- Have you seen the Great on Kindle markings for books?
It's a way for Amazon to help readers identify
nonfiction books that have been deemed
to be of the highest quality.
It's done on an invite-only process,
so it's not something you can game or gimmick.
So, you might be wondering,
how do you get your book to be listed as Great on Kindle?
If you're wondering that, this video is for you!
(high energy rock music)
Hey there, I'm Julie, the Book Broad from Book Launchers.
We're your professional self-publishing team,
helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book
that will impact your reader, grow your business
and make you money.
Our super power is caring more about you and your book.
And what we do differently is we work incredibly hard
to get your book in (child humming)
(child humming)
♪ Bring your child to work days, everyday ♪
(tone)
We work really hard to get your book
into readers hands when it's done.
And the best part?
You keep all rights and royalties, and have full control.
If this is the first video of mine that you have ever seen?
Please let me first apologize for what is about to happen.
To all my YouTube besties and especially Kevin Maguire,
this is for you.
(clearing throat)
♪ Blame it all on my fear ♪
♪ I showed up with a tear ♪
♪ And didn't get Great on Kindle ♪
♪ The last book you'll read ♪
♪ The last book you'll concede ♪
♪ My book was the last one you'll see anywhere ♪
♪ And you'll see the surprise ♪
♪ And the fear in my eyes ♪
♪ When my competitor, took my last customer ♪
♪ And I toasted you ♪
♪ Said cheers you made it through ♪
♪ Man, I wish I'd hired an editor ♪
(laughing)
That was so bad!
(laughing)
I really can't sing!
The school plays, where they were singing,
I always got the speaking parts (laughing).
But after I did the metadata rap,
I promised a country song
to my YouTube bestie, Kevin Maguire.
So, there it is.
Well, part of it, there's more to come (giggling).
But I might recruit someone else to help me with that.
Now, let's get into this!
Great on Kindle is another way to be seen
and stand out on Amazon.
As of April 2020, this is what Amazon says
about Great on Kindle.
"Great on Kindle is an Amazon program
"to help customers discover high-quality nonfiction eBooks.
"Great on Kindle eBooks offer enhanced features
"that readers value.
"This program is currently an invite-only
"and on a book-by-book basis."
If your nonfiction eBook qualifies for Great on Kindle,
it will get flagged as such, like this book right here.
And customers will get a credit for your book,
but this doesn't impact what you get paid.
And your book could also be flagged
for more promotional visibility with Amazon.
So as far as I can tell, no downside (giggling).
And frankly, anything that allows your book
to be singled out as high-quality
by someone else is of value.
And big bonus points
when it's the biggest sale site for your book.
So, how do you get this elusive invite-only thing?
Well here's the process,
as we've seen it play out for our authors.
The first step is you turn on the X-ray feature.
And when you do that, they start indexing all the terms
that they think need to be defined.
It's a bot doin' its thing,
and it's not a 100 percent accurate.
So then number two, is they email you when the bot is done,
and you go in and review the terms.
You get to define if the indexing found characters or terms.
For nonfiction books, it's most often terms.
But sometimes for example, it will make sense
to classify Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a term,
and then Abraham Maslow as a character.
Step three, you're gonna review each term
that was selected and decide
if the Wikipedia article the bot has provided is correct.
If it's a term you want to define for yourself,
or if it doesn't have much context
and it shouldn't be indexed.
Amazon does tell you, how many times a term appears
in your book that will help you decide.
You can also combine terms.
So for example, Garth Brooks,
♪ And the fear in my eyes ♪
might show up as Garth and Brooks.
But you don't want to have those as separate entries.
So then you would combine them into Garth Brooks.
Step four, when you're done with that,
you publish the definitions.
You don't have to have 100 percent coverage
of all your terms to publish.
Step five, at this point, Amazon automatically submits
your book for consideration in the Great on Kindle Program.
So there's nothing for you to do.
The eBook files are then examined the exact same way,
as if someone filed a complaint about your eBook.
And they're looking for low-res photos, broken links,
formatting issues and a few other things.
Then step six, is you receive an email
that will be sent to you telling you
that there's open issues with your book.
If you happen to miss the email,
there will be a box at the top
of your KDP dashboard that will say,
"One or more of your books has quality issues
"that need to be addressed.
"View Issues."
So, you may wanna check that every once in a while.
Seven step, is when you view the issues.
In the bottom right hand corner,
you're gonna see this "Eligible for: Great on Kindle,"
and ask you to resolve all issues
to get into the Great on Kindle Program.
To be clear, this is a screening process.
So if you want your book to be eligible,
you must correct all typos, formatting errors
and anything deemed to be a quality issue,
like a low resolution image, a broken hyperlink,
something broken in the table of contents,
or some other formatting problem.
You also need to have your author page
on Author Central created,
which I'll link to a video on that on the end.
Final thing is, you have to make sure
enhanced typesetting is enabled.
Of course, your book also obviously needs to be available
for sale on Amazon.com
So, let's just quickly touch on the images for one second.
As many people DIY their book formatting,
they won't have professional screenings.
So remember, readers are interacting with your book
on Kindle, so you have to make sure your book
is set up for successful interaction.
High resolution images are part of this.
They must be at least 300 pixels per inch,
that's PPI, so 300 PPI.
For example, if you want an image
to take up the full screen of a device,
the image has to be at least 12 hundred pixels wide
or 18 hundred pixels in height.
♪ 'Cause I've got my book doin' ace ♪
I'm gonna get you to this part.
This'll be you.
♪ 'Cause I've got book it's doin' aces ♪
♪ With Great on Kindle ♪
♪ And the Amazon X-ray ♪
♪ My book's doin' okay ♪
♪ I'm not big on author pages ♪
♪ But my book's out doin' all great in places ♪
♪ Oh, I've got my book ♪
♪ It's doin' aces ♪
That's right Sparky, it's doin' aces.
- That's it!
Wasn't it better?
Having Dave do the rest of the song for you.
(laughing)
All right, please I am not taking requests,
I don't wanna do any other genres of songs.
I'm sure it was as painful for you, as it was for me.
Now, have you noticed that Great on Kindle feature?
Is your book turned on for it?
Have you noticed the sales lift?
If it is, let's chat about all of this and more,
not my singing, in the comments below.
And when you comment, the day our video is released,
you'll be entered to win some sweet Book Launchers swag,
like our oh soft journal, and our #noboringbooksmug
where coffee, tea and hot chocolate
are guaranteed to taste better.
There's new videos every Tuesday and Friday,
so make sure you know when a new video is out
by subscribing to the channel and turning notifications on.
I promise there are no others with my bad singing.
Well, there's that bad rap in the metadata video,
but no bad singing!
(laughing)
Here's the video I promised
on how to set up your author page.
And this one right here,
is the latest and greatest from the channel.
You're fun.
Let's hang out some more, shall we?
So go ahead and click on one of those videos,
and I'll see you there.
(high energy rock music)