#692 – Amazon KDP Money Making Strategies

Unlock these secret strategies for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and transform your Amazon entrepreneurial journey with insights from our conversation with Shivali Patel. You’ll discover how KDP can become a powerful tool for brand expansion, offering sustained royalties with much less hassle than traditional publishing. Shivali shares her incredible path from a teenage entrepreneur to a successful KDP author and Amazon FBA seller, emphasizing the importance of creative control and the freedom from traditional publishers that KDP provides.

Throughout the episode, we tackle the nuances of maximizing success on the KDP platform. From the necessity of thorough research in the Kindle Store to the savvy use of tools like Helium 10, we provide a roadmap for aspiring authors. Learn from industry veterans like Dominic, who has mastered the art of selling over 1.5 million paperbacks, and uncover strategies for identifying trends, optimizing keywords, and breaking into lucrative niches. Whether it’s conducting manual research or harnessing AI tools for book creation, this episode is packed with practical techniques to elevate your publishing game.

The conversation takes a strategic turn as we explore keyword optimization and competitor research to enhance book visibility. With the assistance of Helium 10 tools like Cerebro and Magnet, we dive into methods for refining search results and selecting high-impact keywords. Explore how AI can streamline the writing process, from organizing content to crafting compelling descriptions. By integrating creativity with data-driven insights, this episode serves as your guide to capitalizing on KDP’s potential and achieving lasting success in the publishing world.

In episode 692 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Shivali discuss:

• 00:01 – Utilizing KDP for Online Sales
• 01:58 – Leveraging Amazon KDP for Passive Income Potential
• 10:22 – Analyzing Kindle Store for KDP Books
• 13:20 – Researching Book Niches for Success
• 16:09 – Inconsistent Revenue Data on Amazon
• 17:46 – Strategic Approach to Amazon Keywords
• 23:35 – Competitor Research With Helium 10’s Chrome Extension
• 29:04 – Keyword Research For KDP With Magnet and Cerebro
• 34:09 – Custom GPTs for Brand Promotion
• 39:13 – Benefits of Enrolling in KDP Select
• 44:02 – Utilizing KDP As An Amazon Seller

Transcript

Carrie Miller:

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, we have Shivali Patel, who is talking about all things KDP. She’s going to be showing you how you can utilize it for your own brand and help boost your sales, and she’s also going to show you how you can create your own books for another source of income. So stay tuned for all of the great details.

Bradley Sutton:

How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies of serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.

Carrie Miller:

A lot of people do use this strategy as kind of a lead Magnet. There’s a bunch of different ways that you can use Kindle Digital Publishing for extra sources of income. There’s a lot of different things, and so she’s going to talk to you about that. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to bring Shivali on. Hey, Shivali.

Shivali Patel:

Hey guys, how are you? Thanks for introing me, Carrie, and getting this excited show on the road.

Carrie Miller:

Actually, I do have questions because maybe people are wondering, like how, like what’s your experience with ADP, like what have you done with it so far?

Shivali Patel:

I have a very long road in entrepreneurship. I started when I was 17, and when I turned 20-ish, I believe, is when I got into Kindle Direct Publishing. So right before I became an FBA seller, I had about 20 grand that I wanted to invest somewhere and I was not ready to pull the plug. So I got started with KDP. I thought it would be a great way to show me the ropes of how to use the Amazon platform, and that really sent me ablaze. I started doing physical and digital products after that and now we are in 2025. So, yeah, it’s been quite some time. It’s been fun. I enjoy it.

Shivali Patel:

I think if you are somebody who already sells on Amazon, then you already have all the skill sets that you require in your arsenal to take advantage of this. I always think that most of the entrepreneurs I meet, they always like doing it all. We always have shiny object syndrome, and so because of that, I think this is one of those things that you can tap into to leverage, maybe the things that you already own. So perhaps you own physical product and now you want to kind of either get more leads, get more traffic, you wanna own your data better, or even if you just wanna play around maybe you have a couple hours on the weekend you’re like you know what.

Shivali Patel:

Let me just give it a go and see, because it’s reoccurring royalties. So I don’t really heavily promote my books in the KDP sector, but I still make royalties on them, which is really, really cool for books that I wrote when I was, I believe, like 22. And I’m now 28. So, yeah, it’s really, really cool. And what I’m going to kind of do in the slideshow presentation is kind of show you this setup of how I go through finding a book and getting it uploaded, and then we’ll kind of chat through quick promotion things before opening it up for questions.

Carrie Miller:

Thanks, Shivali, so I’ll let you take it away then.

Bradley Sutton:

Want to enter in an Amazon keyword and then within seconds get up to thousands of potentially related keywords that you could research? Then you need Magnet by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/Magnet. Magnet works in most Amazon marketplaces, including USA, Mexico, Australia, Germany, UK, India and much more.

Shivali Patel:

I just kind of chatted through shop about who I am like I said, I started way, way long ago. I got into network marketing dropshipping before diving into FBA and KDP. I regularly talk to KDP sellers, to Amazon FBA sellers. I’ve spoken at many events and I get to co-host the most listened to podcast in the world with Carrie and Bradley with over a hundred thousand monthly downloads. So that’s all to say. I know a little bit about what I’m talking about.

Shivali Patel:

Most people think write a book me. Heck no, okay. When I was 10, I thought I was going to write a book and that was the only time I thought I would ever write a book, because after that I was like that’s a whole lot of effort. Effort doesn’t that require a load of effort? And that might have been true back in the day when there was traditional publishing, which was a quite lengthy, discouraging process, required a lot of folks involved. It could take months or years for approval.

Shivali Patel:

And this is still a route that some go, especially if it’s their full-time career. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s just for folks like us who maybe have other businesses or other interests, maybe this is not our full-time gig, this can feel really, really highly competitive and like a lot of effort for something we don’t have so much passion in just yet. This can take one to two years from acceptance to release and, moreover, publishers can take a really large cut, leaving authors with five to 15% of royalties per book. So reach is limited due to the publisher’s distribution network. Obviously, that can be a double-edged sword. It can also be amazing because they have great distribution control. But again, authors at the end of the day often have to relinquish creative control. Maybe you’ve seen things, or heard them, about people saying oh, I had to go back because my publisher actually wants me to take this bit out, or this character isn’t great, or you killed off too many characters. I had that happen with a customer writing that for a book of mine. So sometimes that creative control gets taken away if you’re going the traditional publishing route. But if you’re doing it on your own, then that helps you retain that creative control.

Shivali Patel:

Now, a lot of the books for traditional publishing also require heavy marketing to gain traction, whereas today, if we’re taking a look at a platform like Amazon, well, the reach is already there, right, and Kindle direct publishing is simply tapping into that. The basics are Amazon’s KDP platform lets you publish eBooks, paperbacks, hardcovers to Amazon without having to go through a traditional publisher. It’s absolutely free to use. You can literally get set up in five to 20 minutes if you have all your stuff pulled together, and you get paid royalties when books sell. Like I said, I still make royalties when books sell. Like I said, I still make royalties on books that I wrote when I was 21-22.

Shivali Patel:

You need a KDP account. This is different from an Amazon seller central account if you already have one, as well as different from owning an Amazon account that you purchase from. However, you can use your Amazon account, your customer account, to create a KDP account, which is what I’ve done. The tax information and banking information are two additional things you’ll need to get started. It really asks you basic stuff like what’s your name, what’s your address, what’s you know an account that we can pay you at, and making sure that your tax info is attached. Later you will need a manuscript, book, metadata rights and book covers. All right, is this KDP thing a new thing or has it been around for a while? It has been around a long while, my friend. I think it’s just becoming a little bit more popular and because of that, we’re making sure you guys have the resources to create great products or great books. Rather, while you have all the skills in your arsenal. For self-publishing, there’s no gatekeepers.

Shivali Patel:

You can publish directly within minutes. I know it says weeks, but really you can do it within minutes if you already have a manuscript written. You can make all decisions, from title design, pricing, marketing. It can be done as fast or as slow as you prefer. One of my books I published in 72 hours, and then I’ve also had books I’ve stared at for months. So it’s really up to you. You can earn 35% to 70% royalties on eBooks and up to 60% on paperbacks. I say up to 60%, but KDP now offers 50 or 60% on your list price for paperbacks as well as hardcovers.

Shivali Patel:

Books are instantly available worldwide. I love that. You can reach somebody in a completely or on a completely different continent, which I think is really, really useful. And then you still maintain the full control that we were talking about before. When you’re relinquishing all that control over to a traditional publisher. Here you can keep your characters alive if you want, or kill them off or run different pricing strategies, different sales strategies. It’s really up to you.

Shivali Patel:

Now this is open to anyone. So if you or your friend or your parent or anybody you know has a knowledge or a story or a mess that they want to share, that can help somebody, or even is gonna help somebody, step into a completely different world, then you can publish. This is great for building a brand as well as attracting speaking gigs, coaching and other income streams. So many times in the self-help niche specifically, we see all these gurus who are getting these speaking gigs and sometimes it’s kind of hand-in-hand right, like you publish the book and then you go on tour, or sometimes you’re doing all the speaking already and you’re like well, I already have an audience, I should monetize that. And this is the same exact deal is.

Shivali Patel:

There’s so many ways to approach the whole aspect of publishing a book. You also get to leverage Amazon’s trust in customers as well as the customer’s trust in Amazon. Customers already have credit cards linked. They’re ready to buy. They use it as a search engine. If you sell on Amazon as a physical products FBA seller, then you already know that we’re not really creating a whole new thing. You can, if you’re ambitious, but you also can just go on there, check out where the demand is and then create a product that is built for that demand.

Shivali Patel:

So let’s get into finding profitable niches manually and kind of a little bit about what Calla just asked in the comments, which is does Helium 10 support special keyword research specifically for this? Yes, we are getting into that now. We do already have tools. We’ve had tools for a long time, but we haven’t necessarily marketed them in that way or in that capacity. But let’s chat through all the things that you can do using Helium 10 tools as well as manually, so you know what to do when it comes to publishing a book.

Shivali Patel:

If you’re doing this manually, you’re going to go into Amazon and click the categories list. You could click Kindle store or go into books. Now, that’s a little bit different. Kindle store is specifically going to be situated for our KDP based products, whereas if you go into the books category, these might be your books that have been pre-published and then you’re kind of going in and maybe distributing them to warehouses across Amazon, you know, across the country. Or maybe you have a stash of physical books in your garage that you’re selling and those might fall into the regular books category. But Kindle store is specific to KDP and so that’s where I like to do my research, because I always advocate for doing your research where you plan to sell. If you are selling in the Kindle store, that is where you should do your research, right?

Shivali Patel:

When you go in to the Kindle store, you might see something like this, where you have a bunch of books to explore based on your reading. What are the things you’ve been reading? Taking a look at, and sure, you might think this could be a starting point. For sure, if these are your interests, you might know a little bit more about what to say on them. But at the same time, maybe this requires a little bit more effort, right, the same way for physical products.

Shivali Patel:

We go in and we check out what are the competitors like, what does their listing look like? How much revenue are they generating? We want to do the same things for Kindle. Right, same exact process. So what are the things that we’re really going to take a look at? So what are the things that we’re really going to take a look at? If you’re going in and you’re checking out the title, the description, the A plus content, all right.

Shivali Patel:

Something else you can go into is the bestsellers list. Yes, Dominic says that is not true. If you publish your KDP book as a paperback or hardcover, it’ll still appear in the books category. Yes, that is true, but they will still be influx. There will be an influx of the physical books as well. That’s why, if you go into a tool like X-Ray, you’ll still see the information’s a little bit intertwined.

Shivali Patel:

So, the bestsellers list right here, you’re still going to see our keyword niche summary, but this right now, what we’re looking at is the Chrome extension. That’s why we have access to this right here. If you do not have access to it, then you’re going to need to go to helium10.com/extension. Okay, that’s going to give you the downloadable version of this, and then you can see information like this directly on the browser. This is where you can now see 30 day revenue, 30 day units sold, average BSR, average price, average rating, and if you scroll down for all of these books, you’ll also have associated information. So where is the seller originating from, as well, as you can tap into, for example, these graphs and see what their 30 day revenue looks like, their 30 day unit sales, the length and all this great information. Dominic says I sold over 1.5 million paperbacks in three years for KDP. That is awesome. That is so cool. We actually I feel like we should have you on Sears Sellers Podcast. Baby, maybe you should reach out to us because that’s really really cool. Congrats.

Shivali Patel:

When you’re going in and you’re doing manual research, these are the things you might want to take a look at. You can take a look at what the revenue looks like in the niche. What length of pages, right, are all the books in that category, especially if you’re interested in a particular category. Now I’m looking at nutrition, for cancer prevention specifically, as well as common themes and patterns that you’re seeing across the bestsellers, because bestsellers are what these are books that are doing really, really well, right? So we know that there’s traffic and people are looking for it, clicking on it, reading it, and this might be something that you can also tap into. You can take a look and consider all of the book covers and figure out whether you want to elevate them or you can elevate them. This is just one aspect, but these are all manual things, right? You’re checking out the book cover. You’re seeing what the competition looks like.

Shivali Patel:

You’re opening up each of these listings to figure out what does their actual description look like? Do they have some sort of HTML coding put in? Is it digestible? Does it make sense? Is it persuasive? Some books are simply up and listed. Right, right, you haven’t put in maybe the, the description that is truly built for the customer. Instead it’s maybe stuffed with keyword data or vice versa. Right, it’s really really well written, it makes sense for the customer, but it’s not really ranking, and so these are all things to consider. But then you can also go in and find it with a software tool like Black Box. So Helium 10’s Black Box lets you do this via the products tab as well as the Keywords tab. Let’s jump into the products tab.

Shivali Patel:

When you’re inside of Black Box with products, you can go into categories and subcategories and select books and eBooks. Okay, there’s a handful of filters here. Now I’ve gone in and you know, and put in some of these filters. So I have, for example, a minimum of 3,000 for ASIN revenue. Maybe I want books that are no longer than 150 pages on average. I put in length unit for pages because all of our tools are built for more than just the KDP seller. They are also built for physical products as well as even dropshippers use this wholesalers. So you will want to go in and put in length unit so that will adjust your setup. You can also type in whether you want a book set or not, if it’s a series or not, publication age, and then go ahead and click search and what this does is it takes you in. You have your results okay. So now you’re seeing these different books that fit the criteria that you have in mind.

Shivali Patel:

I have used other software tools before and when you’re going in for some of these other software tools you have to go through manually and at least the ones that I’ve used I won’t say I’ve used all of them out there, but the ones that I’ve used in the past you have to go in manually and then sift through the actual search results pages. On Amazon, there is a pullback. I found when I was using a different tool and that was when I was going in and checking out what their revenue was I noticed that the information varied based off the category that it was in. So, based off the pricing and then what the BSR was, the actual revenue the book created would change. So it wasn’t consistent over categories and that is the sort of thing.

Shivali Patel:

While it’s awesome and it feels really good to see a great revenue for a book. It’s not necessarily always accurate, and so being able to pull from Amazon data directly is really beneficial, because now you’re taking a look at the actual revenue for these books and you’re going to be able to see something that is stationary across the categories because it’s the actual revenue, all right. So when you’re going in checking out the price now $108 book, I’m definitely not going to be writing $108 book because I’m not a writer first and foremost. I’m a writer on the side, right, so you can go in and figure out whether that’s you. If you think you know what I am an expert player for you know the casino, I’m going to go in and write a whole book. I can do this better. I can write a better description, I can write a better book, I can create a better cover. Then you can go in and maybe this might be something that you want to take a look at.

Shivali Patel:

But again, this book was published in 2000. All right, so it’s been around for quite a long time, but it does meet our criteria, right. It’s less than 150 pages. It’s generating over 3000. Their review count is less than a hundred and it’s doing well. It’s making about 7.5, almost. So you can go through and check this out.

Shivali Patel:

The difference between products and keywords tab is the products tab is going to give you access to URLs. This is going to take you into a product listing page, whereas the keywords tab takes you into a niche. All right, so that is what I technically prefer the keywords, simply because you’re not gonna be just listing up a book and hoping it sells. You’re to be competing with people and with other authors, and so that’s why I like to go into the keywords. But before I do that, I did switch this up a little bit because I went back into. You can if, let’s say, you’re seeing 500 items and this is a little bit too all over the place for you can always go back into edit filters and then add in something like, for example, we have keywords, including for the filters, and I typed in AI, and so then you have some AI-based books. You can switch that up and type in something like cancer prevention, because that’s what we were looking at before right, cancer, or that’s why I put in title keyword cancer, and so you found this book right here.

Shivali Patel:

And some other things you can even do is, as you’re scrolling again, tap into that graph icon and check out where their sales are peaking. So, for example, pickleball is the sort of sport that you would assume would do well in the summer and that very well happens to be true here. So you’re seeing that in summers you’re having a little bit of a peak and then a little bit of a drop off. Now this is still selling year round, it seems. But more recently something’s happened where their sales hit zero in the last month. But maybe I’m taking a look at this and I’m seeing that you know what they’re selling 100 come July and around here they were still selling, you know, 85, 90. Then maybe these are periods where it might be worth it for me to get a book up that’s similar.

Shivali Patel:

Again, this is a very one aspect view that we’re taking a look at here. I would really recommend doing your due diligence on this. That means again taking a look at the book cover, the competition, the description. Do you have enough information that you would actually be able to create a book on this? And there are resources to help you figure out the information at hand if you don’t have it beforehand. So if you’re not a pickleball expert, you can still write a book on it, however, just going in and making sure that there’s going to be opportunity for you wherever it is that you place it.

Shivali Patel:

Now, again, we’re taking a very broad view of this right now. This is just how to write a book, how to get it up, but at the very end we’ll just quickly discuss. Now the keywords tab. Like I said, this is my favorite. You can still go into categories, select Kindle stores. You can select books, if you’d like to as well Some of my favorite filters in here to use.

Shivali Patel:

I won’t be able to cover all of them but you can hover over this little question mark icon which will tell you exactly what those filters mean. It’s pretty self-explanatory, I promise, but these last three are the ones right here, and then the one below the, the category section, is what I want to talk to you about, and that is because this is going to take a look at your top 10 organic placements and typically, when you’re ranking a book or you’re actually up in listed, you want to rank on the top half of the first page, because that’s where all the traffic really tends to be, as well as where they tend to purchase and so being able to compete with your competitors at the top half of the page is really valuable. This is where I can put in things like I want a minimum of two of my top 10 have less than 75 reviews or, you know, minimum of three have more than 2,500 in revenue. You have your word count, so your word count might be a minimum of two, and that is to help you with buyer intent. Right, most books.

Shivali Patel:

If you have something really generic like fitness or nutrition, you’re now looking at a really broad audience. You’re not really sure where the specifications are, whereas if you have something like, let’s say, weightlifting journal for women on a keto diet, now you have something really, really specific, because you’re probably going to have a woman who’s on keto, who’s getting into weight training. Maybe she wants a journal or something like that, and so if you’re up and listed on a key phrase like that, you’re more likely to get sales, more bang for your buck, all right. So when I click search, you might end up having something like this where you have 120 phrases found. So compare this to before, we were looking at product links, that took us into product listing pages. Now we have search terms that people are typing into Amazon’s search bar.

Shivali Patel:

Does everybody understand the difference? You have handwriting practice for adults, customer service, phone number, logic puzzles, adults, and this is all great. If maybe I don’t already have a brand, I might be able to just go in and test drive this with a product like this right here, handwriting practice for adults. But let’s say I already have a brand, then I might want to go in and actually end up finding something that is based in fitness. Maybe I’m selling yoga pants, so I want to find all the books. I still have my category selected and I might still have, you know, things like title density. Title density tells you how many products on page one have the actual key phrase in the title. This helps you rank really, really fast. We’ve tested this at Helium 10 with my own products as well. I know Carrie also does this with her products and so you can go in and find those key phrases where maybe not all your competitors are putting that into your title, but if you did, you’d be able to rank for a whole lot faster. And so you can go in and now, all of a sudden, you’re looking at key phrases that are related to fitness.

Shivali Patel:

You have fitness routines, total fitness manual, muscle and fitness magazine, gospel of fitness, 90-day fitness journal, us physical fitness program, et cetera. Okay, and these could be things that you use for your brand. So maybe you’re creating a book as a bundle, or a leads magnet or something else. This can be where the KDP segment fits in. Competitor research via Chrome extension. Now, like I told you before, you can use the Chrome extension on any search results page. Okay, and when I’m going in? So before let’s just go back here I found 90-day fitness journal. Okay, so I typed that into Amazon and this is what I’m seeing.

Shivali Patel:

These are the first three products that are organic and, believe it or not, there was no sponsored ads running for this, except for this right here. All right, so there was only one, and that was a sponsored brand video, but you didn’t have actual products, which sometimes I see as opportunity. I say, okay, as long as there’s actual search volume, that can be a really good thing, because it means if you do run sponsored, you’re going to be at the top of the page for it, right, without having to pay too much. So you have quite a few folks who are showing up for this, and this one right here is killing it with 12K in revenue. Like I said, not many sponsored placements for that specific search term.

Shivali Patel:

When I go into Chrome extension at the top of my browser once I have it installed and I click X-ray, I can see something that looks like this All right, so it shows me the reviews, the ratings, the size tier. If I keep scrolling, you would also be able to see things like the page length when it was created, who the seller is, and then you’d be able to select these. So I actually went in and I sorted by the revenue and then I started clicking products that I felt were good competitors for this particular search term. All right, so when I do that and I click run Cerebro. That would take me into Cerebro inside of Helium 10.

Shivali Patel:

Now it appears that I put in my associated categories section right here first. So let’s just quickly do a tangent run through of that. All I mean by the associated categories is while you’re taking a look at the competition by opening up that search term and seeing what actually is on the page. By the associated categories is while you have, you’re taking a look at the competition by opening up that search term and seeing what actually is on the page, you can also go into the categories. So when you scroll down on that and you click on any of those products that are on that search terms page, you can check out which categories they’re in and then consider all the books that are also in those related categories Everybody still with me. So, as you’re going through and you’re finding these tangent ideas, now you’re taking both the narrowed view of what is actually fitting those parameters that you typed in, but as well as the broader view of what that market might be and what are additional themes and patterns that are showing up in your space. All right, so again, for example, here we have anti-inflammatory diet, we have pocket companion, intuitive eating, high protein, weight loss, gut brain paradox, etc.

Shivali Patel:

And then you can compile those relevant identifiers, input into Cerebro for competitor research. So you can click run Cerebro and then anything else that you find in those categories. You can just copy the identifiers and add them into Cerebro. You can enter up to 10 to find the top performing keywords. All right, now there are a lot of filters here as well. Like I said before, you can hover over the eye icon to tell you what those mean if I don’t get to it. Or you can select Cerebro training. All of our tools have a training sector at the very, very top. So relative rank is one of the filters that I love inside of Cerebro.

Shivali Patel:

When you’re going in and you’re trying to figure out, let’s say you already have a book listed, then you can go in and say you know what? Show me, if I put in a minimum of two right, for all of these different competitors, I want to see a relative rank minimum of two, okay. So then I’m going to go in and let’s see, there you have it. We would see something like this in the relative rank sector, where it’s showing me where that first product identifier is ranked in position two Okay, and anything lower than that, even if it was hitting, let’s say, four, five, six, if I typed in as many identifiers. This would quickly let me distill all of the results I got to the ones where I’m not doing as well as my fellow competitors. This is if your book is listed.

Shivali Patel:

Now, if your book is not listed right, then relative rank might not be the first filter that you end up using. You might end up using something that looks like, let’s say, going in and checking out title density, okay, or even your search volume. So maybe I have 3,000 search results that show up and I go in and I say, but show me only the results that have a minimum of 200 or 400 or 500 minimum folks that are going to it per month, and then I’d be able to see all of those results where now I can start identifying keywords for a variety of different reasons. All right, so I can go in and see things like the body keeps the score, weightlifting, woman, the science of strong women, health and fitness. eBooks cut this book up. Great.

Shivali Patel:

You have 3,951 filtered keywords, of which 1,318 are organic, 2,898 are paid, 725 are Amazon recommended. Of that, all of these keywords are split into word frequency. This is going to show you which keywords are, or which words rather are, showing up the most and how many times in these 3950 keywords. All right, so you have journal being used 524 times. That’s showing up 524 times. Workout is showing up 460, etc.

Shivali Patel:

Okay, let’s go into Magnet real quick and then I’ll kind of like jump back if I have time during questions. Okay, you can also do competitor research with Magnet. So with Cerebro, we had inputted what we had inputted in the ASINs the identifiers product identifiers for these books, right, and then you could have used the filters to narrow it down to find your keywords you might put into your metadata for keywords that you might use to build your chapters, for keywords for your a plus content for your ad campaigns, as well as if you even wanted to figure out what you want to actually call your book, right, that’s where title density can be really helpful, as you can go in and figure out which keywords or which key phrase rather does not have too many competitors utilizing it. So you can go in and figure out which keywords or which key phrase rather does not have too many competitors utilizing it. So you can go in, make sure it has great search volume and you can start ranking for it a whole lot faster, taking advantage of traffic that already exists. You can also, instead of that, go in and put in a key phrase Okay, so I typed in 90-day fitness journal, because that’s what we found inside a Black Box for keywords and that’s going to give me associated keywords as well. You’ll see some crossover of filters here and that is going to include things like your keyword sales, your title density, match type, how many competing products there are. So that’s going to be, if I’m inside of Amazon, how many products are really showing up at the very top competing products there are. So that’s going to be, if I’m inside of Amazon, how many products are really showing up at the very top. And you can use this to go in and figure out, well, what is most relevant to the book that you are looking to build.

Shivali Patel:

All right, anytime that I’ve gone in and taken a look and I find things that aren’t relevant, you can click delete and then you’d be able to checkbox these and actually add them. All right, so you want to start compiling data for the chapters. Like I said before, there’s so many ways that you can utilize the data, be it for the chapters, be it for the ad campaigns, and so I always recommend building different folders for all of these things. You can go in and say, all right, these food diary, lean into life, cut the feeling becoming yourself. Now, if we are doing a 90-day fitness journal, maybe there’s parts of that journal for a differentiation factor. I’ve maybe gone in, taken a look at my competitor books. They’re just providing lines. Maybe I want to go in and add in like a little intro segment for two to three pages before I give them the lines to actually write what their workout was, write what their food journal was, and this can give me a good feel of what people are looking for on Amazon. And so now I become more relevant to them.

Shivali Patel:

Before separate keyword folders into different objectives, like I said, these are the different things that you can utilize all the information inside of Cerebro and Magnet. Or you have chapter subjects to help you write for traffic that pre-exists. Relevant keywords for exact match campaigns for 4,000 character descriptions. Honorable mentions, which are backend seven keywords. Data that might not fit the description. Broader word frequencies for broad match campaigns. Product targeting to target your competitors where you can actually compete.

Shivali Patel:

All right, now, when it comes to actually building that book out, I know so many folks say use AI. I love AI, but KDP does have a bit where it says you have to require it’s required that you inform them of AI generated content. However, it is not required that you tell them about AI assisted content. However, it is not required that you tell them about AI assisted content. So if you are going to leverage AI, our goal is to really shoot for AI assisted content in order to stay compliant and utilize your resources to learn how to shortcut tasks, but not skip them altogether. Okay, so how you can leverage AI to help write your book.

Shivali Patel:

I love Google Gemini for deep research and that is going to help you provide any sort of information. Let’s say you want I want to write a fitness journal for women who are on a keto diet and they’re just getting into weightlifting. In-depth research for you and help provide an outline for topics that you might know next to nothing about. Right, maybe I don’t know anything about weightlifting. This would be a great place for me to kind of get a rundown on things, because it pulls from all over the internet. You have ChatGPT 5, which helps you organize the keywords you pulled, so you can download all the data that I showed you inside of Cerebro and Magnet once you’ve built the lists, and then organize them into chapters via something like chat GPT 5.0. So you’re not quite writing the book full blown with AI. However, you are using it to help you build an outline, to just get things organized really quickly. You can also use it for persuasive description, for any sort of metadata, and then you have your voice typing function on Google.

Shivali Patel:

Have any of you ever used Google voice typing? I’ve used it before for books, but the only caveat I will add is it’s not always perfect when it’s actually writing what you’re saying and sometimes you have to click the button over, but it does let you yap away and write more for less time. And then you have Grammarly and Quillbot, which can help you edit, humanize and double check your AI generated assistance. All right, so a few ways that you can use AI. There’s also custom GPTs that you can build out specifically. If you have a brand already on Amazon I’ve done this for my brands you can go in and create workstations so you can ask GPT, something like ask me 25 questions about my brand so you can help me create a leads magnet for what I do, right? And then go in, answer all those questions and upload them to create a custom GPT which then can help you kind of go back and forth with your new virtual assistant for your brand to help you come up with a leads Magnet book, right? So this can be a way for you to just get additional traffic. Maybe you’re using this as a freebie so you can list it on KDP and maybe run something like a free promotion and start driving traffic to it from other platforms. For the actual listing build out, once you’ve gone in and you’ve saved, when you’ve gone in and you’ve found you’ve narrowed down all your keywords, you can click the check mark and click add to my list to begin creating the folders. And so those folders. Now when you go into our toolbar on Helium 10 and you click Listing Builder, it’ll actually let you populate those from your folders. So, even though you can’t see it, because it’s underneath this keyword performance, it lets you pull from your folders, it lets you type it in and it also lets you input in your product identifiers to give you keyword outputs, potential keyword outputs. I always like to do my research inside of Cerebro and Magnet because it gives you way more information and you’d be able to go in and actually pull the information together here without having to do it manually.

Shivali Patel:

I remember the very first time I ever made a listing. This was 2020, I think. No, it must have been. Yeah, maybe around then. So one of the first times I built a listing for my FBA product, I remember doing everything manually. I was sitting there cross-referencing spreadsheets and trying to go back and forth. It was so time-consuming, it was mind-boggling. And this helps you get rid of all of that, because now you can just say all right, even though at the moment the screenshot you’re looking at is for just our general setup, we are coming out with a KDP version of this where you’ll be able to toggle eventually and just be able to say, ok, this is the product title, this is the 4,000 character description.

Shivali Patel:

But what I like to do in the meantime is you click this little Edit icon and put in 4,000 for 4,000 characters, and this right here is a handful of different titles. Don’t look at all that. I was just trying to input in a bunch of info so you guys can see how it works. All right, so you can go in and you have the different key phrases that we inputted in being highlighted. Okay, and it’s now giving me a keyword performance score.

Shivali Patel:

Now, again, this is way too many for titles. You just want one. And then for the 4,000 character description you would need for upload, you’d be able to have that in the different box down here and on the left side you’ll see it get crossed out. So I’ve used artificial twice. At the very top you’ll have on the left-hand paneling you’ll have root keywords. So that’s going to take your key phrases, like we were looking at before for word frequency, breaking them down into one word roots, two word roots, three word roots. Because, remember, guys, you don’t need to get all of your keyword phrases into your listing, you only need to get the top, like 15, maybe right, like somewhere between 10 to 15 in, and then the rest you can just break down into word roots so that way Amazon can still piece it together on its own. Okay, even if you think about broad match campaigns, it’s the same. You’re not going to put in whole words, but you can put in the most relevant ones broken down, so that way Amazon’s able to pick up what your book is actually about. So you can go in see the root keywords. If you go a little bit further down which it appears I don’t have on this you’ll be able to see your keyword phrases and then you can sort that by your competitor performance score as well as your search volume, and then, below that, you’ll also have listing analysis. Now, listing analysis is not relevant to KDP books. However, you can leverage it and that’s gonna be through keyword performance rank. You can just add competitors right here. So any of the books that you think are your competitors. Go ahead and add them in and then for your keyword performance score, if you click it, you’ll see something that looks like this, which compares how your product is doing compared to your competitors.

Shivali Patel:

Book cover design Book covers. I use Canva. You can go in for templates or you can go to Upwork and Fiverr. I’ve used those as well. You can hire out if you’d like, but since I end up having time, I believe that this is a great way to DIY it yourself. You can change up the images, change the font based off what book type you have. The actual upload itself once you’re logged in, you’ll be able to click create new title or series. You can upload an e-book, paperback, hardcover, and then you have the option to. I actually wanted to show you guys the back end of how upload looks. Let’s just kind of keep it moving here.

Shivali Patel:

You’ll have the option to enroll into KDP Select, which is an optional 90-day Amazon program for Kindle e-books, into KDP Select, which is an optional 90-day Amazon program for Kindle eBooks. When you enroll, it gives Amazon exclusive digital distribution, so you can’t actually upload your manuscript to other platforms for 90 days at a time and in return, you get access to promotional tools. Your eBook becomes enrolled in Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle owner’s lending library, where you get paid per page read. Yes, even if your book is listed as free, only if the actual person ended up getting the book like borrowing the book from Kindle Unlimited, all right. And because KU readers pay Amazon a monthly subscription fee to access those unlimited books, it’ll appear in KU and then Amazon will pay you from their fund. A benefit of this is you can run free book promotions up to five days every 90 days, or Kindle countdown deals, which are limited time discounts with countdown timers. This is useful if you’re leveraging other people’s traffic or if you’re running a promotion with somebody or an influencer or UGC content. Whatever the case may be, you can utilize that. Set it for free, get way more folks to read it to get those initial reviews. Initial reviews are your bread and butter when you’re getting started, when you just got a book up and listed, and so this can give you a quick amount of reads and reviews in a short amount of time. This also gives you better visibility in the algorithm. If you’re enrolled, list your book, decide if you wish to enroll in KDP Select. It’ll be added to KUNKOLL with availability for free and discounted promos.

Shivali Patel:

Readers can buy your book outright or borrow it and read, and you get royalty payments monthly about 60 days after the sale. This right here is going to be your royalties information. All right, I will not cover this right this second, because I know you guys can just type in KDP royalties and see this as well. But, as you can see here, eBook royalties you can select between 35% royalty options as well as 70% royalty options and paperback and hardcover 50% or 60% royalty rates sold on the list price. This is usually calculated like the printing cost itself is usually like a fixed cost plus the page count of your actual book times the per page cost. Okay, so that’s kind of going to depend on how long your book is and a handful of other things like ink type or your trim size and you know the marketplace that you plan to sell in. Now promoting your book after launch, you’re going to be able to leverage your existing audience.

Shivali Patel:

Newsletters, social posts, existing customers if you already have a brand, can be a great place to go for this leveraging the audience of others. You can turn to ads. You can run ads for your books and it’s really easy inside of the KDP platform. Once you have that book up and listed, you can go in and actually set the ads. You can also go to other blogging sites. I’ve done this. I personally really enjoy this because I think it’s worked really well for me. You can also go to Facebook communities that travel cohesively and interests and post them, as well as influencers who review or are willing to create UGC content. I’ve had folks reach out and say hey, can I review your book? And then they’ll do. You know they’ll read the book and then they’ll review it, and then that can drive sales as well.

Shivali Patel:

And author central, author central as well. So you want to make sure you create an author page. Now, not all my books are under my name, meaning you can create different author pages as well. So my ghost writer, ghost writer name, pen pal names is what they’re called, right? So the pen pal names also have different author profiles and you can create that. That can be pretty fun to do and you have the marketing resources inside of KDP so you can go in. It’ll link the author central for you. You can go in tell a little bit about you so that way the readers can get to know you and then all your books will be linked for that specific author page. So if you have, you know, one pen pal name has 10 different titles, then all of those will be linked to that author’s page.

Shivali Patel:

Amazon ads A plus content. You can run price promotions. Again if you’re listed for KDP select. This is an example of an author page. So J Shidte everybody knows J Shidte. You can go in, read it, take a look on a listing page. You have your title, your description and then right here it says follow the author. So if somebody likes your book they can begin to follow you and that way they have, you know, better access for all these books all of a sudden.

Shivali Patel:

Now, when it comes to utilizing KDP as an amazon seller, like I said, leads magnet, you can implement portals to own your own data. You can put in a page Portals is inside of Helium 10. You can quickly create a small link that you can then drop for, or even like QR code or something like that, to a page that you’ve created on a different platform, like QR code or something like that to a page that you’ve created on a different platform, by all means, and then incorporate that into your book so that way people have a reason to go. You can, you know, offer them something, whatever the case may be I don’t know what your brand might be if you’re already selling, but something that will help you own your data. You can then run that as a leads Magnet bonus products. So if you are combining your digital product with your physical product, that can increase customer touch points and lend to better reviews for your physical products as well.

Shivali Patel:

You can also get reoccurring royalties for skill sets you already have. A prime example of that was the 90-day fitness journal search results page that we were looking at. Nobody’s running sponsored ads for that. But if you already sell physical products, you most likely already know how to do that, and so you can just go in and do that same process, right? You still have your product research, still have your keyword research, still have your Listing Building, and then you’re going to do your marketing, and this is great for line expansion as well. If, let’s say, you are maybe capped on capital for the time being, since physical products are quite cash flow heavy, then you can go in and still use the same skill sets for this, and something like this can help you build a community. And then any questions.

Carrie Miller:

Thank you so much, Shivali, for that presentation. I think it was very helpful for everyone on here. So, yeah, I guess we will see you all next time. Bye, everyone, see you guys. Bye.

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