Amazon Could Try to Be More Helpful

Amazon Could Try to Be More Helpful

Making it Easy to Self-Publish, But Not Making It Easy to Be Seen

Happy Tuesday, readers! I skipped last week after the bomb I dropped on indie authors the week before. Today’s blogpost is targeted at indie authors, too, but not in critique of you. In fact, I’m going to tell you some secrets that I learned about that should absolutely not be secrets.

Last week began the collaboration with the marketing professional I hired from Reedsy to help me with Abaddon. At the end of the week, she had a report ready for me to review that included instructions on how to amp up my presence on Amazon. And there were two things I noticed in her report that I felt should not have to been difficult to figure out–meaning Amazon should have explained better, or in one case, not been deceitful.

Keywords

In my report from my marketing agent, she suggested what to update my keywords to in the listing for my book. I think there are seven. Now, there are very little details given above the spaces to insert these keywords from Amazon. So, prior to being otherwise informed, I treated them like tags or more specific categories (we’ll get into the categories in a minute). But what Amazon fails to inform you is that these keywords are not tags or more specific categories to further define your book. To my understanding after having received my report from my marketing agent, the keywords are literally what a user types into the search bar. And as we all know, Amazon is a search engine. And no one just uses their search bar to type in a “keyword”. They type in phrases. Ex: “adventure books for teens”, “fantasy books with women protagonists”, etc. I thought this was not clear on Amazon’s part, because I feel it would be very easy to say verbatim in the details “Enter keywords and phrases that people are likely to type in the search bar when looking for your book.” No, that’s not very official sounding–but everyone knows what that means. It’s vivid. It’s beneficial. And it’s actually almost no effort. So! Take note, self-publishers. That’s what their poorly-defined-and-titled “keywords” section actually appears to mean.

Categories

This is the one that made me angry (not that it’s difficult to make me angry; I have problems, I’m aware). When entering details about your book to prepare it for publishing through Amazon, you are asked to assign it two categories. Two. That’s it. If you’re like me, you probably thought, “Oh, well… I wish you could have more than two, but okay.”

Guess what? You can. But you have to go out of your way and contact Amazon through their Help link and bleeping ask for them.

Not even details that I saw on the page stating “if you would like to assign more categories, please reach out to us.” Nothing. Just two, you get two. That’s garbage, Amazon. Now, I understand that the reason it is this way was probably a solution to a slew of people assigning a thousand, random-ass categories to a book that made no sense just to make sure their book appeared literally everywhere, which I’m sure slowed down the review/approve process when you’re inundated with people trying to take advantage of infinite categories–I get it. But this solution punishes those of us who would submit responsibly. As I said, it’s deceitful. Your effort to make something easier on you made it infinitely more challenging for authors to be seen. And as I said also, a simple line of text stating you can ask for more categories would likely be the win-win we’re looking for. Because those of us who follow the rules would see that and do it, and those who wanted to be jerks would probably not go out of their way to ask for more if it’s not an option that’s already right in front of them. You have to review and approve them all anyway; just leave us a note.

I appreciate Amazon’s seamless avenue for authors who are tired of jumping through all the fiery hoops of querying to self-publish. I’m very grateful for that and it has fulfilled me and helped me accomplish my main goal in life. But I think some reform could take place to help indie authors make the right decisions when submitting. I wouldn’t advocate that Amazon tell every single person all their secrets on how to get big on their site for free. That’s a bridge too far. But there’s no need to hide things. Please stop that.

That said, I see no reason why I can’t share more “secrets” that I learn about while working with my marketing agent. You still have to put in the work (and maybe find a marketing agent for yourself as well) to know what to include, but I think it’s silly to keep details like this to myself when I’m here to support other indie authors who have good stuff to share.

You shouldn’t have to play their game your whole life just to have a chance, people. So, if I can help mitigate some of that nonsense, I sure will.

Cheers, everyone! Hope you have a great rest of your week!