Welcome to Episode 65 of Published. Today we're talking to publishing guide and book launch coach Scott James about how books become Amazon bestsellers. Scott explains how he helps authors plan successful book launches and bestseller campaigns and how this can add value to your book promotion strategy.

Many authors want the distinction of being labeled a bestseller but aren't sure how to get there. Trying to become a bestseller can seem like a complicated or elusive process when you're going it alone. But Scott explains how it all works for the Amazon lists in today's episode. From presales to Amazon reviews, Scott goes over what is and isn't important when trying to reach a bestseller list. He will also talk about how to find your appropriate Amazon categories and which mistakes to avoid when planning your book release and building your Amazon listing.

In this episode, Scott leans on his expertise as a book launch coach and publishing advisor and discusses how he helps authors reach strong sales and rankings with their books and how you can do the same.

Let's get into the interview!

1:25 – Alright, Scott, welcome to Published! Well, let's start off by having you tell folks a bit about yourself and what you do.

• My name is Scott James. I'm a publishing guide and a book launch coach. And essentially, I just like to support especially independent authors to go from idea to published. And then also, I like to think about it like I give the book the launch it deserves. You worked for two years on it. Let's give it a good jumpstart out of the gate.

2:01 – So today, we're talking about Amazon bestsellers. And to kind of lay the groundwork here for our listeners. For those who are unfamiliar, what does it mean to be an Amazon bestseller?

• Yeah, well, that is an excellent question. And I'll preface this by saying there's a whole lot of debate around what that answer is, but the easiest answer is to say that, if you're the number one book, in any category, on Amazon's website, you'll get a little orange flag that says, Number One Bestseller, and that means that you're the bestseller in that category.

• Then there are other versions of that. For instance, there's an overall list out of every book on Amazon, and you need to be selling 1000s and 1000s of books per day to be that number one on all the Amazon charts. And then there's also a way to look at it where the top 100 books in each category are going to be listed on as one of the bestsellers in that category. There's sort of a gradient, I guess. But the easiest definition is the number one book, in each of Amazon's up to 2000 subcategories, is considered a bestseller.

3:35 – As always, we're talking about quantities and numbers and tactics. So how many sales should a person generally expect to have to receive to accomplish this bestseller status? And are there other factors that go into this this status, which is reviews ratings set forth?

• Well, again, the preface to that answer is nobody knows 100%, for sure, because this is a secret Amazon algorithm. And of course, if everybody knew exactly the recipe, it would be much easier to game it or do things like that. So, with that caveat said primarily, what's going to make you a bestseller is selling the most books. If you move the most units in a 24-hour period, that's going to be the biggest factor.

• As far as other factors that might influence achieving that status, the biggest one is velocity. This means if you if you have zero sales, and then suddenly you have 200 sales that's looked upon less favorably then if it's slightly more gradual, even if it's over a couple of days. You don't want to go so far that it's so gradual that it's spread out over like a month or two months, where you're not getting a volume of sales in a day.

• But sometimes I'll work with folks, and they'll want to have everybody go buy the book at four o'clock on a Tuesday. And that advice is out there. And that's not necessarily a great idea. But having like a 72-hour push over your launch day, for example, is good, as opposed to a three-month drawn out, preorder campaign, which has other benefits, but specifically for Amazon bestseller, not as great.

• Reviews are a factor. Although they are not a huge determinant in the ranking. As it moves around day to day, as time goes on, it's a much bigger factor in how well the book shows up in search results and how sustainable your sales are.

• So, I'd say in the during the launch period, the biggest thing is sales, like just unit sales. And then very quickly after within a few days or a week, you want the reviews to be going up. Amazon will notice that, and you want them to be verified reviews, meaning people who bought the book on Amazon, and then reviewed it on Amazon, and you want traffic, you know how many people are going to your book page.

• All of those seem to come into play. And then there are a whole bunch of supporting factors, like how your book description is written, keywords, things like that, about how you structure it, and we could do a whole, a whole other podcast just on all the strategies there. But the main thing is book sales, followed quickly by concentration of book sales, and then followed by reviews and, and traffic to the page.

6:59 – And so there's obviously a lot of hard work and strategy going into achieving bestseller status. Why does an author care? What value does that bring to a book on Amazon?

• There's a lot of reasons to care. And on one hand, I've found that it's a very nice crystallizing goal for people when you're planning your book launch, because there's a lot of things that you could do. But for most people, just the reality of personal bandwidth, there's only a few things that you should do. And this is a very nice, tangible, concrete goal. Even before any of the results, I find that it has this really nice crystallizing effect for people to just say, alright, this is where I want people to buy my book on Amazon because it has the widest reach. And I want people to buy it during my launch week. It gives you something to plan around and something to focus all the attention and activity around.

• That said, if you are in the top 10 or so top 20 of a category, Amazon's going to notice. I'd say the number one benefit is not actually being the number one book, the number one benefit of sort of doing a bestseller run is being in a top ranked book in one or more categories that your target audience is shopping in or browsing or pays attention to.

• And a big reason for this is because when you're able to get your book highly ranked, Amazon will take notice if you can maintain that ranking over time, and they'll start to do things on your behalf because Amazon is an e-commerce store.

• They noticed that you're selling, they want to help you because they see that people are buying your book and it becomes a virtuous cycle. If you sell well, consistently, for days, weeks months, Amazon will start to recommend your book to other people who shop in those categories. Sometimes people will be following a category on Amazon, and you might be included in like a hot new release email, you might be in those carousels further down the page.

• All of those are the really big meaty benefits because they put you in front of an audience that isn't yours. You know, these are not your friends and family going to buy a book on launch day. This is people who are looking for a book on leadership or people who are looking for a fiction book in your genre. So being able to pick out of the 100s and 1000s of categories on Amazon, the ones where your target audience is, that's the biggest benefit.

• Secondary to that but flashier is if you can be a number one bestseller, you can put it in your bio, you can talk about it, it's going to be something that you can claim forever. And that's really valuable. If you're someone who's using your book to pivot, or to build a speaking career, if you're trying to have the kind of bio that is noticeable and draws attention for somebody, a client or a business.

• It has all kinds of concrete benefits, like trackable benefits with sales, traffic, etc. And then it also has these harder to track or more intangible benefits where it just bolsters your reputation, your thought leadership bio.

• I also like to say that ranking well, and in relevant categories over time is a very powerful brand building gesture. If your book is ranking well, when people go to look at it, it's part of your product details, the three categories that you're ranking the best in. If you tell new folks or you give a talk, and you send people to your Amazon site, if you have three reviews and you're number 2000 in some category, not that impressive. But if you have 45 reviews, and you've maintained like a number 40 ranking in multiple relevant categories, it helps vet you, essentially, so it's good for your brand in that way.

11:37 – So big picture, what are the strategies that you use when you're working with authors to hit a bestsellers list?

• I love talking about those. As you can tell, I could go all day. But the biggest thing is you've got to pick the right categories. And then the second biggest thing is, you need to work with all your supporters. I call it rallying your network. Rally your network in the different ways that they can help you best.

• You want to first position your book in the right categories. And the secret there is that each book gets uploaded automatically to two categories, when it's added to Amazon. But if you know who to talk to, and how to find them, you can discover up to eight more categories that you can personally, or your publisher can, add your book to. And I'm always surprised to find out that a lot of people don't know this, including marketing people at other publishing companies.

• Then the big thing is what do you do? Who do you tell? And how do you rally your network? And how do you rally? Or how do you reach out to people who you don't know? And there's months and months of strategic work, that can really move the needle on all of that.

13:07 – Now, we've been talking so far in the context of a book launch, books that are upcoming. What about an author who's already published? What can they do to improve their bestseller ranking on Amazon?

• There's a lot you can do. And I would say just do a category audit. That would be the first thing. Just go to your go to your book page and see what categories your book is currently showing up for.

• Click on them. Look at what else is in that category. Are those your competitors? Are those the folks that you want to be next to? And then dig in. Are there other categories underneath that? Are there subcategories that are more relevant? Would you be better served being in that subcategory where you might rank better next to books that are closer to your subject matter?

• You can look at how your description compares to other books that you consider competitors or in your genre, and maybe you should update your description, using all kinds of copywriting tricks, maybe taking a look at your keywords is going to give you more traffic.

• So essentially just doing a basic audit. What are my categories? Why did I pick them? Are they still the best ones for me? What are my keywords? Why did I pick them? Are they still the best ones for me, and then finding either a person or one of the many tools out there to help you learn as much as you can about your choices.

14:48 – And you mentioned the categories, but I imagine folks are wondering, what is the “right category?” Is it the most accurate category for my content, or is there a way to assess a category in terms of relative competition within the category? Or is it a balance?

• Yeah, it's definitely a balance. Like I say, you get to add up to eight more categories. So, the way I think about it is you're working with up to 10 categories. And you can take a couple of them, one or two, and basically look for where do I have a really good shot at hitting number one, and then take the other six, or three or four of the other ones and say, where's there really high traffic? Maybe I won't be selling 300 books a day, like some of the books in that category. But based on what I can learn, and just derive from the rankings of the book in that category, I can probably be in the top 50, pretty consistently.

• That means that if people are going into that category, buying other books, in really high numbers, you're going to have a pretty high likelihood being in their recommendation carousels further down the page, or while they're going to that book, your book is going to show up or there, somehow it just all of it builds on itself. When you pick a category, it's not just oh, I'm going to pick some random category, that's a huge stretch for my book, just so I can hit number one.

• I think, in the publishing industry, it's good for all of us to be ethical about it and choose the categories that do fit our book. But also, it's not even to your advantage to pick a category that doesn't fit. If it's really easy to rank number one, then you won't get any benefit from it, even if you did rank number one, it might be some category that nobody visits or something.

• Pick categories that are a combination of medium to high traffic with openings. A lot of times I'll look at it, maybe the number one book in that category is selling 1000 books a day. But the number five book in that category is selling 22 books a day. There's a lot of business categories like that. And you can get a lot of visibility by being in the top 10 of that category over time, not just at your launch. And that's just as valuable as rocketing the number one in any particular category.

17:41 – You talked about some of the things that authors should do, what are the mistakes that you see authors make when they're angling towards trying to optimize their Amazon page, or especially if they're hoping to become a bestseller?

• The number one issue is not understanding the process. People will take second or third-hand information and try to build a strategy around it, which is a problem. So certainly, you want to do your research.

• But once people have done that, even then, a big mistake I see people make is over-emphasizing the number one, like the quest for number one. It's awesome to hit it. And it's a concrete thing, and you can brag about it forever. And I'm not trying to downplay that. But once you do that it's kind of like, what happens next? Because your book lasts for basically forever. And you spent two years on this.

• Hitting number one on any list is less important than how durable is this book, how many people can it get in front of, how consistent and long term can my sales be.

• Then specific to the Amazon bestseller run, I'd say a mistake I see people make is over emphasizing preorders. And that's because the advice to really go after preorders is all over the place. And that really helps preorders stack up and then they all get counted the week your book is released for the big lists like New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today. But for Amazon, anytime somebody buys your book, it counts right then.

• And so, if you are sending people for two months to go buy your book, you do get all those sales, you get the royalties, etc. But if you're selling, 10 books a day for two months, and you sell 250 books, you're going to rank in your categories, wherever selling 10 books ranks you for those two months, as opposed to if you compress that preorder period even to one week, or if you sort of use your preorder time, not to drive sales, but to get people excited, and then unleash all these people who are wanting your book during the launch week, then you're going to do a more concentrated volume of at least 250 sales. And that's going to give you a lot more visibility right at launch. I don't know if it qualifies as a mistake, I view it as a mistake specific to the Amazon platform.

20:38 – So you've talked a bit about activating an author's network in roundabout terms. When thinking about friends, family, all the folks that we as authors hope to lean on to support us in these types of quests, or just to raise our Amazon Author profile, how can those folks help?

• Well, the biggest way that anybody can help you is to either put your book in front of their audience, if they have an audience, or introduce you to someone who can put your book in front of their audience. I would say the hardest thing for any author is to get exposure to new potential readers. If you know someone who has a connection to media, or somebody who has a podcast, etc, and those folks have a similar audience, get those introductions so that maybe there's a connection, and they'll put your book in front of their audience. To me, that's the most important.

• Aside from that, most people don't have that. So, it's really helpful to just sing the book's praises when it comes out on social media. It's really helpful to go and leave a review, it's really helpful to buy a copy and just tell your friends.

• It's amazing how challenging it is to ask for reviews. And I find friends and family especially, or colleagues or clients, things like that, everybody's just busy. And the phrasing that I've found people are comfortable with is I love that you loved my book, the hardest thing for me is to get quality honest reviews on Amazon, if you would, if you want to help me, please go put that book on Amazon. And then you're sort of enrolling the person onto your team.

• It's nuanced, but I find even authors who are uncomfortable with self-promotion, can get behind this idea of like, well, they already love the book. And now I'm just asking them to help. I run into that all the time. And just having a phrase ready for how to ask is as helpful as having an elevator pitch.

• I tell folks that it's good to have as many reviews as you can at launch. And then a good target is, after your launch period, to try to get 100 reviews on Amazon, because 100 reviews is super noticeable if you can get to that in a year. You're going to be doing a lot of this just sort of on the ground, grassroots work to get your book out there. And you're going to learn a lot about what people respond to, to try to hit that number.

24:42 – Definitely, that's great advice. And obviously you've coached a lot of authors during their book launches. So, rolling into our conclusion here, is there any other advice that you'd like to offer folks as they get ready for their book launch?

• The main thing I tell people is do a few things really well. So that's number one, do a few things really well.

• And people always freak out about social media when they're starting a bestseller book launch or any kind of launch campaign. And I would say six months before your book is released, three months before your book is released, it is not the time to start a brand-new social media account on Instagram or TikTok and expect that account to move the needle.

• So rather than saying, oh, my launch is coming up, I really need to start doing 12 more things, I would say think of it as, my launch is coming up, I really need to look at the groups that I've built, and how do I go deeper with them? And how do I rally them? How do I get those folks excited? Because they already like what I'm doing, and how do I help them help me? How do I give them even more? And make it a big party.

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ABOUT SCOTT

With 15+ years of experience in various roles throughout the publishing industry, Scott works as an independent publishing guide, and loves helping authors publish books with courage and quality. Scott previously served as director of author branding at Greenleaf, and has been featured in Entrepreneur.com as one of “27 masters of Marketing and PR Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From.” Besides being an expert on the ins and outs of the publishing process, he is also a writer and author himself. Fun fact: his debut poetry collection was an Amazon bestseller and a #1 New Release in Amazon’s Inspirational Poetry category. If you'd like to learn more about Scott's work and how he serves independent authors, check out his website here: https://scottjamesconsulting.c....