotional campaigns may bring a potential reader to the edge of a sale, but isn’t always enough to close the deal. But if dumping money into ads isn’t the most effective way to sell copies of your book, then what is? That’s precisely the question Ginger addresses in today’s blog, as he delves into the four key attributes that have the power to significantly impact the conversion of traffic into sales. You don’t need to incorporate them all, as some may align better with your unique situation than others. Yet, harnessing just one of these attributes, as detailed below, can substantially enhance your chance of transforming your passion for writing into a thriving and profitable career. The purpose of many of my blogs is to help authors actually SELL copies of… Read More >
Past Tense vs. Present Tense: Which should YOU choose?
By: Ginger | Posted on September 1, 2023
Past tense vs. present tense is less a debate about which is better, and more about which is a better choice for your particular book. While many authors default to past tense, that may not always be ideal for your story as both tenses have their own unique strengths and challenges. Today, Ginger examines the advantages of both past and present tense so that you can have a better understanding of when they should be used, and even provides examples of each from popular works of fiction. Having a strong grasp of narrative tense is important because choosing the right one for your story will help leave an impact on your reader and keep them coming back for more. Recently, I was participating in a writing discussion when the topic of tenses came up. Other members of the group were surprised that a book we were discussing was written in… Read More >
Are AI-generated Books Already Ruining Kindle Unlimited?
By: Ginger | Posted on July 21, 2023
With the rising number of low quality AI-generated books flooding the digital bookshelves, there is already cause for concern about how this affects authors and customers alike. This is especially true for those books that are part of the Kindle Unlimited program. Many authors are suspicious of the sheer number of these titles, often with poor covers and questionable content, that have somehow made it onto the bestseller lists. It is believed that many of these books are being artificially pumped up via click farms that are downloading and “reading” the books, not only pushing out more legitimate books from the top charts, but also taking an unfair share of the KU money pool. So what, if anything, is Amazon doing about it? According to some sources, AI-generated books are flooding Amazon’s best-seller lists and causing concerns for both authors and readers enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. When it comes to… Read More >
What are the 5 most-funded Kickstarter books?
By: Ginger | Posted on July 7, 2023
Kickstarting books and publishing projects has been gaining popularity recently, as a means to offset the costs associated with self-publishing, especially for ambitious ventures and special editions. In fact, the popularity has grown so much that the publishing space has quickly become one of the top categories on Kickstarter. Today, Ginger is looking at the five biggest Kickstarter publishing campaigns of all time, and trying to glean some insights and inspiration from what they’ve done. However, it is important to keep in mind that these projects represent exceptional outliers, and their success seem more like lottery wins than the typical experience most authors will have. Even so, Kickstarter offers a platform that many authors can use to reach their far more modest fundraising goals, allowing them to embark on innovative projects with minimal risk. The result can be financial rewards for the author, and unique experiences and non-traditional book formats for… Read More >
How accurate are Attribution Tags in tracking book income?
By: Ginger | Posted on March 17, 2023
Ever since the introduction of Amazon’s Attribution Tags, authors have been able to track the book income resulting from their advertising and promotional campaigns to a level not seen before. This is incredibly useful for determining the value of these campaigns and planning strategies around then. But how accurate are they? In terms of tracking the sales that come directly as a result of a click from one of your attribution links, they’re very accurate, but that doesn’t actually tell the whole story. Even when the only promotion you’re doing is running a campaign with a tracked URL, you may very likely see more sales than are actually being reported. To demonstrate the issue and explain what’s going on, Ginger takes us through an example using an ad campaign he recently ran on one of his own books, complete with all the sales and page read numbers. I’ve been writing… Read More >
What can Jack Carr teach us about writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 2, 2022
Despite following in the footsteps of Lee Child, there is still much to learn from the meteoric rise in popularity of former Navy Seal turned author Jack Carr. Carr is a relative newcomer to writing, with only about five books to his name so far, but he’s been a chart topper since his debut, and his first book has already been turned into a streaming series on Prime. That’s why it makes sense for Ginger to examine what it is that has led to Carr’s quick success and what it can teach us that can be applied to our own writing, in this latest installment of his informal writing lessons series. Right now, there are two deadly badasses on my Amazon Prime menu screen – Jack Reacher and James Reece. The former is played by Alan Ritchson, who takes the role of the eponymous star of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher… Read More >
