How to sell more books with amazon

As romance writers, we've got it tough. Millions of other writers vying for the same bestseller spot in Amazon just so we can sell more books. I've been tinkering with my own uploads recently, always adjusting my info, categories, keywords and whatnot and I've come to the conclusion that it's hard to find the specific categories you want to enter. Some categories don't show up on Amazon KDP at all, while you can search for the category in the regular Amazon store.
For instance; New-Adult (or NA) & College books is a new vibrant category with only 1500 books or so and it's a very good opportunity for indie writers to get a hold of new readers. However, this category is not yet available in KDP.
So what have I discovered? When you type the category as 1 keyword in the keyword section, the book will also pop up in that exact category. Or in other words; you can pretty much use this a loophole to get your books into more categories.

Another thing. Some writers categorize their books in very general, non-specific things, which makes it:
a. hard to find.
b. a needle in a haystack.

Some categories are WAY too full and there are so many other categories you can find that have very little books. The less books there are, the higher your chances to be found. I know that sounds weird, because you'd think 'well, there are so many books there, it's got to be a better place to market my books'. WRONG. These categories are flooded, which makes your book disappear.

What you need is to pick a very specific genre that dives deep into sub genres. Pick something that goes down as deep as possible, but always make sure you still stick to your book's theme.

I've made a list here to show you what I mean when I say there's a lot of difference in books available between different categories:

 July 2013 list of available books in categories:

(Averages)

Romance -> contemporary              47. 000

Romance -> erotica                         21.000

Romance -> NA                                  1.389

Romance -> comedy                       5.600

Lit -> contemporary                           149.000

Erotica                                                    98.000

Romance                                               143.000

Short stories                                        36.000

Women’s fiction                              14.600

So, looking at this graph, I've placed my newest short story Doing It Wild under:

Romance --> Contemporary

Romance --> Women's fiction

Then typed in the keyword: New Adult

And BAM, my book showed up in about 5 categories.

(since the last edit, I also inserted "comedy" into the keywords, will see if it'll enter that category too).

With another book, I'm trying the same thing now, only a bit different. I put Hooked By You in the following category:

Romance --> erotica

Fiction --> erotica

Typed keywords for category loophole: Contemporary, Women's fiction, Multicutural & Interracial (since my book features a Japanese man).

I'm still checking to see if it'll work out, but I hope it does. If this is true, you can pretty much glitch the entire Amazon Categories list to fit it to your liking. Which is fantastic, to say the least. The more categories you can enter your book in, the more likely you are to get on a bestseller list, which is a sure way to boost your sales.

Anyway, that's it for today! Hope you found it useful :)

Clarissa Wild

>> Order your copy of my sizzling erotic romances today! <<

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Internal Dialog quirkiness

So recently I've been reading and critiquing other people's works in exchange for the same. I often come across mistakes that are cringe-worthy to say the least, but sometimes also find mistakes that are easily looked over, because they're not actually mistakes, but more style problems.

For instance, a writer put his internal dialog in italics, but made it very narrative, instead of real thought patterns coming through on the pages.

Example: Danger alert! Panic mode on.

I know what the writer is trying to do, which is create tension for the reader, but this is not an internal dialog at all. One does not think like that. Do you? Do you think in terms of 'Danger!' and 'Alert' and 'Mode on' in your head? I don't.

Regular thought patterns are usually either questions or judgemental statements. People think in either of these 2 categories:

• Question (i.e. What is he doing? Why is she here? etc.)
• (Judgemental/emotionally loaded) statements or ideas (i.e. I don't like this. This is stupid. He looks amazing!)

There isn't actually any other internal dialog going on in your brain apart from those two. Sure, you can talk to yourself in your head, but it still falls into either categories. For example: What should I do today? I could go swimming. No, wait, I hate water. Nevermind. <- now if you read closely, you can see the first is a question, the second is a statement/idea, the latter ones judgmental statements.

In your books, you want your characters to be as close to a regular human as possible, even if they have magical powers. It doesn't matter what they are, but they need to have human thought patterns and human traits and emotions.

Why?
Because people want to relate to your characters. Books don't stick if people can't sympathize with your characters. This is a plain fact, for something to be successful, you need to engage people. So stick to these two categories and you'll be fine on the inner dialog part ;)


Anyway, that's it for today's rambling :)

Kisses!

Clarissa Wild

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