I finally broke down and purchased Dave Chessen’s keyword tool, KDP Rocket aka Publisher Rocket. It’s a nice author marketing tool to have in my arsenal. I am using October to test advertising campaigns, and I wanted to try a low-budget keyword campaign using up to 1000 keywords, which is where Publisher Rocket comes in.
Publisher Rocket helps to generate keywords, but it doesn’t do 100% of the job. there is still a little extra work involved, which didn’t bother me because I like to maintain some control. I had to remove all of the duplicates and unrelated titles. I suppose it’s not important to remove the unrelated titles, but I needed to edit by about 60 keywords by the time I removed all of the duplicates, so I went ahead and took out the romance novel-sounding keywords.
I generated from strings like “christmas books for kids,” “christmas books for children,” “christmas chapter books,” “how the grinch stole christmas,” “home alone,” “a christmas story,” etc. I set my daily budget to $1.00 and maxed out bids at $0.10 each. As Dale the indie publishing podcaster suggests, it’s grabbing at all of the low hanging fruit.
In less than 12 hours, my Publisher Rocket test run has already given me 76 impressions, but no clicks. If I can get any of these to convert at such a low bid, then I’ll raise the daily budget. Right now, my 21 targets in the other campaign have 1958 impressions but only 3 clicks total. I’ve only spent $1.28 there. I probably shouldn’t be checking obsessively, but I somewhat enjoy it. I also like learning new marketing software.
If you’re interested in checking out Publisher Rocket but want to review it before you buy like I did, take a look at Dave Chessen’s free AMS course. There’s a good overview of the software and some generally solid tips for advertising on Amazon. Let me know what you think!
I was happy to see my hardcover edition was posted to Amazon yesterday. It wasn’t quite October 1, but I got close enough considering I only ordered the dust jacket last week. I ordered two hardcover author copies. I have a copy coming from IngramSpark, as well as a paperback. I have another copy coming from Amazon, a copy that will have taken something like 8 days to arrive. I need to order those cheaper copies well in advance, whether it’s coming from IngramSpark or Amazon.
I want to post the news to Facebook about the hardcover on Amazon, but I also want to see it to make sure it turned out okay. It’s been a week since I posted the initial announcement on my Facebook author page. I don’t need to necessarily post about the hardcover, but I should write something. It would be nice to post a picture of me holding the hardcover when I make the announcement.
There are so many things I need to do — email list, reach out for Amazon reviews, library outreach. I learned that when I speak to libraries, I should tell them they can get my book from “Ingram Books.” They will likely have an account. I want to have reviews before I do any of these things. I finally wrote back author Matthew Sullivan. It sounds like he’s having some decent success and is about to launch a series. I asked him about it. It might be good to have someone like him as a resource.
I have the girls all weekend. Their mom is going away for the weekend. I have no other details, nor did I ask. The girls seem to think she’s going by herself. I doubt that’s the case. It consumes a lot of my thoughts. It probably raises my blood pressure. I have not accepted, and that’s okay. I have a long way to go.
