How to Promote YOUR book on Amazon discussion

The help documentation in KDP states that seven keywords can be selected. I presume this is what some refer to as meta data. Seven doesn't seem like much. In my day job in a particular system I can enter up to 50 words or phrases to help promote various courses. Anyway, seven it is. So, how do I make the best use of these seven? What's been your experience?

It occurred to me that if I knew the keywords of successful books that have the same genre as my own I might consider modifying what I'm currently using. Is there any way of viewing the keywords of other books?

I had my own website at one point. Google provided a nice summary of search strings used by people to find my site and the country of origin. There was a whole swag of interesting stats. That's the sort of thing that would be useful to see in Amazon's book listings. Are there any tools to check on other people's books?

I've found the following articles from Kindlepreneur to be of immense help. Amazon says "7 words", but they really mean 7 connected phrases. One I'm using now for my new novella is: "Ireland Irish history potato famine starvation".

https://kindlepreneur.com/kindle-keyw...

https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-chan...

As far tools go, I'm only aware of Publisher Rocket which he mentions but, unfortunately, isn't free.

Thanks Gifford.

That really puts a new perspective on it that I'd never considered. My keywords currently sit as one word each.

Ron wrote: "Thanks Gifford.

That really puts a new perspective on it that I'd never considered. My keywords currently sit as one word each."

I have always found this challenging. They say you can use a phrase but not to use them again in the next keyword spot. so if "Ireland Irish history potato famine starvation" is used, what do you use next?

By the the time you get to the seventh, all you are left with are articles, prepositions , and conjunctions...

OK, humor aside. One tip I've read is to go to the Amazon search bar in the book section and type in different key word stings to see what other books come up.

Your keywords don't have to be related to the subject of your book. You can use them to describe the time period, the setting, the characters, theme, tropes, etc. It helps if all the words in one phrase are related, but it's not necessary.

Amazon will juggle all the keywords on one line to fit a search. So if someone looks for "Ireland famine", they'll find my book. And it's not a bad idea to repeat a single word. For instance, another one of my fields is "Irish folklore legend folk song music immigrants" (as I include all those things in my books). Someone looking for "folk songs" as well as someone looking for "Irish songs" will see my book come up. You just don't want to have the same word in every line.

Another thing: Amazon will automatically look for the singular and plural of a word, so don't waste your characters on "songs" instead of "song".

Think about all the aspects of your book you'd want readers to know about. The trouble I encountered was reducing the keywords I wanted to list to fit the limitations.

And speaking of reductions: Amazon recently reduced the search term fields to 5.

PS: I finally decided to pay for Publisher Rocket -- some of the best $$ I ever spent!

Gifford wrote: "I finally decided to pay for Publisher Rocket -- some of the best $$ I ever spent!"

Good to know!

HI Everyone,
I am new to the group and so excited to learn about ways to promote my Children's books on Amazon. I currently only have 1 self-published, but working on book #2.

I second Gifford's endorsement of Publisher Rocket and Dave Chesson's (the creator of Publisher Rocket) website, Kindlepreneur.com. Publisher Rocket is an amazing tool and Dave shares tons of great information on Kindepreneurr.com! He also has a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/Kindleprene.... Very valuable tips for adding keywords and additional Amazon categories for your books.