Last year, in November, I marked a personal premiere: promoting and launching a book on Amazon KDP for one of my clients. It was a learning curve and worst of all, the launch date was only two days after the US presidential elections. It was hard to compete for attention when the whole world was spinning out of control with the confirmation that Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States. But that’s another story. 

One of the hardest parts of figuring out this whole KDP eBook launch was understanding how Amazon’s search algorithm works to be able to create a proper product page. If you haven’t considered this before, it’s time to wrap your mind around it: Amazon is a search engine.

Just like Google has a bunch of algorithms that take into account many, many things, so does Amazon. Things like SEO, on-page traffic, original content, great copy, good quality pictures matter a lot too. But there’s a catch.

Both Google’s and Amazon’s ranking algorithms are mostly secret. Experts, consultants and recent updates help us figure out some of those. However, Google SEO & Amazon SEO are a bit different. While Google ranks results based on how best will it respond to your content query, Amazon ranks results based on purchase intent. In conclusion, for Google you optimize for website traffic from organic searches (getting in the top 10 search results), while on Amazon, you optimize for sales conversions.

The guys from A9 work the Amazon search engine and here’s what they say of how it works:

“Great search can seem to customers like it is reading their minds. We start the search experience by giving customers suggestions on how to formulate their queries as soon as they start typing.

The better we understand the meaning of a query, the better we can help customers find the products they want. So we focus on the words and the intent behind those words. When a customer tells us they are looking for “Harry Potter in books”, we distinguish in their query the title: “Harry Potter” from the category information: “in books”.”

Long story short, almost one year later, I’m preparing a new KDP eBook launch campaign for another client, in the DIY category. Just like last year, I’m placing a lot of focus on getting the book description right the first time. 

I believe practice and research are key to success. Hopefully, by the time my own book will be ready (yes, that’s happening), I’ll have figured a sort of recipe for success and have enough data to share a case study of my own.

Until then, I hope these  tips from the best online articles on how to get your KDP book description right will help you figure out this thing for yourself.

I saved a lot of resources from last year’s KDP book launch campaign and updated that list with a bunch of new tips that helped me craft an awesome description for this upcoming launch. In this post, I highlight the best pieces of advice to make it easier to browse all these resources.

Surely, the key to success takes more than just an awesome description. However, if your reviews are good, the cover art is awesome, and yet, you’re not converting viewers into sales (or downloads), it might be well worth to take an in-depth look at your book description.

8 Tips to Get your Book Description Right for Amazon KDP

1. “There are only three things you need to do to become a multi-platinum, world-conquering ebook tycoon with a fleet of yachts and sales figures that would make James Patterson spit with envy: 1. Get people to look at your book page. 2. Convert them into a paying customer. 3. Keep them coming back for more.”

These tips come from an older article, but I feel these apply very well to the present. They’re common-sense practice and can be used in any book description, whether or not you’re selling it on Amazon. It’s a guest post authored by Mark Edward, a Kindle published author who got the #1 spot on Amazon.co.uk and later on, bagged a six-figure publishing deal. He shares the 11 ingredients of a sizzling book description.

Make it clear. Your potential reader needs to know with a quick skim read what kind of book this is, what it’s about and what the story is.

The first line is the most important. If you don’t get the first line right, they won’t read on (this applies to the book itself too). Your first line needs to encapsulate the whole book. It needs to draw people in, hit them where it feels good and make the hairs on the back of their neck stand up. Not easy – but worth spending time on.

Use testimonials. If you have some quotes from well-known writers or experts, use them. 

Make the reader desperate to know what happens. You have to end your description with a cliffhanger. 

THE 11 INGREDIENTS OF A SIZZLING BOOK DESCRIPTION by Mark Edward – Read full article here.

2. “You are not the author. You are not writing your book description as the author.”

“You are writing it as the publisher. Making an impact on the reader is your principal concern. What will move the reader to want to know more about your book? What will motivate the reader to add your book to his or her cart? Write the book description with your head, not your heart. Remember, the book description is marketing material – not literature.”

HOW TO WRITE AN EFFECTIVE BOOK DESCRIPTION by Richard Ridley – Read full article here.

3. “Most people don’t read websites, they scan. So the same is true for your book description. If you have huge blocks of text without any consideration for spacing, bolding, bullets or some other form of highlighting that helps the reader scan.”

HOW A GREAT AMAZON BOOK DESCRIPTION CAN HELP AUTHORS SELL MORE BOOKS by Penny C. Sansevieri for Huffington Post – Read full article here.

The “fun” part about Amazon is that all styling is made with HTML codes. The good news is that it’s not as hard as it sounds. Here’s a list of supported HTML codes for book descriptions on KDP. Other eBook manuscript resources for KDP here.

You can also use this Amazon Book Description Generator to add your HTML codes.

4. “Include Top Keywords. The term “keyword” is actually inaccurate because readers don’t search based on a single keyword. Think instead of keyword strings.”

HOW A GREAT AMAZON BOOK DESCRIPTION CAN HELP AUTHORS SELL MORE BOOKS by Penny C. Sansevieri for Huffington Post – Read full article here.

5. “Tailor Your Bio to Your Book. So, for example, let’s say you wrote a book about marriage but your bio talks about how you live in Maine with your wife and three dogs. That doesn’t really help substantiate your expertise for writing this book.”

HOW A GREAT AMAZON BOOK DESCRIPTION CAN HELP AUTHORS SELL MORE BOOKS by Penny C. Sansevieri for Huffington Post – Read full article here.

6. “Don’t think of the book description as a synopsis, but instead view it as an advertisement. It is not meant to summarize your book. It is designed to make people want to read your book.”

HOW TO WRITE A BOOK DESCRIPTION THAT SELLS by Tucker Max – Read full article here.

7. “Don’t just talk about what’s inside the book and what problems your readers face, take it a step further and show the readers what life will be like once they follow your advice.”

HOW TO CRAFT THE PERFECT AMAZON BOOK DESCRIPTION by Mike Fishbein – Read full article here.

8. “When it comes to your book description, think of it like a blog post. If you want to write an effective blog that ranks in Google, you need keyword-rich, easy to scan and understand content. You also need to take advantage of proper html tags. The same holds true for your Amazon book sales page. “

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO AMAZON KINDLE SEO FOR SELF-PUBLISHERS by Tom Morkes – Read full article here.

Hope these tips will help you get a better grip of what it takes to self-publish and self-promote a book. I’ll add more tips related to this subject in the future, so make sure you subscribe to my newsletter in the sidebar to your right.

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