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Hey again!

Now that you've had a few days to give Booksprout a shot, I wanted to make sure you're getting the most out of it.

Did the onboarding process go smoothly for you? Did you get stuck anywhere, or were you able to get your first ARC up and running? Anything we can help with?

P.S. Yup, this email is automated. However all replies go directly to our support team so we'll help with whatever you need! Or, just reach us anytime at help@booksprout.co

Hey again!

So now that you've got your first ARC up and running, you probably have a few burning questions that you'd love answers to. Here's some of the most common ones that I've received over the years running Booksprout!

What should I do after I create my ARC?

In short, you'll want to do two things:

1. Share it with your ARC team (if you have one) or your existing fans. Letting your newsletter or social media following know about your ARC is a great way to turn fans into superfans!
2. Wait. Yup, it's hard. Waiting for ARC downloads is a lot like waiting for sales. People need time to check out your book and pick it up!

The long version of this answer can be found in our knowledgebase

Can I create ARCs for previously published books?

Yes! Keep in mind that Booksprout's ARC feature was developed with ARCs in mind so it works best for them, but there's nothing stopping you from using it to get reviews on previously published books.

In fact, I totally recommend that you do so. The more ARCs you run, the more eyes you'll have on your writing, and the better chances you'll have of building a dedicated ARC team who will review your next book come launch day!

Can I use Booksprout for ARCs if I'm in KDP Select (Kindle Unlimited)?

That depends on your tolerance for risk. I've seen numerous authors reach out to KDP support and ask this very question and they all get the same boilerplate response back that seems to allude to it being okay. However, they won't outright say that it's okay so the questions is left without a proper answer.

The best I can do is tell you what I know. To date, I've never heard of a single author running into issues using Booksprout to get reviews while their book is in KDP Select (and a lot of authors do).

That said, when you enroll a book in KDP Select you are agreeing to make your digital book available exclusively on Amazon during a 90 day period. There's no saying that Amazon won't decide to crack down overnight and say that using Booksprout to get reviews is against their rules. I would personally say that the risk is low, but I simply cannot guarantee anything when it comes to Amazon.

If you want to be 100% safe, the best course of action is to either put your book up on Booksprout before enrolling it in KDP Select, or after the 90 day period is up. If your book is currently enrolled and you wish to get reviews on it, we recommend that you un-check KDP's option to automatically re-enroll it. Then, mark it on your calendar when your book will be out of KDP Select. Once that day comes around, you can make an ARC on Booksprout for it risk-free!

Let me take a quick moment here to read your mind.... Yes, you want to sell more books on Amazon... Well, great! Let me share with you the single trick that originally propelled my books to new levels and allowed me to become a full time author. After discovering this trick back in 2014, here’s what happened to two of my books immediately afterwards:

This was achieved simply by updating a single field on each book in my KDP backend. You know that little “keywords” field in Amazon? The one that says optional right beside it? It’s probably not that important, right?

WRONG!

For a new author, that ONE field is probably the most important in getting their book in front of the right people. The Amazon search engine relies on it. Sure, if you’re a big name author and people are searching for your books by title, you’re not going to have any problems. But if you’re a little guy, you want to take advantage of what the search engine industry calls long tail keywords. The problem is, you’re probably doing something like this:

romance, ebook, small town, firefighter, librarian, happy ending, love

No nono nonono!! Those are all short tail keywords! If your keywords look like that, you need help. Luckily, we’re here to do just that! Here’s what you did wrong:

That’s actually ONE keyword to an experienced author. They’d be using something like this:

a romance ebook between a firefighter and librarian who fall in love in a small town with a happy ending

Notice how it’s a big long string? Now your book is going to appear in some very specific searches. That’s great because there will be less competition and you’ll appear closer to the top!

But, I lied a little to demonstrate my point. That last string is not what an experienced author would actually be using. They’d be more likely to use something like this as their first keyword:

romance firefighter librarian fall love small town happy ending

So why did we omit the connecting words? Easy. Amazon automatically removes them from any user search, so they’re unnecessary to include in your keywords. Go ahead, try it. Search for firefighter librarian and then search for firefighter and librarian. Now look at the number of results for each. They’re the same, right? That means “and” is not a useful keyword to include.

Let’s do another example. Let’s say your next book is about vegetarian cooking. Normally, you might be inclined to have keywords like this:

vegetarian, cookbook, recipes

The problem here is you’re not being specific enough. If someone searches for vegetarian, they’re going to get results for why they should become a vegetarian, how to become a vegetarian, and many more things that might not be closely related to your cookbook.

To solve that problem, let’s think a little more widespread. What type of problems does your cookbook solve? What might someone be searching for in order to find a solution to those problems? How about vegetarian chili? Maybe they’re not sure how to spell it and actually searched for vegetarian chilli. Either way, those are two search results you’d like to come out on top for, right? Consider using something like this as a keyword:

Vegetarian cookbook chilli chili recipes

Now you have your first keyword! Follow the same process to get the remaining six because you absolutely want to have all seven filled in. The more search results you show up in, the more books you’re going to sell!

That’s enough examples for now. Let’s dive a little deeper.

Avoiding Amazon restricted words and other no-nos

1.     Amazon doesn’t want you to use certain words anywhere in your keywords field. Their list of restricted words is changing all the time, but things like kindle, unlimited, and amazon are frowned upon. If you use them, expect to get a nasty email giving you 5 days to fix all books or risk having them removed from sale.

2.     Don’t use other book or author names. Yes, I’ve tried it and they don’t work as well as you’d think. You might snag a few sales but ultimately those people searching for a specific author or book want that author or book. Worse yet, when those books lose popularity your keywords become useless.

You have 7×50 characters. Use them.

There’s 7 keywords areas and each of them can contain up to 50 characters. If you’re not using every last character, you’re missing out on possible long tail searches.

Don’t duplicate keywords.

It’s unnecessary and doesn’t gain you any bonus points. Don’t reuse a word that you’ve already used in another keyword.

Avoid connecting words.

Amazon automatically removes a lot of common words from user searches. Things like in, a, with, book, and many more are unnecessary in your keyword strings. If you want to see if a word is ignored by Amazon search, simply go perform a couple specific searches of your own (for example, your author name). One that has the keyword, and one that doesn’t. If the number of results are the same, don’t use that word as a keyword for your books.

Think broadly.

Use words that describe your book or words that someone who would like your book might be searching for. If you want an example, check out the vegetarian cookbook example above.

Research what readers are already searching for.

The best way to get your book found is to write about what people already want to read. Booksprout has a handy keyword tool to help you discover and optimize your keywords for Amazon. It automatically drops down suggestions based on what you’ve already typed in and what is commonly searched for. For example if you start typing in vegetarian, you’re presented with a few suggestions such as vegetarian cookbook, or vegetarian slow cooker. Those would be great to include in your keywords!

That’s it for now! We hope these keyword secrets will take your publishing game to the next level. When I implemented all of these tips I literally saw my Amazon sales triple the next day and it was enough to have me living on the income!

Anyway, I hope this helps you sell a few more books on Amazon!