Many Kindle authors seem to just pick their titles haphazardly. They don’t really think about it – they just assume that as long as the title basically says what needs to be said, they’re good to go. I urge you to pay more attention to your title than that, if you want to be successful on Kindle.
Your title is something that should capture people’s attention. You really want them to take more than a short glance at your book because your title is so forgettable. You want them to become so interested, based on your title, that they can’t help but go on to read the description. Books with poor titles often go unnoticed – and that is not what you want to happen to your book.
Your title is also something of a promise. You want people to get a certain feeling after they read it. You want to capture them in a way that holds their attention. I can’t say it enough– you’re not just a writer anymore, you’re also a marketer. If you were a marketer already, now it’s time to put what you know into practice. Trust me when I say that you know more about marketing than most wannabe Kindle authors out there.
You have to know that you only have a very short time (a few seconds) to make a first impression. There are so many other books out there that people could spend their time and money on. Impress them with your title so that you stand out from the crowd from the very start.
Planning Your Fiction Titles
Fiction titles are different from nonfiction titles. Fiction titles should be interesting, but there aren’t as many “rules” as there are with nonfiction titles, simply because they are a different beast than nonfiction. However, there are some things you can do to help boost sales even with fiction titles. For instance, choose a series name that will be interesting and enticing to the genre you are targeting.
You can then tie all related books together with that series name, even though each book also has an individual name. An interesting series name can really help boost sales and capture readers’ attention.
This is something you should plan in advance, and is just one of the reasons I recommend releasing at least three books per pen name or genre when you’re first starting out. You’ll want to capitalize on the books that are successful by having an obvious way to tie them to more books. Your readers will want more, more, more.
I’m not saying that all of your fiction titles should be part of a series. But having some sort of tagline or series name or whatever will work best for your book can really help capture the reader. Take a look at the books that are in your genre, particularly those that are self-published and doing really well, to see what I mean.
Planning Your Nonfiction Titles
For nonfiction titles, you really need to think about keywords and how people will find your book on Amazon and elsewhere. Fiction readers soon become familiar with and loyal to their authors. This is less often the case with nonfiction. Readers often search for their particular problem or interest and are most likely to go with a book that is exactly what they were looking for, regardless of who the author is.
Of course, you want them to “fall in love with you” after they read your book, but it’s the first time you need to be concerned about. How are you going to get them to buy your book in the first place? How will they find it?
Keywords are one way people will find your book. Keywords stand out to people because they’re exactly what they need or want. If someone types in “easy organic gardening” and they find your well-optimized book on Kindle, they are likely to go on to buy.
Keywords are used on Amazon and off—it’s simply how people find things on the Internet. Amazon has an internal search engine and you can really do well if you rank for a particular keyword related to your niche. Google and other search engines crawl Amazon’s pages and you can rank very highly for certain keywords in the regular search engines as well.
But you can’t just keyword stuff your book titles. Is anyone going to want to buy a book that’s called “ Easy Organic Gardening: The Best Easy Organic Gardening Tips”? The answer is, probably not. That’s not a “human” focused title. It’s helpful to use keywords but the people at the other end of things are most important.
You can’t just use keywords in a way that is uninteresting and is clearly designed to game the search engines. Your first concern has to be the people. Books that are selling well and are getting reviews will rank better than a keyword stuffed spam book any day.
When people are scrolling through Amazon’s pages and are searching for something related to their topic of interest, what is going to get them to stop scrolling? You have to think about the human side of things as well.
What many authors do is use the human-interest portion of the title in the front, with a relevant keyword after the main part of the title. Something like “This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Garden: Easy Organic Gardening For Total Newb’s”. Play around with this and see what works best for your genre and audience. The example title is geared toward a young “hip” crowd and includes a keyword
If you get the title right, then you’ll get more sales and better visibility. You’ll rank better in the search engines, capture more people’s attention, and really stand out in what might be a crowded field of books.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download