How many times have you read a blog post, book, webinar, or YouTube video offering book marketing advice to authors, and thought: “I need to be doing this” …. and a month later you still haven’t put any of the successful strategies into action? Welcome to my world!

I knew I needed to change my approach. In my defense I’ve been so focused on writing books that I haven’t had the time or energy to focus on book marketing. Oh! let’s be honest—I’m an introvert, and marketing and promotion doesn’t come naturally to me, and with limited time available I want to make sure that the activities I’m during are going to make an impact. So I decided to put together this case study to use the strategies I’ve been learning about, and monitoring the impact of my efforts.

Listening to the Experts

I’ve been following Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur site for a few years and have his Publisher Rocket software. He’s also guest posted on this website a couple of times. In addition to this, one of my recent reads has been David Gaughran’s Amazon Decoded book. Both of these guys write about the importance of categories and tags, so I finally decided to stop reading about their metadata strategies and start putting them into action.

Could tweaking my categories and tags really make a difference to my Amazon rankings and sales? By the end of this Case Study you and I will both have the answer to this question.

Books in this Case Study

I’m a nonfiction author. I write travel guides, How-To guides about how to write and self-publish your own travel guide, and books about travel writing techniques. I’ve also created a couple of companion workbooks for my How-To series, and a couple of five senses travel journals.

Most of my books are aimed at travel writers who want to write and publish a travel-related nonfiction book, but two are Turkey travel guides aimed at independent travelers who want to get off the beaten path to explore the little corner of Turkey we call home.

Usually the peak sales period for my travel guides is between April and August, but sales have been dismal this year. The Covid pandemic has decimated the travel industry, and people are either too scared to travel or are being blocked from traveling by the governments.

So I decided these two travel guides would be a good starting point to see the impact of updating my Amazon categories and tags. I wanted to see whether updating my book’s metadata and a trickle of sales could have a positive impact on my category rankings, and potentially encourage more sales.

This case study will be relevant for anyone who wants to target a relevant niche Amazon category to increase the visibility of their book.

Optimizing the Off the Beaten Path Category

Guide Book: Gumusluk Travel Guide

I’d identified three keywords that were highly relevant for my travel guides:

1. budget travel
2. Turkey travel
3. independent travel
4. off the beaten path

I’ve already been using the budget and Turkey travel categories, but competition in these is stiff. There isn’t a category for independent travel, and when I looked on Publisher Rocket for a U.S. Amazon category for off the beaten path, there wasn’t one, which meant I wasn’t able to see how many books I’d have to sell to get in the top ten or in the number one spot.

Off the Beaten Path did show up in the Keyword search. So if I want to get found for this in the U.S. I’d have to add it to one of the other metadata areas, like book title or subtitle or one of my seven keyword terms.

One of the current challenges with Publisher Rocket is that the only territories it currently covers is the U.S. and Germany, rumor has it that they’re going to add other territories, including the UK.

When I did a manual search of Amazon U.K., Off the beaten path was listed as a category. So rather than focus on the U.S. I decided to focus on tweaking my U.K. category for my Gumusluk travel guide.

I emailed Amazon U.K. through my Amazon Author page and asked them to add my Gumusluk travel guide to:

• Kindle Store > Books > Travel & Tourism > Guidebook Series > Off the Beaten Path

When you email Amazon you need to include the full string. You won’t see these anymore on your book sales page, but if you click on the category it’ll take you to the hierarchy view.

A few days later I was in the category, and not just in it, but in the #1 spot. How many books had I sold? One!

What this shows is that you can target a niche category that’s relevant for your book and if the competition in the category is low you have a greater chance of getting in the top ten or in the top spot.

The only place I’m using the Off the Beaten Path metadata was in my subtitle and my choice of category:

I wasn’t even using it as one of my keywords. According to Amazon Decoded, as long as you have the keyword in one of your metadata areas you don’t need to repeat it in another. But, even though I was using Off the Beaten path in my subtitle, my book didn’t automatically get added to that category, I had to request it.

So one sale + request to be added to a niche category = me in the #1 spot.

After another Gumusluk travel guide sale on September 6th, my best seller ranking had improved, and although my ranking in Off the Beaten Path had slipped, I was clawing my way up the broad travel categories.

So how and why had I slipped to the #2 spot? I’d pushed myself off – with one of my other books!

Guide Book: Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide

My other travel in this series, the Bodrum Travel Guide, usually sells about two or three times the Gumusluk book. So I decided to see if I could get that travel guide into the same niche category.

On the day that my Gumusluk book was in the #1 slot, I updated my Bodrum subtitle to match my Gumusluk guide, and I also used off the beaten path as one of my seven keywords.

The next day I sold one Bodrum Travel guide and my book went to #1 in the Off the Beaten Path Category.

Up until this point my book had only been in two categories. I hadn’t sent an email to Amazon U.K. to ask them to add me to the off the beaten path category. But by changing my subtitle and my keyword, I’d automatically been added to this third category.

So one sale + update to my subtitle + keyword update = me in the #1 spot.

It just goes to show that what Dave and David have been preaching about the importance of metadata – has some merit, and I should have listened to them sooner.

But then it gets a bit quirky

The next day, this happened: The books changed places again.

This would be understandable if I’d sold another Gumusluk travel guide, but the last time I sold a copy was on August 25th, and since then I’d sold four copies of my Bodrum travel guide.

So if I’d sold more Bodrum books, why had this book only spent one day in the #1 spot, before my Gumusluk guide returned to the #1 spot and stayed there for a number of days? It didn’t make sense, so I checked my dashboard. The four Bodrum sales were in the U.K. whereas the one Gumusluk sale was in Germany.

Why would a book that sold one book in Germany be in the #1 spot in a U.K. category, when the #2 book in that category had sold four books in the U.K. category. I checked Amazon.de and my Gumusluk guide is only showing up in Budget and Middle East Travel – no mention of Off the Beaten Path.

Both books are enrolled in KU, but I’ve only had recent page reads for Bodrum, and none for the other.

Maybe this switch-around was due to some kind of Amazon glitch? Systems aren’t infallible.

Update September 5th:

My books had switched places again:

No sales for either of these books, but still retaining these two top spots—I wonder how long that will last? I’m going to keep checking periodically to see what happens.

Update September 10th:

• Both books still in the #1 and #2 spot.
• No sales for Gumusluk book in #2.
• One U.K. sale on September 8th for the Bodrum book. I’m still at #1, my Best-sellers rank has gone for 287k to ~153k and my table placement on my two broad categories has taken me to just outside the Top 50 in both Best Sellers lists — just a little nudge, and I’ll be on the first page of results.

Update September 14th:

• Both books still in the #1 and #2 spot.
• No sales for Gumusluk book in #2.
• One U.K. sale on September 12th for the Bodrum book. I’m still at #1, my Best-sellers rank has gone from ~152k to 41k, and my table placement on my two broad categories has taken me to the Top 10 in one, and just outside in the other.

This raises the question .. how could my best-seller rank be at 41,381 which equates to selling about 7 books per day (according to the Kindlepreneur Amazon KDP Sales Rank Calculator).

Case Study Summary

So far, being in the #1 and #2 spot hasn’t created a sales spike. But we’re coming to the end of the season here, so I had low expectations. But I’ve made the most of my bragging rights. I’ve posted on Facebook and Twitter about this achievement, and a screen shot of this has now been added to my marketing materials folder so that I can add them to my Bodrum and Gumusluk Book’s sales pages on my website.

The goal of this case study was to assess whether I could have a positive impact on my category placement, and I’ve shown that by choosing the right (relevant) niche and with minimal book sales, I can.

Bottom line though – I’m happy to see that by identifying a relevant category and tweaking a few of my metadata fields, I was able to get both of my travel guides to the top two spots. Just shows what a little bit of category and keyword research can do for placement.

No my sales haven’t soared, but they’re more than a trickle, and in these challenging times, I’m counting this as a win. (I’m just glad that when we experienced that perfect storm of a Military Coup and a Syrian Refugee crisis in Turkey, I had the foresight to diversify, and expand my writing niche to something other than Turkey Travel Guides!)

Watch this space to discover whether my sales will grow, or if these category placements are only good for bragging rights.

Next Steps

I’ve scratched the surface for these two books, but there’s more work to do to find other relevant categories. Then it’s time to move onto my other nonfiction books.

Tweaking categories and keywords takes focus and effort, but I’ve just proved that making small tweaks, and choosing the right niche categories can push your books up the charts. And who doesn’t want to be at the top of a Top 100 Paid chart on Amazon?