How To Be Successful in Amazon KDP

I am Subha and I have been publishing books on Amazon KDP since 2017. Today I will answer a burning question, “How to be successful in Amazon kdp”.

Your success with Amazon KDP boils down to three things; your ability to find the less competitive kdp niches, your willingness to create high-quality books, and finally your approach to promoting your book to the right audience.

This is exactly what I have learned over a period of 6 years and more having published well over 1,200 books on amazon kdp. As a beginner kdp publisher, you need to spend time finding the low competition niches, in order to get initial sales and a confidence boost.

How to Be Successful in Amazon KDP Publishing

Now let’s have a deeper look into this answer. Below you will learn what you should be doing being a newbie kdp publisher to create and publish successful kdp books.

Step 1: Get The Fundamentals Right

There are some really important things you need to keep in mind to achieve success with Amazon self-publishing thing. Below I will discuss them one by one.

1. Select A Less Competitive Niche

If you are a beginner and publish a book in a really highly competitive niche where big brands are promoting their books like mad, your chances of success would be very slim. 

Therefore, choosing the right Amazon KDP niche is the very first step you should consider taking. Just spend some time to find to make a list of 10-20 low-hanging fruits (easy kdp niches). 

If you prefer doing it manually, you can go to the Amazon search bar and type a seed keyword relevant to the type of book you want to create. For example, if you want to create a math workbook, then you can simply type “math workbook for” and see the Amazon suggestions.

Pro Tip: Use an incentive window and use a US IP to see the unbiased data.

Now you can click on one of the Amazon suggestions and see the actual book ranking for this exact keyword on the first page of Amazon. 

👍 Validate Niche for Low Competiton

While doing so, check the number of Amazon results for a specific Amazon search suggestion. The higher the number is the more competitive the niche would be. So, you can aim for search results of 2,000 at max. 

As you can see the keyword math workbook for 4th grade has over 4,000 Amazon results which means competition is a bit higher. In such a case, you need to keep typing different keywords in the search bar to see different search suggestions.

I typed a different seed keyword in the Amazon search box and I can see a totally different set of Amazon search suggestions. Here I clicked on “double digit addition and subtraction workbook” and found that the competition is very low for this sub-niche.

👍 Validate Niche for Demand

Once you are able to find a niche with a low number of search results, then you can look at the actual book ranking for this exact keyword phrase. 

Just look at the covers, book titles, subtitles, and no. of reviews. You can also use a free Chrome extension called Titans Quick View to see the other helpful data like BSR and book categories for a given title.

If you found multiple titles with decent Best Seller Ranks, then the demand for the niche is very high and that is a good sign. 

To speed up this process, you can use a Chrome extension called Titan Pro. It shows you a lot of Amazon search suggestions along with a lot of helpful data right away. I have written a detailed blog post about Titan Pro, you can read it here.

2. Create High-Quality Books

To be successful on Amazon KDP, it is important to create high-quality books that will appeal to your potential buyers. 

If you want to achieve long-term success with amazon kdp, then you should be willing to put in extra time and effort to create kdp books.

Do thorough research on already published books in your niche and try to create a better book. 

One good idea is to look at the reviews of already published books and provide what those publishers are missing.

You can also offer more value for a lower price. For example, if want to publish a math workbook and you notice most of the existing books have 100 practice pages, you can create 150 pages or more.

3. Optimize Your Book For The Amazon Algorithm

To be a successful kdp self-publisher, you can learn a bit of search engine optimization. This involves using 1 or 2 keyword phrases in the book title and subtitle in a strategic way. 

To do this, you can find multiple related keyword phrases about the topic of your book. You can use these keywords in the book metadata including the 7 backend keywords.

However, you need to follow kdp content guidelines & best practices while adding keywords. Also, don’t add keywords in the title, and sub-title if they don’t fit or don’t look natural.

4. Price Your Book Competitively

Book pricing is yet another very important factor when it comes to making a decent income with kdp publishing. 

Both pricing your book too high or too low can result in lower sales and lower royalties per sale. Therefore, you need to price your book competitively. Look at other books in the same niche and note down their pricing.

Next, take the average of their pricing to have a better idea of the price range. If you want to do this effortlessly, then you can use the Titans Quick Chrome extension by self-publishing titans. This shows you a lot of helpful data right away. 

For example, you may notice that most of the books in your niche are priced between $6.99 to $8.99. Now, you can price your book at $6.99 for the first few weeks and then raise the price by a dollar or 2 after you get some good reviews.

Step 2: Put Your Book In Front Of Potential Buyers

Gone are the days, when your job was to publish a book on amazon kdp and see the sales rolling in. Nowadays, you can’t just sit back and relax after getting your book live on Amazon. 

Rather you should be investing some time and money to promote your book to get initial discoverability. Below are some of the most effective ways to promote your amazon kdp books.

1. Promote Your Book On Pinterest And Other Channels

Once your book is up and live on the Amazon platform, you can go ahead and start promoting it on various social media sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Linkedin & Twitter. 

Pinterest can be a very good platform to promote your book. All you need is to create a visually appealing pin using the front cover of your book and post it regularly to Pinterest.

Canva is a great tool to create Pinterest pins and other social media graphics and the best thing is it’s FREE. So, the thing is are you willing to put some extra time into promoting your book? 

Getting initial sales on Amazon is very crucial as it helps your book rank on Amazon. You may already know one of the ranking factors on Amazon is Sales History. Therefore, giving your book an initial boost can really help in the long term.

2. Create a Website or Blog About Your Books

Having a website or blog not only gives you exposure to the target audience it also provides you with an additional income stream. 

For example, if your main focus is on creating activity books and workbooks for kids you can create a blog and share helpful content there. Then between the blog posts, you can promote your own books.

I have done this successfully, and it works. When I first started creating medium content books I also started a blog and one of my blog posts was ranked the first of Google. In that specific blog post, I promoted one of my books and it started to get organic sales.

This method of promoting your books is really useful and I can see many big brands are using this to achieve massive success. 

3. Build Your Own Books Brand

Building a brand around your books is really helpful way to cross-promote your books. You can create an author central account for your book brand where customers can follow you and find out more about you.

Creating multiple books in the same niche/topic is the fundamental part of building a brand. I personally have a brand of math workbooks and so far I have published 6 math workbooks. Now three of them are selling very well.

I interlink my books by adding a QR code and book covers on the last page of my math workbooks. This gives my buyers an opportunity to see my other related books and potentially buy one of them.

So, creating a brand and publishing multiple books is a very effective way to promote your books and be a successful publisher on Amazon KDP.

Step 3: Analyze & Double Down

This is step three of being successful in the Amazon KDP self-publishing journey. 

Once you have created multiple books and have some data to analyze, you will have a better idea of what is working and what isn’t. Just look at the kdp titles that are bringing in organic sales or converting well if you are using ads.

Next, research and create similar books. You can also create different volumes of the same books. For example, if you have a successful puzzle book for kids, you can create Vol.2 of the same book with almost the same cover & metadata. 

The only difference, in this case, would be the content of the book. In the 2nd volume, you will be adding different puzzle pages. One good way is to first create an easy puzzle book and then create a vol.2 with a bit harder puzzles inside.

Conclusion!

In a nutshell, succeeding with Amazon KDP self-publishing is about making smart choices. Start by selecting a niche that’s not too crowded and ensures there’s a demand.

Publish high-quality books that add value to your customers. Price them just right, and don’t forget to promote them on social media and on your own blog.

Once you have enough books published, analyze what works and create more of it, or build on your successes. So, if you’re thinking of trying Amazon KDP self-publishing, follow these steps, and you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful author and publisher.