Did you know that approximately 9% of consumers searching for a specific eBook title end up buying something else? It makes sense that If you can’t find the book you want to buy or if you search for it and it doesn’t appear then of course you will buy something else!”

In a previous post my colleague Patrick outlined how searching for “100 year old man who climbed out the window” on Kobo resulted in the book not being found because the actual title is “The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared."

If the customer is in the shop, knows what they want to buy and can’t find your eBook, then this is not a discoverability issue. This is not a matter of achieving stand out or growing word of mouth online or a kickass social media strategy. This is a Visibility issue.

There is only 1 way to overcome a visibility issue it might be called Metadata optimization or book search engine optimization. Optimizing your content for book search engines might send not be why you got into publishing but it’s better than being consigned to the back of the bookstore or consigned to the virtual bargain bin.

Despite the title of the blog, SEO is mostly science, not art. It’s based on mathematic equations, set formulas and experimentation. But it does encourage creativity, lateral thinking and generating an emotional response.

No Pandas in the Amazon

I thought about calling this post "There are no Pandas in the Amazon." But that might be a nerd step too far.  Amazon’s algorithm is far more simple than the Google algorithm. It hasn’t released tough new versions designed to weed out spammers or prevent linking and black hat strategies. Amazon has one goal, to try to sell the user something, anything. They do this through best matching their needs and predicting what they want based on previous purchases. This could be your eBook, it could be a pencil case.

Making sure your eBook is visible:

Categories: Research your categories, assess if you could be number 1000 in Non Fiction: Biography: Sport or number 10000 in Non Fiction: Biography General or number 20 in Sport: Cricket: Biography. It will impact your sales ranking, it will improve your listing drive sales and boost visibility (and discovery)

Keywords: Research your keywords and phrases, ensure your core, descriptive and enhanced metadata are enriched with these terms. Use author names, locations, series names, titles and subtitles to ensure the potential reader or customer can find you.

Think like your customer: Think like a human being. We  are used to using powerful search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, some internet users don’t remember what a dial up sounded like never mind a world without Google. These sophisticated search engines can predict our behaviour finish our sentences and most certainly know that if you type 100 you might mean a hundred or one hundred. Add these to your descriptive metadata.

Linking: Link to your eBook on Amazon from your site, from your Facebook page, Pinterest account, YouTube channel etc build traffic and drive customers. The Amazon algorithm wants to bring consumers to the right item; it wants to sell to them as much as you do. It’s not personal, it’s just maths.