Breaking Orbit: How to Write, Publish and Launch Your First Bestseller on Amazon Without a Mailing List, Blog or Social Media Following (Serve No Master Book 4)

by Jonathan Green

  Originally, I used spreadsheets to store all my data when researching a keyword. This tool eliminated that and cut my search time down. I can look at the detail listings to check for false positives very quickly. I start with KDP Rocket, and then I use KDSpy to confirm that I’m on to something.

  The more I use KDP Rocket, the less I rely on KDSpy lately. The more I play around with Rocket, the more it’s becoming my favorite tool. I have some videos of me using book tools in action at ServeNoMaster.com/orbit if you want to see the difference.

  5

  Keyword Research

  If you don’t want to use any tools, Amazon’s search box is amazing. When you start typing something in that box, Amazon will start trying to guess what your final term will be. This autocomplete will give you loads of great ideas.

  Let’s say we’re doing a book on yoga. You love yoga, and it’s your passion. Go into the search box and type “yoga a.” Amazon will then give you a load of results starting with yoga anatomy, yoga accessories, and yoga as medicine.

  Once you write down these ten keywords, you type in “yoga b.” You will get the more results. It’s then time to analyze each keyword to see if it has books in the top 30,000. We always want keywords that generate sales. Amazon lets you attach seven keywords to your book listing, and you don’t want to waste any of them.

  KDP Rocket Shortcut

  There are a few standalone Amazon keyword research tools out there, but most of them just automate this process. Those tools will give you ten results for each letter after your keyword. So you end up with two hundred and sixty keywords. That’s pretty cool and gives you a decent baseline. You will find at least eighty percent of the valuable keywords that way.

  But here’s the problem. Autocomplete will not come up with any keywords that don’t start with yoga. You will not find "hot yoga" or "learn yoga" with this technique. Amazon’s suggestions never suggest words in front of what you typed, only after.

  I just typed “yoga” into KDP Rocket, and it came up with core power yoga and bikram yoga. These are two powerful keywords that no other tool would have found. I love this tool!

  Speed up with KDSpy

  KDSpy speeds up the keyword analysis process. You can type in a complete keyword from your list and then click on your KDSpy icon. It will show you the book sales numbers in a few seconds. When you are grinding through hundreds of keywords, the time-savings becomes massive.

  Each time you search a keyword in Amazon, KDSpy will give you color-coded advice in three categories: popularity, potential, and competition. Popularity tracks how many overall sales there are amongst these books. Potential looks at the amount of money you can make if you get a book onto this page. Competition looks at how tough the other books on the page are. If every book has over a thousand reviews and hundreds of pages, then you will see a red light.

  The tool’s advice is usually pretty solid. As a beginner, it’s worth trusting those color-coded recommendations. When you see three greens, you have found a keyword you want to use.

  Assessing the competition

  There is nothing worse than entering a market where there is loads of money to be made and realizing that the competition it just too brutal. Books through massive publishing houses that have been bestsellers for decades are not easy to knock off their perches.

  The second part of keyword research is checking out the competition. How many pages are the books? How many reviews do they have? What’s the price point? How long has the book been around?

  If I see twenty books that are all older than me, contain five hundred pages, and have thousands of reviews, I know that category is simply too tough for me. I don’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign to fight them. It’s much better to find categories where the books have less than one hundred reviews, less than two hundred pages, and are less than five years old. Then I know it’s a keyword or category with some movement or opportunity.

  KDSpy can do the assessment for you with its green, yellow, red light system.

  Keyword Limits

  When you publish your book to Kindle, you are allowed to include seven relevant keywords. When you publish to Createspace, you only get five. Make a list of your best seven keywords, but also mark which are the two worst keywords; these are the ones that won’t make it to the paperback listing.

  6

  Crafting A Title that Sells

  Writing a great book title is truly an art. Most books have terrible titles, and it kills their sales. I spent a long time brainstorming with a few of my interns to dial in the title of this book.

  Start by looking at the books you will compete with. How are their titles structured? Do they have one-word titles, or are their titles just keywords? When you check on the “yoga” keyword, most of the top books are simply titled “Yoga.” This is a space where titles are just keywords.

  In fiction, this won’t fly. Would anyone read a book called “Space Marines?” Would you buy a book called "Detective Story?"

  Look at the way your competition structures their titles. For most non-fiction categories, the title is a keyword or a short phrase that leads into the keyword.

  On a practical level, look at the top ten books in your area that are making decent money. Once you have the title structure dialed in, look for words that repeat. Look for terms that appear over and over again in their titles. That shows you the keywords they are targeting.

  When working on the title for this book, I kept seeing timeframes in the titles. Write a book in three months, two months, thirty days, ten days, and even twenty-four hours. It appears that there is an arms race on writing the fastest books possible. When I checked on these keywords, however, I found that nobody types them into the Amazon search box. That’s why my title doesn’t have any time element.

  Once you have dialed in the keywords that you want to appear in your title, start looking for images that fit the idea. I noticed that a lot of competing books have a picture of a pencil-rocket flying into outer space. This image is a little bit too cartoonish for me and doesn't quite sync up with my brand. I also don’t want to copy what other people are doing.

  I started looking at pictures of space and aliens and books and spaceships. I like the idea of launching a book. The word “launch” appears in titles over and over again. There is no synonym with the same power. “Release a book” just doesn’t have the same energy.

  I love reading science-fiction novels, as you well know, and in space navy books they always talk about the importance of controlling the high orbitals. In a gravity well, whoever holds the high ground is dominant. It’s much easier to drop a rock from a spaceship than it is to shoot a rocket back up from the planet.

  High orbital and gravity wells became the seed of my primary idea. After bouncing more ideas and looking at astronauts and spaceships, I came up with Breaking Orbit. I brainstormed this with some buddies and then I thought about “Break Orbit.” Everyone preferred Breaking Orbit more, and that became the title of this book.

  After the Colon

  The subtitle is where you can go to town with your keywords. Find the highest performing keywords from your list and put them into a logical sentence. It’s a balance between keyword stuffing and being ridiculous.

  Some books go way too far and have a big list of keywords that looks ugly. The desire to rank for those terms has damaged the aesthetic of their Amazon listing and book cover. Finding the keywords is a science, but combining them in a way that sells books is an art.

  My subtitle for this book doesn’t have an exact match keyword. The top terms were "write a book," "publish a book," and "publish a bestseller." A robot would use the title Write a Book: Publish a Book, Publish a Bestseller. This title looks and reads horribly, but there are plenty of books on Amazon that look like this. Their titles scream “marketer” rather than value.

  The second half of my subtitle came from reading reviews of the competition. I read some negative reviews that complain
ed about getting a book out there without an existing following. My method assumes that you have no friends, family or following to boost your sales. I have entered multiple markets on Amazon with zero following.

  Since my method answers this complaint, I decided to stick it into my title. With non-fiction, you want to make it as clear as possible what people will get when they read it. I like to provide clarity.

  With fiction, you often have to explain the genre to potential readers. That’s why many books say things like “a space cowboy shapeshifting thriller” in the subtitle. I know that seems silly to established authors, but that information affects a lot of buying decisions. Anytime I see “a supernatural detective” in the subtitle, I buy the book because I know what the book is about.

  The Glory of the Word Cloud

  KDSpy shines when creating book titles. When I have the top twenty books in my category on the page, I can click a word cloud button. The software analyzes all of the titles on the page and tells me the words that appear the most frequently among those titles.

  I can shortcut my process with the click of a button.

  7

  Tools of the Trade - Outlining

  When I encounter a writer suffering from writer’s block, I can always trace back their difficulties to the research phase. Whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction, lack of an outline can grind your entire project to a halt. I use two primary tools for my research and outlining phase.

  You can use any method that works for your personality. When I began writing, I used a basic word processor for each stage of my process. Having written over one hundred books, my process is now more streamlined. I only add tools to my workflow if they save me money or increase my productivity.

  Nothing else matters.

  Xmind

  I started mind-mapping a few years ago, and I’ve never looked back. Mind maps are outlines in a circular format. Everything expands out from the center, rather than in a straight line.

  In school and working as a teacher, every system I used was linear. The order was locked in as you developed the content. I learned this system because it was the only one available to me. Transitioning to mind-mapping unlocked my creativity. It separates the content from the order and allows me to generate much better research.

  I recommend trying mind-mapping and outlining to see which method suits your personality. Everyone is different and will prefer a different method.

  I have been using Xmind for about two years now. It is absolutely free. There is a paid upgrade, but you don’t need that. I used Xmind to outline the book you are reading right now. I do the majority of my outlining and planning in Xmind.

  As I research, I save all my best ideas as little notes in the mind map. The order is very fluid. With a mind map, I can drag a branch around to change the order of the chapters. I don’t come up with ideas and notes in the same order as the final book. As I write and go into later research, changing the order is really important to me. This fluidity is the reason I personally adore mind maps.

  OmniOutliner

  If you are a linear thinker, then you will prefer traditional outlining. My assistant loves to outline directly in Word. The thought of doing that makes me cringe, but it works for her. I haven’t tried to force her to use either of these tools. Find what works for you and stick with it.

  Sometimes I need to create a linear outline. I am working on several 30-day challenges. One of the projects is about setting up and making money from a blog in thirty days. There are thirty steps in that outline, so I used my outlining software, OmniOutliner Pro.

  I only use this software for five percent of my outlining, so I can’t give you a hard recommendation. I am blissfully ignorant of the competition, and I don’t even know if there is a PC version. This is simply a tool that I bought ages ago and still use. It's easily the most expensive tool that I will mention in this entire book, so feel free to find a cheaper alternative.

  I was just working on my 30-day challenge outline a few weeks ago in OmniOutliner. If you are a linear thinker, take a look around, and you can probably find an excellent free tool that meets your needs. When you do, please email me and I’ll add it as a resource on my website.

  8

  Building the Framework of a Bestseller

  Research and planning are the keys to any successful book.

  This section will share how I outline non-fiction books. Creating a fiction book is so complex that it requires a separate book. There are a few amazing books that I recommend for creating your fiction outline at ServeNoMaster.com/orbit.

  Even if you are writing a fiction book, most of this section will still apply to you, as it is about creating the big picture or strategy for your book in a way that your audience will enjoy consuming.

  Our audience will tell us what they want to read about. Then we simply give them what they want, using our own voice.

  Mind Map or Outline

  The research process starts with a mind map or an outline. You can choose either method, but you do need a place where you store data. In this process, we will save ideas, quotes, references to medical studies and other key pieces of information.

  Our initial research process will help to generate a table of contents. Depending on your level of expertise with the subject, that might be all you need. When I’m writing on a new topic, I like to dig deep into my research. I look for original medical journals and studies. I want the first level information as much as possible.

  For this book, my outline was mostly big picture. I research, write and publish new books every month, so I already knew the deeper content for each chapter. Whatever you are working on, the deeper you research, the better.

  Reverse Engineer

  The entire process of creating non-fiction books is to reverse engineer what the competition is doing. We want to read similar books, watch training videos, read scholarly research and forum posts. Take parts from dozens of resources to assemble the best content. Then streamline that material and add in your own voice.

  Creating a book from research is much easier than starting from scratch. Trying to turn an idea into a book with no strategy or organization is tough. The deeper you delve into your research, the easier it will be when you start writing your book.

  With a fiction book, you might only take a few big picture ideas from other books in your genre. With a non-fiction book, research is imperative. You want to delve into your research as deeply as possible.

  Deconstructing the Table of Contents

  Your mind map inner circle will become your table of contents. To develop this, begin by looking at the tables of contents in similar books that are doing well. Amazon allows you to look inside other books without even buying them. Every chapter topic you see in one of the top five relevant books gets added to your mind map. Start off going for quantity. You can easily pare down and merge chapter ideas later.

  When you examine five different books, you will find that each book covers topics that the other ones don’t. This is why you look at more than just one book. We want to create an amazing customer experience for our future readers. If a reader wants to learn the material that is in book A and book B, they have to buy both of them right now. When your book comes out, they can just buy yours and not need to look for additional information elsewhere.

  Many people just copy the table of contents from one similar book and think this phase is done. Don’t do that. You want to go deeper. This training not about creating good books, it is about creating excellent ones.

  Big Promises

  Look at the sales pages of similar books and products. Read the descriptions of every book you are competing with that is doing well. What does it promise the reader? Fiction and non-fiction books alike make promises.

  For many of the books I read, they promise a great space opera adventure, planet-hopping, space marine battles or great naval engagements in the depths of outer space. The descriptions of popular books will give you a feel of what your audie
nce is looking for in a book.

  The promises made on the sales page need to be answered by the content in your book. This applies across all genres and sales platforms. Violating a promise is the fastest way to lose your audience and get one-star reviews.

  I used to read a great series about space marines. Each book followed a year in the life of the main soldier. For the first four books, the space marines fought aliens across glorious battlefields. In the fifth book, the series took a hard left turn. The marines were sent to guard factories owned by evil corporations and to kill human protestors.

  The books had almost zero battles and turned into pure political commentary. The author set up a world where evil corporations owned entire planets and then spent the rest of the book trying to convince me that this is bad. I was on board with the idea from page one. I don’t think corporations should own planets. The rest of the book was a complete waste. He promised me space marines and turned it into a political agenda.

  He broke his promise, and if you find the author I’m talking about, you can see exactly where his series crashed. You can’t break promises, and you can’t change the story later in the series. The promises from book one have to remain through the entire series.