- Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing
can be quite the lucrative opportunity
as I've often shared here on this channel.
From newbies to experienced indie authors,
we've come to appreciate
what Amazon has to offer to the self-publishing community.
However, there are
way too many features to keep track of,
and sometimes it can be overwhelming.
And that's why I thought I would share
some of the most common missed features
as well as some of them that you aren't even aware of.
You're gonna want to make sure that you
stay tuned today's video.
This is Self Publishing with Dale,
and if you want to learn more about publishing eBooks,
audiobooks, print books, and more,
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Stick around to the end because I've got a bonus tip for you
as it relates to Amazon KDP,
and I'll bet you've never heard of this.
We can all agree that Amazon KDP is
quite the opportunity, but conversely speaking,
it can be somewhat overwhelming,
and especially when it comes to all the features
that are available.
That's why I thought I'd go ahead
and put together a little list
of some of the features that
you may have seen before and never used
and some of them you may have missed all together.
Exclusive category placement.
You'll find from time to time
when you're browsing on the Amazon platform
there are some categories and browse paths
that you didn't necessarily see
inside your Amazon KDP dashboard.
You can scroll through the long list
of those categories inside your dashboard
and never find those.
It's because these are niche-related topics
that Amazon says, "Okay, this is just for our platform,
"whereas the other ones are for organizing elsewhere."
So, you can choose those two inside your dashboard
and typically after one sale,
they'll throw a third one into there,
and it's related to the seven keywords that you chose
within your metadata.
And another factor is how long your book is.
Why do I say this?
There are specific categories called Kindle Short Reads,
and inside the Kindle Short Reads,
you couldn't be able to put like a two or a 300-page book
underneath Kindle Short Reads.
It's clearly not short.
So, if you've got say for instance
a short story of some sort that's, you know, ten pages long,
then it's probably gonna go into the Kindle Short Reads,
and there's also further niche down areas
of those Kindle Short Reads.
So, you want to make sure that you browse around,
take a look at those type of things.
If you try to request some of these browse paths
through your KDP dashboard through Contact Us,
you can ask for that,
but sometimes you might get denied,
and it's because maybe you don't meet the qualifications
for getting in to that specific unique category.
Age and Grade Range.
This is mostly applicable to the folks that are,
say for instance, doing young adult,
teen, any type of kids books,
and if you're even doing adults only type of content,
you're gonna want to make sure
that you have that age and grade range
all dialed in because it's a way of telling Amazon
this is how you categorize me.
I've found a number of my coaching students,
as well as viewers,
that have missed out on this particular opportunity
to really niche down exactly who their audience is.
Again, it's going to make you more discoverable
because it eliminates who is not your reader
an thereby dials in exactly who your reader is.
Series Name.
If you've got a book in a series,
this is one of the most important factors in your metadata.
You're gonna want to make sure
that you put the series name
as well as the applicable number inside the series.
And when you get them all put together
and you have them all matching up exactly,
then Amazon's going to put together one product page
for the entire series.
This is nice because it further indexes your catalog
and makes it a bit more discoverable
than if you were to go with out.
Kindle Matchbook.
Now, this is only applicable to the print books
that you do in through KDP print.
So, for instance if a customer purchased your book,
then they have the opportunity to get the Kindle version
at a bit of a discount, if not for free.
I think we can all agree that print books cost
significantly more than eBooks,
and if you can offer that additional value to your readers,
they're gonna really appreciate it.
The biggest hang-up you're gonna run into is
a lot of the customers that are browsing
the Amazon Marketplace
aren't aware of this particular option.
So, it's up to you to educate your reading audience,
as well as your potential customers
about this particular option that's available.
For me, I typically like to have my print books
a little bit higher than most,
and then I'll go ahead and add in the eBook 100% free,
so that way if they don't have their book with them
and they're out and about they're able to read it from
their mobile device.
The Look Inside program.
Now, it should be noted this is only available
for print books over on Amazon,
and what it does is it shares about upwards of
10% of your specific print book.
It's an automated process usually,
but it's been a bit slower these last few months,
I've noticed.
So, if you want to really get the interior dialed,
and have specific sections,
or even more or less of your content shared,
you can enroll in the Look Inside program with Amazon.
Being enrolled in the program just allows it to where
you can actually share specific portions of your book
and avoid other portions.
Now, it should be noted that
I actually applied for the Look Inside program
quite some time ago,
and I'm supposed to be getting some type of an email back
that I've been approved for this one,
but I've had no specific answer on this one.
So, we'll see on what Amazon does
with the Look Inside program.
It should also be noted that this is region specific.
So, if you want to change the interior
for one area and have it different from the other area,
then this is going to be how to Look Inside program
can really benefit you.
Enhanced Typesetting.
This is a fancy way of saying that your ebook is adaptable
to whatever device that your reader is reading from,
and it's more importantly,
very good for somebody that is sight-impaired
so they can actually zoom in on the text,
and it doesn't ruin
any of the experience of reading the book.
Sadly, enhanced type settings not gonna work for
specific books that have a lot of graphics involved in it,
or even like big intricate tables and charts,
so this is something that is completely automated
in the Amazon KDP dashboard,
and I don't know of any other way
outside of reaching out to their team
to actually get this featured in the enhanced typesetting.
X-ray for Authors.
Big shout out to my boy Keith Wheeler Books,
and actually he was one of the ones
that turned me on to X-ray.
I'd heard about this some time ago,
and I just kind of held off and held off
and I said, "Ah, it sounds to complicated."
But it actually is quite easy,
and it's another way that you can deliver additional value
to your readers via the eBook.
Think of it like Easter eggs for your book,
instead of just like Easter eggs in movies and DVDs.
In Amazon's Word, they say this:
"X-ray for authors is a free Kindle Direct Publishing tool
"that enables you, the author, to add your own descriptions
"or commentary that will show up when the reader engages
"the X-ray feature."
It's really quite simple, actually.
All you need to do is go into your dashboard,
find the particular book that you want to enable X-ray.
You're gonna find the ellipses at the very end,
click on that, add X-ray,
and it's going to send you an email
as soon as it does the automated process of determining
a few of the areas that you can highlight.
And then, all you gotta do is go back in,
you can really look over some of the things
that they highlighted, you can refuse to use those,
you can add in additional ones.
So, this is just another great way to build
more value within the contents.
Great on Kindle.
I've mentioned this,
and actually it's probably been over a year ago
about the Great on Kindle program,
and it is an invite-only program for nonfiction books.
Amazon even goes on to say about the benefits that,
"if your nonfiction ebook qualifies for Great on Kindle,
"it will be eligible for a detailed page message
"that identifies it as a high-quality book,
"promotional credit offers for customers,
"nominations for potential merchandising opportunities,"
and all this is subject to change.
You also, what I've found
with some of the Great on Kindle books,
you get an individual category for Great on Kindle.
So, this is another way that you can be further indexed
within the Amazon platform.
The big catch, if I can recall,
was you're only getting 50% royalty payout, but
don't scoff at that.
If you're an author who's putting in high-resolution images,
and your files are particularly large,
you will know that eats in to your bottom line,
and you're not gonna make as much money as
somebody who's putting out that type of content
and somebody else who's just putting in
just the very basics within the contents of their book.
Just so you know, in order to actually qualify
for the Great on Kindle program,
you need to actually have images that are high resolution,
enhanced typesetting enabled, accurate metadata.
This means that everything needs to match from
how you have the title, it needs to be on your cover,
so on and so forth, X-ray enabled,
free of typos and errors,
and lastly an Author Central page.
I'm still kind of on the fence
when it comes to Great on Kindle
because there's still a bit ambiguous
on how you can actually get in there
because there's no application process.
So, essentially you just have to
hold your breath and hope for the best.
And the bonus tip:
Author Central.
Before you click away, you need to hear me out on this one.
This is crazy, it's gonna singe your eyebrows,
I promise you, in fact if it's new to you,
I want you to drop down in the comments New to Me down below
as soon as you hear this.
Outside of creating an Amazon author profile page,
Author Central can be utilized for so much more than that.
Of course, you can put editorial reviews,
you can really track and manage your sales ranks
from one area, and there's just so many ways that you can
leverage Amazon Author Central.
In fact, I'll drop a playlist video link
in the description down below,
and you want to take a look at
how you can utilize the Amazon Author Central page, but here
is where Amazon gets the big banana sticker,
and especially Amazon Author Central.
If you go into your dashboard,
and you click the Help in the top right corner
and then the Contact Us in the top left corner,
it's going to open up a few choices as far as to
some inquiries that you can put in
through Amazon Author Central,
and this include items such as Add a Book,
Add a Product that's not a book.
Hmmm, this is an interesting one
because when you actually click it,
they say you can't add anything that's not a book
over at Amazon Author Central.
Remove the book, Update Info about a book,
Availability of my book, and other.
You actually can probably spend easily about an hour
dropping down the various inquiries,
and finding out actual information.
And they'll send you redirects
before you even have to put in any kind of a question.
One of the areas I found very interesting was
adding subjects to your book.
Now, you're probably saying subjects.
Yeah, they've said you can have up to 10 subjects per book,
and I'm going, "Do you mean categories?"
unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity to ask
Amazon Author Central about what the deal was with subjects
because they say that you can find it on
each one of the product pages,
and there's no subjects on each one of the product pages.
So, this could be something that was a bit outdated
and maybe they had this on for a few years ago,
and it's just kind of stayed there, but either way,
10 subjects, yeah, there you go.
Big banana sticker if you figure that one out.
But here is the one that is going to blow you away,
and I've shared this before, it is
five keywords that you can relate to your specific book.
Now, you're probably saying, "But Dale,
"there's seven keywords."
Yeah, seven keywords on Amazon KDP.
There are five keywords that you can actually attach
to your book through Author Central.
And you're probably scratching your head going,
I don't understand this.
Does this mean I can have additional
keywords related to my book?
Yeah.
I actually got Author Central on the phone.
I spent easily 20 minutes talking to them
and it felt like an Abbott and Costello routine of
Who's on First, What's on Second.
So, I had him clarify it for me.
I said "Okay.
"If I've got five keywords, I give them to you,
"and you attach it to my title," and he said "Yes,
"and there's also the seven keywords."
I said, "Okay, wait, hang on.
"If I give me these five keywords,
"will they replace the seven inside my dashboard?"
He said, no they don't replace those; those stay the same.
so this means you can put in additional five keywords
on your book through Amazon Author Central,
and he even gave me an extra tip.
He said you don't even have to go through the Contact Us.
You can actually use their email:
AC-General@amazon.com.
When you put your inquiry in,
make sure that you're using the related email
to your Author Central account
as well as the ASIN or ISBN of the book
that you want to attach the five keywords.
Might I recommend that if you do put
an additional five keywords, use something that's different
than the seven keywords that you're doing
inside the Amazon KDP dashboard.
After all that information,
it's not surprising to see why some people
are probably overwhelmed
and have missed some of these key features
when it comes to Amazon KDP.
In fact, I talked a little bit about
self-publishing on Amazon,
the pros and cons in this next video.
I'll see you down there. (bell dings)
Quite frankly, you could get two times as much at 70%,
and that to me is why I kind of, oh, I don't know 35.