As you probably already know, out of the 10 or so available Amazon marketplaces,
amazon.com is the biggest one.
But that doesn't mean that that one marketplace is the only one that you should
be focusing your efforts on. In fact, if you're like me,
you might find that your books actually generate more royalties in a market
outside of the US; likely the UK market,
which is the second largest Amazon marketplace.
But how exactly do you effectively target marketplaces outside of
amazon.com,
aside from simply taking that little box next to your chosen primary marketplace
when you're going through the publishing process?
Stick around and you will find out. If you're new around here,
my name's Rachel Harrison-Sund,
and I help people generate passive income creating and selling journals,
planners, notebooks, and more on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
If that sounds interesting to you,
then please hit the "Subscribe" button and the bell so you can be notified every
time I put out one of these videos, every single Monday.
When I started publishing low-content books,
there really didn't seem to be that many people effectively targeting the UK
market, so I decided to take a crack at it.
Since originally I'm from England--I grew up in a British household and still
visit pretty frequently--I've got a pretty decent understanding of the subtle
and sometimes not-so-subtle differences between English and American
English. As a Canadian,
we're kind of somewhere in between American English and British English.
It can be a little bit of a pain in the butt sometimes--converting
measurements kind of comes to mind--and that's totally beside the point. Anyway,
armed with that little bit of cultural insider knowledge,
I was able to effectively target the UK market.
I'll get into the details of how I did that in just a couple of minutes. Anyway,
after a while about 80% of my royalties started coming from the UK market,
which for me was great living in Canada, considering what the exchange rate is,
when those pounds get converted into Canadian dollars.
It's quite likely that other smaller markets aren't being
effectively targeted. so if you have any special knowledge of these markets,
leverage it where you can in the ways that we're about to talk about.
But before we get into it,
tell me--are you currently targeting various marketplaces outside of the US with
your low-content books? Let me know in the comments. Step one,
take a look at all of the marketplaces that exist--I've left a link to them down
below--and consider which ones that you might be able to leverage.
There are a couple of ways that you can do this. Firstly,
once you've come up with a book idea,
think about how you might modify it slightly for another marketplace.
One question you could ask yourself is,
what would your book type be called in a different language,
or would your book type be called something different in that other
marketplace? As a quick example here, a daily or a weekly planner:
that's what's used to keep track events, appointments,
to dos in the US and in Canada.
But that same type of book is often referred to as a diary in the UK.
So knowing that little tidbit gives you a little bit of an edge,
if you want to target the UK with your daily planners.
Or you can go at this from reverse.
If you've got familiarity through language or culture with another country's
Amazon marketplace, try to come up with a list of,
of ideas that might work especially well in that marketplace that might not work
as well on amazon.com.
So one idea is to take advantage of idioms, common sayings,
phrases, or lingo that people living in that marketplace might use,
but might make no sense whatsoever in an American market.
This is a tactic that I've used pretty successfully in the UK market.
I've used a ton of British slang on the covers of my books,
and some of them have done really, really well. Meanwhile,
those same books were never likely to take off on the .com store because those
sayings that I used in the covers would be, most likely,
completely meaningless to almost everyone in the US except, maybe,
like a small fraction of Brits living there. Step two,
you're going to conduct all of your keyword and category research in your target
market. So if you're targeting the UK market, you're going to go over to
amazon.co.uk and do your research there. If you're targeting the German market,
you'll go over to amazon.de, and so on.
The keywords that people are searching for along with their search volume are
going to be vastly different from marketplace to marketplace,
and the Amazon browse categories are different as well.
So you've got to go to the appropriate website to do your research.
When you're doing your research,
keep in mind all of the differences in language when doing your research.
This is pretty obvious for marketplaces that are in different languages,
but maybe not quite so obvious when you're dealing with two English speaking
marketplaces like the US and the UK. Remember,
as I already just touched on while the US and the UK are both speaking English
speaking countries,
there are some differences in spellings and some pretty big differences in word
usage. For instance,
you are not going to have a ton of luck getting accurate search data,
searching for "coloring book"--"C O L O R I N G"--on
amazon.co.uk,
but you are going to have luck searching for "coloring book"--"C O L O U R I N
G." And then also going back to my previous example of the US "daily or weekly
planner" versus the UK "diary." If you're doing your research in the UK store,
you'd want to be searching for diaries, not planners.
Great way to save huge amounts of time and streamline your research
process is by using a keyword and category research tool
like Publisher Rocket, which now enables you to conduct research in the US,
the UK, and the German markets, which is pretty exciting.
You can check out how this tool works in this video here.
There's been a few more minor updates to the interface since I published that
video,
and I don't think that research in the UK and the German markets was available
at that time. So you're not going to be able to see that,
but you are still going to be able to get a good sense of how the tool works and
get a good sense of just how much time it saves.
I've also left a link down below to Publisher Rocket if you'd like to check it
out there as well. For step three, pretty obvious,
but you're going to use the keywords and the categories you found while doing
your research in your target marketplace when you go to publish your book.
So you'll come up with your books' title information,
create your seven keyword strings and your description using the keyword and
category research that you compiled on that marketplace's Amazon website.
Just in case there's any confusion here,
you do not need to open up a KDP account in any other marketplace.
You're just simply going to publish your book as usual in your one exact same
KDP account. After your book is published,
you're going to email KDP and request the eight browse categories that you found
in your target marketplace as well,
being sure to state which marketplace the categories belong to.
If you've got no idea what I'm talking about when I say "Amazon browse
categories," check out this video here,
which will help you understand the two different types of book categories that
Amazon uses. Again,
there's been a little bit of an interface change on KDP since that video was
made.
The menu options that you'll see in that video when sending an email to KDP are
going to look a little bit different than they do now,
but you will understand the difference between the two types of categories,
as well as how to go about having your book added to additional categories.
Maybe I should just do an updated version of that video. Next,
you're going to choose your primary marketplace and you're going to price it
accordingly. When you get to the pricing page when you're uploading your book,
be sure to choose your target marketplace as your primary marketplace.
Then you will want to choose a price that is
appropriate for your target marketplace.
KDP does a pretty good job of offering suggestions based on currency conversion,
but it's a good idea to see what similar books are going for in your target
market and kind of stick within that general zone.
I often price books about a dollar more than I see similar books priced at.
Generally,
I just know people don't mind spending an extra one or two dollars for something
with a perceived higher value.
And that extra dollar makes a huge difference to you on the other end with your
overall royalties. I've talked about it before,
but sometimes trying to undercut your competitors with the cheaper price just
backfires because it makes your book seem of lower value. And then,
as a side note, I always like to set my prices with 99 cents at the end.
That's just kind of what most of us are used to.
I really don't have any data as to whether that actually matters at all;
it's just what I do. Lastly,
don't be afraid to test multiple marketplaces at once.
You can do this by creating two of the exact same book and targeting one
marketplace with one and another marketplace with another.
I have done this by publishing daily planners, targeting the US market,
and then publishing the exact same book as a diary, targeting the UK.
So same book, different title information, different keywords,
different categories, all gleaned from the corresponding marketplaces.
If your book gains traction in one marketplace,
it's pretty likely that you're going to see it fail in the other one.
That's totally okay.
That's good information to have because now you know where to focus your efforts
moving forward. If you're lucky, your book will take off in both markets.
Unfortunately, this has never happened to me. Hopefully it will happen to you.
Hope that helps you start getting other Amazon marketplaces.
If you're just starting out with low-content publishing and need a helping hand,
download my free guide,
3 Steps to Publishing Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day.
I've left a link to that down in the description below.
If you're spending a ton of time on keyword research and you're finding it hard
to find potentially profitable ideas,
check out this video that I came out with--I think a couple of weeks ago now--on
how to find profitable book ideas and keywords fast. If you liked this video,
please don't forget to hit the "Like" button, subscribe,
and share it with anyone you think might find it useful.
Thank you so much for watching. I will see you next time. Bye bye.