The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: I think the most valuable thing you can do on the KDP platform has published on three modalities. The Kindle edition, the paperback edition and the audible for audio edition
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[00:01:04] Jason: All right. Welcome everybody. in this Hot Takes episode, we are going to do a fun conversation about Kindle direct publishing, KDP Metrics. We love. And, this here is a little in by the topic because they’re not sure Chris. Are going to jump into it though. And I know all of us have confidence because at the day, this is about, Amazon both advertising and just product sales.
[00:01:33] So just product listings, books are no different, maybe no different than a regular product. So look at it today because I’m happy to go around the table. And, insights perspective takes on what KDP max. We love anybody when we started the conversation. They sell
[00:01:49] Kyle: books on Amazon?
[00:01:50] I guess historically that’s how hands on. Got it. Got it started. But now we, everyone thinks about it as just pick your private label product, but it’s probably, I don’t know this definitively, but I would say it’s gotta be at least one of the, if not the largest digital platform for sales on the planet, I would assume that Kindle sales, dominates everything else or pretty close.
[00:02:13] So it’s exciting. And I do think that there’s definitely opportunities to both. Digital products to, any physical products business. It is, we’ve talked about it before on, on this show, for sure. So I’m excited to get and learn a little bit more about KDP and what should I be paying attention to?
[00:02:29] Chris: Jason, you said it at the beginning where like me and you have. You and I, my grammar spend today, and Kyle and Michael really haven’t published. But I don’t think there’s as big a disconnect as there really is in terms of we know the inside and oh, if you’ve never done it before, what’s it going to be like, but I know that it feels like that because I’ve coached enough people.
[00:02:49] And once they upload their first book and then. Flabbergasted. They’re like Chris, that was like, just as easy as you’ve been saying for the past 10 years, I was like, exactly, like over and over again, like it’s repeated, that’s what I’m trying to like hammer this home with people that I get, there’s going to sound like, oh, publish a book and it doesn’t have to do with me.
[00:03:06] I sell physical products and wholesale and private label. No books can add so much in terms of marketability, establishing a level of expertise, bundling like complimentary products. There are so many opportunities that the biggest problem is which opportunity are you going to pursue depending on what you are already doing, either as a seller or as someone who’s trying to get into the world of selling and entrepreneurship, or even just new into Amazon books are not going to.
[00:03:33] There was an article that came out and was a Kindle sales have overtaken physical book sales, and they got all like jumpy about it and oh, the books are in decline know, year over year. Physical books were up year over year. That exact same year. Okay. So books aren’t going anywhere with people’s preferred method of gathering information.
[00:03:52] They buy digital and physical books. It’s so easy to offer both because I think you’re right. Amazon may be the largest digital product site, like marketplace and that’s essentially what you’re doing. You have a digital product that can be sold on Amazon as a digital product if you want, but also converted into a physical product, offered for sale prime eligible completely.
[00:04:10] Hands-off for. Like it’s so good that to me and I am convinced everybody has this opportunity to say, look, how can I use KDP in my business, whether digital or physical or mix or both, or for-profit, or for marketability or for exposure. There are a lot of variables that go in there, but I feel everybody’s going to end up somewhere on that line and they’re gonna be glad that they spent the time taking a look at it.
[00:04:34] I’m convinced a hundred percent.
[00:04:36] Jason: You are a salesman for it all the way. Okay. But let’s talk about that. The metrics, man, the metrics, what metrics do we like, Michael, you want to weigh in on a metric that you think is most important for Amazon sales in general? Or do you want me to lead with one?
[00:04:52] Michael: All I would say is.
[00:04:53] If it’s not him as a metric, one of the reasons just to follow up and leave is one of the reasons that you already got half the battle done, because you understand the Amazon platform and the metric. It’s people starting off without that. But Jason, I’d love to hear from you because I do not KDP, but I really am working on right now.
[00:05:14] And I’m really convinced my client, what, whatever. Really to be moving out and on the spot. So yeah, it, the, what did we collect people on?
[00:05:26] What
[00:05:26] Kyle: are the metrics?
[00:05:27] Jason: The metric that I think is top for, in my way of thinking of it now, wasn’t what I thought five or 10 years ago. But the metric that I think is the number one metric is reviews.
[00:05:38] And I used to think that it was, Bestseller rank, which would it be a different math, Matthew metric we could talk about. And I used to think maybe it was Roaz, which is an ad centric metric, but more and more of what I’m thinking is just reviews. And that’s interesting because reviews are a metric that you can engineer in legitimate ways in a book like asking people to leave your review.
[00:06:04] The better you are doing that. The more reviews you can. And I think reviews are really central. I would be very interested in your guys’s perspective from the off of the Kindle sections, point of view on Amazon sales, how important you think reviews. And then happy to chat about those other metrics.
[00:06:21] I just mentioned as well, BSR as well as, as well as, Roaz I think those deserve conversation here, but what are your thoughts? Just on the topic of the number of reviews you get on your product is central to the success of it. Any thoughts on that, Kyle or Michael from your point of view?
[00:06:39] Kyle: Yeah, I think that reviews have always mattered on a platform, especially when you have multiple options, you might have a book that I can pretty much guarantee that you’re not going to have the only book alternative, on Amazon who, and even Amazon’s a big marketplace and there’s a lot of topics, but there’s probably gonna be alternative books, to your book. That would be. And the only way that people make the determination of which, what book to buy or what product to buy is to look into what other people have said, it’s social proof.
[00:07:08] And so I think reviews have always mattered. They probably mattered more to your point, Jason than what we’ve maybe given them a little bit of credit for. But I think it becomes more so with, in the book space, because there are so many, talk about a category on Amazon that has millions and millions of products.
[00:07:25] KDP in books, definitely. So in order to stand out, I think reviews definitely, have to be considered, as a key metric.
[00:07:33] Michael: Yeah, it’s interesting. I would say, as I say, I don’t have KDP selling experience from the physical product side. I think getting it, reviews should be a great obsession of unease of the really successful sellers.
[00:07:43] I know. And there are ways to engineer it. Some legit, some not legit is the only way I’d advise anyone to do it really seriously. Don’t try and follow Amazon’s algorithm with books. It’s interesting. I only really haven’t experienced as a consumer and maybe I consume in a different way, but I don’t tend to go on Amazon to buy a book based on keyword, generic research, unlike with products.
[00:08:03] So I tend to go on Amazon because I’ve heard about an author from somebody else. That’s word of mouth often. It’s you Jason, like I bought several books on the fact that you mentioned it in the podcast. I’m like, I’ve got to find them what this gold right bikes about, or, pauses, forces or strategy and stuff like that.
[00:08:17] Or if I heard them on a podcast or some other form where it isn’t actually career driven. So when I go on, I just ignore the reviews unless they’re really dreadful. So my Biogen is quite different for books and for physical products. I’ve done it with that’s typical. I just mean, I just thought I’d put it out now.
[00:08:31] Kyle: That’s what are your thoughts?
[00:08:31] Jason: That’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think that’s
[00:08:35] Kyle: oh, sorry. Layering on that. I don’t think that’s actually dissimilar to mine physical products on Amazon either. I think that the buyer journey really does start in multiple locations and just hesitancy to end up on Amazon as part of the vetting process.
[00:08:49] I think, what was it close to? 60% of all like physical e-commerce product searches start on Amazon in the U S but oftentimes the discoverability of those products is occurring on social it’s occurring by word of mouth. It’s reoccurring on like Google when they’re searching and then they see it regardless.
[00:09:08] You just go look on it. Even in the physical store, there’ll be like going by and oh, I should just check that real quick on my Amazon app and see how much, if I can find it on Amazon. And so I think that is definitely part of the buying experience, bond books and physical products.
[00:09:21] Jason: Yeah. Chris, what do you think?
[00:09:23] Chris: You know what? I think people are forgetting. It sounds smart. Customers are right. Cause it sounds so normal for us to sit back and be like, oh, you know the customers, they go to Amazon first and they look at reviews and like where the buying process starts. And it makes sense when you think about it, but common.
[00:09:36] I think about it that way. At least I don’t, but just as we’re having this conversation, I’m like, customers are smart. They’re going to, they’re going to look at the reviews. They’re gonna be able to tell fake reviews. They’re gonna be able to say, look, this doesn’t have enough reviews. Or sometimes this has too many reviews right now.
[00:09:49] It’s rare, but I can, I could make a case for a product having too many reviews. Now of course, as an author, I want to solicit reviews, but I want to solicit. Reviews. All right. So just to be sure and always asking for five star reviews, where’s asking for reviews, and if you give us one star, it’s probably because we earned it.
[00:10:04] So I’m assuming people are making quality content, so they actually earn five stars. But Jason, I think like my favorite thing about what you said, like BSR, doesn’t matter as much, it’s important. It’s vanity sometimes Hey, number one in my category, you’re like, and I say this top 1000 books.
[00:10:20] Yeah. What their vanity it’s what does it actually mean? Now? You might be able to use it as marketing to get attention, but it’s not necessarily gonna put any money in your pocket directly. But if you’re getting reviews, that means way more than they just bought your book or they download your book on, prime day when it was free or on Christmas needed a free promotional day.
[00:10:35] And I’ve done that, 7,000 downloads. I take a screenshot from KTP and I’m like, what up. But it’s vanity metrics. It doesn’t actually mean anything. It could be 6,999 people download it. And we’re never going to look at it again, reviews. They read it like 99 plus percent chance. They actually read at least some of your content.
[00:10:54] And they meant enough to them. They went on and left the review. And if they do that, hopefully they join your email list, depending how they discovered your book. So if you’re trying to use a book for business and generate leads and customers like a top of the funnel type book, You want to see those reviews?
[00:11:10] If it doesn’t have reviews, it’d be, I could be, it’ll be cynical. You see a book published five years ago with five reviews and they’re using it as like a top of the funnel thing. I’m like, no, one’s no one’s going through that funnel name. Cause if they were you’d have reviewed the show for it.
[00:11:23] So it’s a great metric.
[00:11:25] Jason: That’s an interesting component of it because really, I think what the consumer’s doing and saying that the number of reviews is a proxy for. That you look at the reviews and you say to yourself, it’s got 1400 reviews that it’s a 5.4 0.7 average. It has to be good, and that’s what people are doing as a shortcut to the purchasing decision, I think.
[00:11:45] And so I think that’s why it’s so vital. I think just to finish this one, this reviews for an author who’s trying to work on. But what I would encourage you to do is try to have benchmarks, go for 20 reviews and focus that on as a priority and then a hundred. And then a thousand now I’ve got my best book has 300 and I think 60 reviews, something like that, Instagram power, and it, and the reviews.
[00:12:13] I know help that. It’s it, I just seen over time that as the reviews have climbed, it has just stayed stuck up into the BSRs, for the social media subcategories. But I think we should have an approach where we say, okay, I’m going to go from, try to just focus on getting 20 reviews than a hundred than a thousand, which was aspirational.
[00:12:31] You get a thousand reviews on an Amazon book and you’re permanently stuck into the top of a BSR. You won’t fall. And I think that’s an important way to look at it. Now, let me just circle back to one other nuance here, which was Michael said, I think that, as consumers we swim inside of categories or niches with books.
[00:12:51] So for example, I don’t ever look at, fiction books. I don’t even look at the categories. I just don’t know. Now some readers might be really cosmopolitan about how they consume. Books, but I think more likely people get stuck into what they like, which is as a sub category, the genre that they really find value out of, for me as a consumer of books, that’s a, non-fiction usually in, marketing e-commerce branding, finance, those kinds of, those nerdy.
[00:13:20] Categories. But I think that’s what I think that’s what book consumers do is they have a category they’re in. So therefore, the categories that we’re ranking in are vital and little known fact, Chris, I maybe know more about this than I do. I know you can go to Amazon and ask that your book be listed in more than the three default categories that you get to pick.
[00:13:39] When you set up a book, that’s, a self published book. And I don’t know if it’s up to 10, but you can ask to be in more categories. And that is probably a pro move because of this idea that customers stay in their swim lane in terms of, genres or categories and our, what you guys have in terms of thoughts on that idea.
[00:13:55] But that, again,
[00:13:58] Chris: I haven’t heard of that. I haven’t done it myself. But I would suggest anytime you’re contacting Amazons, this would be a great example. If you’re contacting Amazon and say, Hey, I would like my book to be listed into other categories. Give me a reason why, but give them a customer centric.
[00:14:14] Reason why they say, Hey, customers in this category are probably looking for things along these lines. And my book really addresses that and it’s got great reviews and. It would benefit your customer, Amazon to have it over there. If you speak in kind of Amazon language, it can usually help you get what you want as long as what you want is legit white hat above the table.
[00:14:34] Jason: Totally. Yup. Any other thoughts I want to make sure we spend time on as here, but. One
[00:14:41] Kyle: other one other question on reviews. And this is more of just my me asking a question. Is it within the TLS, if you were creating a Kindle book, could you actually create like a page halfway through your book with a QR code and just ask what people’s not just not the review, but actually like feedback.
[00:14:58] Like I would love to know. Have you thought so far about my book and then send them to a survey or something like that? Or is that not
[00:15:04] Jason: allowed. I don’t know of any call to action. That’s a violation of tos, unless it’s incented in some inappropriate way, you can’t buy reviews. You can’t do that.
[00:15:15] That’s a Telus violation, right? And you couldn’t do that inside a book or off Amazon either if they found out about it. But to say, these are thoughts and progress. I have a second edition I’m working on. I’d love your feedback so I can make this book better. Those are all super legit. Inquiries.
[00:15:33] Now you might end up with reviews that are like, here are the 14 spelling mistakes you made in the first chapter, which, wouldn’t be productive review of content, but, so you have to figure out, okay, how can I position this book as something that someone would like to leave a review and supportive that to Chris’s point B.
[00:15:50] I like to use the phrase. And best review. I would love your highest investor view. That’s not asking for five-star review. That’s asking the customer to leave me their highest and best review that they’re comfortable with. And, and so I think you want to solicit for something that gets you, a positive outcome, not a negative outcome, but, there is certainly art and science to it for.
[00:16:11] Yeah. Okay.
[00:16:12] Kyle: I was just thinking if you actually installed request in the book to go, not just to directly to the key KDP, but actually get some feedback by a survey. Whenever we get they’ve given you that information and it’s positive, then you could always obviously ask for them to, oh, would you mind sharing this on Amazon or KDP has reviewed or something like that as well?
[00:16:32] Jason: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Let’s talk about Roaz as you guys, I think return on ad spend is the marketing metric on Amazon. We all love to think about, and I just want to explain it for book, sellers who haven’t used it, or for people who are interested in understanding how it works for books, the advertising program for Amazon.
[00:16:53] Very similar if you’re not used to it as it does for products, normal physical products. And you’ve got an opportunity to spend. Of course the difference is if you self a Kindle book, you have zero cost of goods. What you have is your role to structure. And for example, if you set up a book, that’s an excuse.
[00:17:12] A book, Chris, correct me on any of this that you feel like I’m messing up, but let me just say it this way. If you set up a role to deal with Amazon, where you get, 70% commission on every sale and Amazon keeps, 30%, if that’s the deal you made, then you want to do the math for the return on ad spend and factor in that expense.
[00:17:32] The Amazon cost structure, and then do a simple calculation to understand, where your breakeven point is. If you spend a dollar, advertising, did you get a dollar back now? I would suggest to you that if you just do that, you spend a dollar and get a dollar back. You should do that as much as you can scale it to till it breaks, and really understand what that looks like, in the backend of the Amazon advertising system.
[00:17:56] And you do that through setting up a bunch of campaigns, seeing what works, putting a little bit of money against them. And if you have a positive or a low as above your breakeven point, then you double down, increase the daily spin, and, let it continue to ride until. An equilibrium point where you’re in essence breaking even or losing money, if you go any higher, that’s my take on how to use, Amazon advertising for, for book work that is tied to self-publishing books.
[00:18:24] You can also do it in supportive, traditionally published books. I have permission to publish my, Instagram power book through McGraw. It’s published by group by McGrath. But I can advertise against it or for it. And I also have permission to advertise for my e-commerce power book published by Morgan James, even though so neither of those are self published, but I can still use the Amazon advertising platform, directly to, to, promote those products.
[00:18:51] So open, around the table conversation about thoughts on advertising grow as that kind of stuff.
[00:18:58] Michael: I got. I have no business with it, cause I haven’t published anything on KDP, but if I’m about to, hopefully when the next is, it’s taken much longer than I wanted as usual with these things, but it is mostly done that if it’s an authority play, there’s quite good argument for saying that.
[00:19:13] Eh, it depends on the business case that you’ve got there. So is it an authority play if you’re getting exposure and paying for exposure, even if you end up losing money, but you can then monetize it on the backend. By getting new clients or sending up other products or so forth, there could be quite an argument for being quite aggressive about it, actually, even, I don’t mean just as a launch strategy, but ongoing, the other thing
[00:19:33] Jason: initially, if your funnel supports the backend sales, examples, outcomes.
[00:19:38] Michael: Yeah. And the other thing that strikes was even if it’s more of a pure profit play and, even if, whether or not you have a backend, but if you want to make sure the front end is washing its face, as it were, that’s terrible jargon. I’m speaking internet marketing jargon. Now, if you want to sell your product at a profit on Amazon, irrespective of what happens afterwards, then you’ve always got to think about the fact that, on Amazon, the return on ad spend is only part of the picture because it will help your organic ranking.
[00:20:02] And I’m presuming this applies to books as well as physical products, which meant that my world, that I’m comfortable with. And if so, then, the value of, an ad driven sale is much greater than just that sale. And exactly how to evaluate that is pretty tricky. But I would say that in terms of mentality, at least I’d be prepared to spend, quite aggressively in that situation as well.
[00:20:19] So there are two situations while I can imagine if. That I would spend probably more aggressively and still hope to make a profit. Yeah, totally. Chris, you’re the money. You can actually speak to that as well as Jason, does it work that way on my
[00:20:33] Kyle: deleting myself here?
[00:20:35] Chris: W I think it goes back to at the beginning where people think it’s more complicated than it is, and it really isn’t.
[00:20:40] It’s here. This is your book. Here’s your listing. Here’s the price that you set and based on all of the factors of your book, you will get this much money when it sells on Tinder and you will get this much money when it sells on paper. That’s it, you can figure that number out before you even publish. If you just Google KTP royalty calculator and you put in your page count and you put in your price and he’ll tell you what your royalty is going to be.
[00:21:04] And that’s it. And then compare that to how much you want to spend on that. And then decide if you’re looking at GDP as a profit center where you’re trying to make profit off the margin of your books, or you’re using books as lead generation where you’re using it. Look, I’m having to break even to get my message out into the world.
[00:21:17] I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not everybody’s dad. I’m not the right person, but there you can do each one of those things. But if people are slowing down to me like, oh, I can’t move forward until I know what my world. No. Yeah, that’s an excuse. You can figure out what your world is going to be right now for a 24 page book, a hundred page book, 480, just go to Google
[00:21:36] Jason: it JVP royalty calculator and on Amazon advertising platform to get your row as you just divide that into a one.
[00:21:43] So one divided by a 0.7, if it’s a 70% royalty structure, just as the example would be a 1.4, two row as is breaking. That’s how you do that. Math. It’s not complicated. So you just figure it out or your royalty rate with the actual, and then you divide it by one and it’ll tell you a number and in, and then you just work towards achieving that number in your ads.
[00:22:08] then Kyle, do I have all that? What’s your thought on all that? That
[00:22:12] Kyle: is that’s right. A lot of the factors depend on your category, right? How much competition you’re in, will you be able to spend and break even, and get organic rank, that will depend on what your book is and who you’re competing with.
[00:22:26] But I think in general, that from this will hold, for books, it will also hold for physical products and then it comes down to just your overall strategy. What are you really trying to accomplish? Is your book going to be the top of funnel? Basically as a lead gen to get new people into your system and deem have opportunities baked into your book, that link out to your website or to other funnels to try and, drive more revenue or to Chris’s point is KTP or main revenue model.
[00:22:53] And you just want to drive sales, from that standpoint. Now, if you only have one book on KDP, unless you’re using one of Chris’s models and it’s a course as a book, you’re probably gonna need more than one KDP book. Okay. Go the classical route with it in order to make any sort of real money for the longterm.
[00:23:12] But maybe that’s not, maybe that’s not the goal. Maybe it’s just trying to like the Chris’s point. You’re trying to get the message out. So as I see it. You use it as a front end to bring people in would probably my best use case for KTP, unless you’re going with a broad catalog of books.
[00:23:27] And then it’s the wide catalog approach that actually drives you long-term revenue, which will then ultimately probably be more along the lines of organic sales that come through over time. But a catalog approach is how you can optimize it.
[00:23:42] Jason: I love that. Alright guys. Final thoughts around the table.
[00:23:45] We’ve talked to. A number of reviews, we’ve talked about a bestseller rankings and categories talked about, ROAS at ROAS and the Amazon ad platform. Any other final thoughts? And, if not, then let’s wrap it up. The question
[00:24:00] Kyle: based on your guys’ experience, do like obviously you get paid for royalty on my pages read.
[00:24:05] Have you noticed if pages are red for KDP, it has any sort of impact on you. W ranking your sales, if you get more red, do you see, or any growth in that, or is it just completely separate?
[00:24:15] Chris: If there’s a metric to track that? I don’t know what it is. I actually looked the other day. I have 2.5 million page reads, which I think is insane, but you guys know me.
[00:24:24] I’m going to use that as marketing. But that’s another way to monetize content is through Patriots. Amazon will, if you’re in the Kindle select program, They will pay based on the page reads. Now there’s black hat ways and there’s white hat ways. I mentioned the black hat ways. Don’t manipulate, just put out good content that people actually want to read.
[00:24:40] But to me, there’s just such a benefit to go physical, which is just going to take away. Like I don’t focus honestly, any energy at all at Kindle nominalized page reads, whatever it’s called. That’s not the type of content I’m putting out. Specifically for, to be read on
[00:24:55] Jason: Kindle.
[00:24:56] Yeah, either. I think the most valuable thing you can do on the KDP platform has published on three modalities. The Kindle edition, the paperback edition and the audible for audio edition, through acx.com that, that combo is where you maximize your profit out. And, and the audible in specifically, I’ve heard over and over people say, that’s where you make the most money as an author, as on the audible edition.
[00:25:22] And but I’ve of all the books I’ve published only a couple of have audible edition. So it’s knowing the path and walking the path are two different things, but in terms of, just pages read, it’s never been something I focused on either.
[00:25:34] Chris: It would work better on fiction books.
[00:25:38] Kyle: Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. At least when Michael does roll out his audio or his book kill already have the audio voiceover ready to go. Cause he already got a cool British accent that he can just apply to. He doesn’t have to pay anybody to actually read his book.
[00:25:53] Michael: Available for reading your book.
[00:25:55] Jason, if you want me on Northville, that would work with your brand. It doesn’t sound very Pacific Northwest, or
[00:26:02] Kyle: even
[00:26:03] Jason: can you sound like a middle age, Seattle guy. I’m from America. I don’t
[00:26:08] Kyle: think I can,
[00:26:10] Michael: I guess this would be my best impression of a middle east Seattle guy, but I don’t really know what this whole thing on that.
[00:26:15] So I bet it maybe not
[00:26:16] Kyle: put myself forward. Oh, that’s pretty good. Actually, your Texas accent isn’t too shabby either. Ah, damn it. It’s hotter than a
[00:26:27] Michael: Scott can hear it. Yeah, maybe I think we’re getting well, well done.
[00:26:34] Jason: I’m wrapping this thing up. Thanks everybody for a great conversation today about KTP metrics as always. It’s an honor. If you’re listening to this show on the, e-commerce leader.com podcast on a podcast player of choice, then feel free to check out the pollen app, which is where we record this, the original content of it.
[00:26:52] And we’d love to have you follow. And a follow along on any player that you’d like with the highest review, your highest and best review, it would be greatly appreciated for the show. And, gents as always, it’s an honor. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today.
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