Author Toolbox Blog Hop: Finding Keywords for your Amazon Book Description

#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog and to the Author Toolbox Blog Hop #AuthorToolboxBlogHop which meets every third Wednesday of the month to share resources and tips for authors. Thanks to Raimey Gallant for hosting this venture. 

Please join us to learn more about the craft of writing and to meet bloggers who are dedicated to helping each other become the best writers possible. Click here to visit other blog hop participants.

🛠🛠🛠🛠

Finding Keywords for your Amazon Book Description

Keywords
Image by Wokandapix from Pixabay 

Keywords are very, very, very, very important for readers to discover your books, blogs, writings and your book descriptions at online booksellers. These words are words people type into the Google search bar to find sites/books related to what they are looking for. These words are the targets used in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) program.

SEO is a robot (bot) that combs thru every page of every thing online. When it spots a keyword like "cozy mystery" (yes, a keyword can be more than one word and can be a "long-tail" keyword,( a string of words e.g. a cozy mystery located in Michigan), the bot recognizes it when someone types "cozy mystery" into the search box. When your keyword pops up, the SEO bot directs the searcher to your book. 

Hopefully you'll figure out that golden keyword that will bring your audience to your book. However, that is quite unlikely, so you need to have a lot of golden keywords and change them often if you can. With traditional publishing, the publisher has to do that for you. If you're an indie publisher, you can experiment with different words.

When you consider there are 8-9 million books floating around in amazon land, you need a way to let people know one of those books is yours. Keywords do that. If a mom or teacher types in "good books for girls age 12," her search will pull up my non-fiction book, Girls Succeed! Of course, it may be on page 75 of the search because Nancy Drew, the Boxcar Kids, and for some reason books about lawyers show up too. But out of 9 million books, even if you're #212 on the list, at least you have a chance someone will see your book. Reviews help you get noticed and ranked better on amazon, but that's a whole other topic.

The FREE tool I'm sharing today, Keywords Everywhere, helps you know how many folks use that keyword for searching and offers related words too. Besides the volume of people searching globally or in one specific country every month, it also tells you the CPC and the competition data.

KE explains all that jargon below.

Search Volume: This is an average of the total searches that people have performed for this keyword per month over the last 12 months. For e.g. a search volume of 1000 means that people have searched for this keyword an average of 1000 times every month for the last 12 months. 

NOTE: I choose keywords with a volume of about a1000-10000 searches. Below that means it's not used much, but again it could mean you might rank in a small niche with not as much competition. More than 10,000 searches a month means there is a LOT of competition making it more difficult to reach a good ranking.

CPC: The cost per click (CPC) is the amount that advertisers are paying for a single click for this keyword in Google Adwords.

Competition: The competition is a gauge of the number of advertisers that are running ads on Google AdWords for this specific keyword. The number goes from 0 to 1, with lower values signifying less number of advertisers and higher values signifying more advertisers.

Take a peek at how this all shakes out on your computer screen. I searched "life story writing" since I am at the moment putting together a journal for folks interested in writing life stories. 

In the screenshop above, the top left arrow is pointing to the keywords automatically generated when you type a search word(s) into the search box. Notice, next to the keywords is the information about the volume, CPC, and competition for each word.

Keywords and information from the search word box

Not only do we get these keywords, but in the image below notice the arrows on the right side of the page. More keywords that are related to the word in the search box. Plus another bonus, a section for People Also Search For with information for you. These are actually more searches done by readers.

Related keywords and People Also Search For keywords
are also available on the right side of the page!

Keywords Everywhere tool is added as an extension to your Google or Foxfire browser. Follow the steps in the video below to help you install KE and to learn more about it. 

VIDEO: Tutorial on Keywords Everywhere

Many programs for finding keywords are available both free and paid. I am only beginning to learn about them.

I've seen several reviews of this program and all have been favorable as a good tool for those of us just getting into researching keywords and finding that golden nugget that will put your book in front of readers. 

Do you research keywords for your title, sub-title, and book description? If so, what method do you use? If you've tried KE, please give us your opinion of it. 

Click here to visit bloggers participating in the blog hop. You may pick up some new author tools to use too!

Click here to connect online and like my Author Page on Facebook.

Thanks for stopping.

Author Toolbox Blog Hop: Books are Tools Too

#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog and to the Author Toolbox Blog Hop #AuthorToolboxBlogHop which meets every third Wednesday of the month to share resources and tips for authors. Thanks to Raimey Gallant for hosting this venture. 

Please join us to learn more about the craft of writing and to meet bloggers who are dedicated to helping each other become the best writers possible. Click here for the list of participants and take a break and visit them. 

🛠🛠🛠🛠

Books are Tools Too

I don't usually think of books as tools. However, every tool comes with a page or pamphlet or book of instructions. So I believe books on writing are definitely tools to instruct us on the art of constructing our stories as well to help us learn how to publish and market them.

Today I'm sharing books I've used to learn about writing and writing life stories and memoirs. 

At this time, I'm working on creating a journal for those who wish to learn how to tell their life stories and a memoir which covers the first year we were in the floral business. (I wish I'd had a book of instructions for that giant leap.)

"Our lives are filled with extraordinarily ordinary moments. 

Our souls are illuminated by them.  

Sharing them around the hearths of our hearts, 

we become tellers of sacred tales, artists of our lives."

                                                         ----Dr. Susan Wittig Alberta, Writing from Life

Below is my review of one of the books on the list. I recommend it for writers even if you are not writing a memoir!

BOOK REVIEW: Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach

Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach

Writing Life Stories: How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature by Bill Roorbach is eye-opening, thought-provoking, and full of wisdom for burgeoning writers, as well as experienced authors. His literary grade language and insight into what writing really is made me appreciate my choice to become a writer. This book is an inspiring read.

Bill, if I may call him that, brings clarity to the memoir genre. Incorporating rules of fiction writing with non-fiction events is an art. I soaked up every bit of the information he shared. He's a teacher as well as a writer and allows us to explore this marvelous genre through writing our own articles as exercises at the end of the chapter. I wish I were actually sitting in his classroom so I could be in a lively discussion with him and students on all the topics he covers.

My vocabulary grew because of his expertise in the English language. I discovered words like "adumbration" and "enjambment." 

These are quotes by Bill I want to keep in mind such as:

In regards to the writer's voice--"Emotion is the sound of a writer's voice."

In regards to writing--"This is art we're talking about, not a job."

I don't usually do book reviews, but this is more of a love letter to this book. If you are looking for a book on memoir-writing, pick this one up. I actually borrowed the kindle edition through amazon Prime's program. You know it had to be worth reading because I broke down and actually bought the paperback book!

If you have any comments about a book or wish to add to the list, please leave a comment below.

HELPFUL BOOKS ON WRITING

Albert, Susan Wittig.  Writing from Life:  Telling Your Soul’s Story

Baldwin, Christina.  Life’s Companion:  Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest

Corey, Judy. Storysharing:  A Bridge Between Generations

Daniel, Lois.  How to Write Your Own Life Story

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Hauser, Susan Carol. You Can Write a Memoir

Heilbrun, Carolyn.  Writing a Woman’s Life

King, Stephen. On Writing

Roorbach, Bill. Writing Life Stories

Strunk, William and E.B.White.  The Elements of Style

Zinsser, William.  Inventing the Truth:  the Art and Craft of Memoir

Format an eBook for Publishing by J.Q. Rose, #Authortoolboxbloghop

#AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog and to the Author Toolbox Blog Hop #AuthorToolboxBlogHop which meets every third Wednesday of the month to share resources and tips for authors. Thanks to Raimey Gallant for hosting this venture. 

Please join us to learn more about the craft of writing and to meet bloggers who are dedicated to helping each other become the best writers possible. Click here for the list of participants. Take a break and visit them. 

I will be away from the office this week so I can't visit hop participants, but I'll catch up when I can. 

***

Format an eBook by J.Q. Rose

Format an eBook by J.Q. Rose
#Authortoolboxbloghop

Indie Publishing--If you want to publish your ebook to amazon, Kindle Create is a tool provided by amazon to build your eBook. I haven't used it, but I plan to with my next book! Click here for information on Kindle Create.

Smashwords offers the FREE Smashwords Style Guide to create, format and publish an ebook. Click here to get this helpful guide.

I have used Draft 2 Digital for my latest indie-published eBooks. Just download your ms file to the site and D2D does all the formatting for you. They're very helpful. I had a glitch with my Table of Contents and they explained what I had done and fixed the headings for me, so all I had to do was to download the file they sent me. What a relief! In 2011 when I downloaded a file to Smashwords, I spent hours and hours and days and days working on a TOC. Thank you, D2D! Click here for information about self-publishing with support from D2D.

***

Traditional Publishing--Procedures for book publishing have changed so much since eBooks have come into our lives. Formatting the manuscript can be different for each publisher. The best advice is to read the guidelines from the publisher you plan to submit to and format EXACTLY how the publisher wants the ms. Your ms may not even get a look if it is not formatted according to their instructions.

If you would like templates for formatting your manuscripts, click here to download templates from the William Shunn site. This also provides a rounded word count. I haven't used them, but they are well-known in the industry.

Please leave a comment below letting us know about your experience in formatting and suggestions for other possible places for distribution of your books. Thanks!

Thanks for stopping by. 
Now hop on over to more bloggers to discover nuggets of information 
you can use in writing, publishing and marketing.
 Click here for the list of participants.

*** 

About J.Q. Rose

Whether the story is fiction or non-fiction, J.Q. Rose is “focused on story.”  

Author J.Q. Rose

She offers readers chills, giggles and quirky characters woven within the pages of her mystery books. Her published mysteries are Deadly Undertaking, Terror on Sunshine Boulevard and Dangerous Sanctuary released by Books We Love Publishing. 

Using her storytelling skills, she provides entertainment and information in articles featured in books, magazines, newspapers, and online magazines. With her non-fiction book for girls, Girls Succeed! Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women, she returned to her first love, writing about real people. 

Click here to visit and like the J.Q. Rose Facebook page.
Thank you!