SELF PUBLISHING - HOW TO GET YOUR NOVEL NOTICED - PART TWO

CHOOSING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

These are the search terms that direct potential readers to your book, and although they're not as visible as Amazon's classifications, they're equally important.

When you self-publish your book you can provide seven keywords (Note: each can be a single word or a phrase). Choose carefully. Remember there are literally millions of books available on Amazon. The more direct the path to yours, the better!)

As with categories, keywords can be changed at any time, so if you're not satisfied with your initial choices, you can make a new selection. I do this frequently, in the hope of bringing my own books to the attention of new readers.

Below are some of my current choices for CABBAGE BOY, which is a humorous fantasy novel for teenagers.


Family life - Obsessive compulsive disorder
Teenage sex - Allotments  - Line dancing
Mutants  -  DNA

It's likely I'm still not on the best track, but I'm hoping that in a roundabout way these keywords might attract readers from the outer circle, ie parents. My thinking is as follows: allotments, line dancing, DNA and obsessive compulsive disorder are subjects that their parents might be investigating. Hopefully, they'll discover my book (either directly on Amazon books or through Google) and perhaps buy to read themselves and then pass on to their offspring. Pipe dreams perhaps?

Choosing keywords (and categories - see Part One) is time consuming and tedious, but necessary and helpful when you're in competition with so many other books (4.5 million last time I checked!)

NEXT TIME: PART THREE - THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR BOOK COVER


    

  

SELF PUBLISHING - HOW TO GET YOUR NOVEL NOTICED - PART ONE

HOW TO CLASSIFY YOUR NOVEL

It's easy to classify your books if you write a police procedural novel or a time travel fantasy or a conventional romance where two young people meet, hate and misunderstand each other but fall into each other's arms in the last chapter.

But how do you classify a book which crosses over from one genre to another, or even a third - or (in the case of one of mine, The Family on Pineapple Island) can be read by parents to their youngest children, yet equally can be read by parents and grandparents for their own enjoyment?

There are books that defy any classification. Sometimes they are exceptional and become best sellers, but often they sink into oblivion. However, even if they fit a classification, it's still a writer's minefield.

If you're self-publishing via KDP, Amazon's publishing arm, take time to work through their quite comprehensive selection lists. It's helpful to select a category which at least directs readers on to the right path leading to your book. However, if it's a particularly popular category, readers might never reach your new baby.

Take ROMANCE as an example. There are thousands and thousands of novels in this category, listed in order of popularity, page after page after page. It's a known fact that the majority of potential readers give up on the list after scrolling through the first ten pages. So how will readers find your newly published novel?

You can lessen the odds by choosing a sub-category, eg Romantic Comedy, or Romantic Historical or Romantic Contemporary, but these still include thousands of books already on sale. This is where keywords help (See Part Two).

You're allowed a second category. My novel AFFAIR WITH AN ANGEL is a sort of romance, but it's also a fantasy, as the title suggests. Check out this category (below). As you see, there are several options. Choose the one that's most specific - and if you're lucky, that may also be one where you're not competing with thousands of others.

FANTASY:
General
Collections & Anthologies
Contemporary
Dark Fantasy
Epic
Historical
Paranormal
Urban

It's a time-consuming exercise and you may never be completely satisfied, but the good news is that you can change your novel's categories at any time if you're not happy.

Interesting note: The first 100 books in any category are listed as Best Sellers. I've not personally investigated but apparently there are some categories which contain fewer than 100 books. If your book fits into one of these categories it will automatically be classified as a best seller!

If you want to take this further, and have the time, check out the following links:
https://www.kindleranker.com/articles/kdp-category-browser/

https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-choose-the-best-kindle-ebook-kdp-category/

NEXT TIME: PART TWO - CHOOSING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS

FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS (COURTESY OF QUEEN)

Fat Bottomed Girls

I love all Queen's music but this is the piece I think of when I've had an extra long writing session at the laptop - sometimes up to three hours without moving a gluteus maximus.
Yet after I've dragged myself away, exhausted, exercise isn't the first thing on my mind. Or even the second.
Chocolate comes first, coffee second - or maybe a glass of wine. After that, even more exhausted, I throw myself down on the couch or the rug and watch something mindless on television.
I envy those writers who are blessed with an iron discipline and will set out for a five mile run or a  ten mile cycle after a session. Are you one of them?
Usually all I want to do when I've had my chocolate, coffee and wine is to get back to the laptop and write the next chapter -
OR  - write another blog post. And next week I'll be starting a new multi-part blog series on HOW TO SELF-PUBLISH YOUR FIRST NOVEL (AND GET IT NOTICED). I hope to cover as many aspects as possible, so if you have any comments or requests, please contact me or comment on this blog.

HOW NOT TO WRITE ABOUT SEX

As there was such a good response to my recent post ‘What’s Wrong With Seniors Writing About Sex?’ I thought I’d carry on with a bit of exploration along that track.

You may not be aware that an annual prize has been awarded since 1993 for the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. It’s the most notorious ‘booby’ prize in the literary world (the worst offenders more often being male writers).

Previous nominees have included a famous horror author (Stephen King), an Oscar-nominated actor (Ethan Hawke), an Ivor Novello award winner (Nick Cave) and - surprisingly - a former Prime Minister (Tony Blair).

I’ve put together a few of the more laughable or cringeworthy examples. Here we go:

‘Victoria was like a deep nocturnal forest that I strode through without knowing where I was going, through woodland, amid ferns, under tall shivering trees, far from any path. There were noises, puddles, odours, dampness, shapes that vanished, treetops overhanging our bodies.’

‘He clung to her, crying, and then made love to her and went far inside her and she begged him to go deeper, and no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection.’

‘I yearned again for the cogs of her Iron Maiden to grind my glans around inside her like an opera singer with a mouth lozenge.’

This last one is more explicit, but it did make me laugh!

‘She felt him aware of his size and weight. His care not to hurt her. She moved to accommodate him and felt the blind probings before he slipped inside her. He was bigger than she had remembered. She tilted her hips and felt the weight of his balls on her... what? Small expanse of skin between vagina and anus. Perineum – was that it? Her mind screamed: Shut up, Lucy! You’re not doing the Cosmopolitan crossword now.’

You can Google the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for more examples. These are just a taster.