Everything matters on Amazon. Your reviews, your author page, and even your backlist matters. And Amazon is unforgiving for anything you overlook.
When working on a new project, you probably don’t want to think about promoting previous books, but it can help you now more than you think. In some ways, Amazon is almost like Google in terms of ranking, so don’t skip any details.
Amazon’s Relevancy Score
When I teach search engine optimization (SEO) classes, I often say if you want to hide a dead body, bury it on page five of Google search results because very few people go that far down the rabbit hole.
First off, let me say that “relevancy score” is my term — meaning this is a term I gave to this idea of relevancy to the market. By this, I mean that Google assigns a score to every website based on performance and relevancy. If Google demotes your site, you wind up on page 50 of the search results.
Amazon is very tightlipped about ranking. Jeff Bezos was an early investor in Google, so it makes sense when you see how many cues Amazon has taken from Google regarding ranking, relevancy, and Amazon ads.
So what is this relevancy score for Amazon? Well, it’s a score based on your book’s relevance to the market. And how does Amazon know this? It’s based on how much traffic you’re getting vs. how many people are buying your book.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re running Facebook ads and getting a ton of clicks but no buys. This could actually be impacting your overall visibility in Amazon searches. Why? Because a lot of clicks and no buys is essentially telling Amazon that your book isn’t right for the market.
The same is true for your backlist. Outdated book covers and bad reviews will impact your overall relevancy score if you don’t stay on top of your previous publications.
If you’re afraid of being haunted by your past, fear not. Google and Amazon both allow you to reinvent yourself and fix mistakes without long-term penalty, which I’ll dive into.
Sometime back, we discovered that a page on our website was broken and impacting us coming up in search. We fixed the page, and within 90 days, this fix had also remedied the search results and we were coming up on page one again.
Fix Your Mistakes
Even big brands fail. Think of Subway’s “Jared’s pants dance” ad or the Ford Pinto or Chevy Nova (which means no-go in Spanish). But brand failures don’t last. Once a brand knows it launched a failed product, often that product is fixed or pulled entirely.
This leads me to ask: have any of your books been a brand failure, and if so, are they still live on Amazon? Maybe it’s time for a redo or relaunch. Even a cover polish could help a failing book and boost all of the books on your backlist.
● Covers: Times change and covers get dated. The cover you picked for the book may have been spot on ten years ago, but now trends are different. Or maybe the cover was just not done well enough, and it’s time to upgrade. A cover refresh can be a fabulous way to boost a backlist title or titles!
● Book optimization: While you’re optimizing your most recent book, set aside some time to optimize your older titles. Now that everything is up to date, create a schedule to optimize your titles once a quarter.
● Bad reviews: If you have a string of bad reviews that seem to be isolated to one book, you should stop and ask yourself why? Is it the story, the editing, or both? If you’re serious about your future, maybe it’s time to consider a relaunch with appropriate edits.
● The right genre and subgenre: When you add in new keywords and categories, it’s always a good time to check to make sure your genre is strong and the right one for your book — that could also be why your reviews are bad because readers are expecting something entirely different.
● Add A+ content: Nothing refreshes an older book like adding new content to a book page, and A+ content is really a great opportunity to add a visual boost to your backlist!
● Book description: I love refreshing these regularly, even once a quarter, when I do my Amazon keyword and category updates.
Now it’s time to strategize some marketing!
If you’re done polishing your book description, cover, and maybe some content, now it’s time to get the books out there — again!
Even if your backlist is a decade old, republishing old titles that are still relevant content-wise can drive interest to you and your new release. Campaigns like eBook promos and Amazon ads can entice new readers to old books, and new books.
My key tip for keeping your backlist continuously up to date is picking one title and focusing on it for a quarter. Doing so, you’ll develop a rotation of having your books in and out of consistent promotions and boost your backlist.
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Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a bestselling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. She was named one of the top influencers of 2019 by New York Metropolitan Magazine.
Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Amazon visibility campaigns as well offering national media pitching, online book marketing, author events, and other strategies designed to build the author/book visibility.
She is the author of 18 books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon, Revise and Re-Release Your Book, 5-Minute Book Marketing for Authors, and From Book to Bestseller. She also hosts the top ranking podcast Book Marketing Tips and Author Success.
AME has had dozens of books on top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.