Today, I want to talk about a cool writing tool that I’ve been using for years.
One of the things it does is it helps you fine tune your marketing.
This means you’re better positioned when you’re ready to publish. More than that, before writing your book, you can check to see if find a niche is overly saturated. (Wait until you see my favorite part.)
There are millions of books out there. How will you stand out?
The research that Publisher Rocket gives you can give you an edge up. In fact, I just used it AGAIN (May 2022) to research a specific phrase.
How does it work?
Let me show you a few cool things…then we’ll dig into details.
I just took these screen shots, so bare with my horrible attempt at circling things! Okay, in this first picture, we’ll look at the difference in simple wording changes.
If you write science-fiction, it’s heavily popular. I want you to look at that first circle, where it says number of competitors. More than 66k — YIKES. That’s rough when you’re starting out. Now, look where it says estimated searches per month. Science-fiction has been getting about 6,000 searches over the past month on Amazon.
That’s a lot of people looking for that topic. By just changing the keyword to science-fiction books, you realize only 1,200 are searching for that specific term. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but when you go back and look at the number of competitors, you see it’s also 66,000– and the earnings dropped. Can you see why I love this thing? Publisher Rocket…well, it rocks.
Now, let’s drill a little deeper in the keyword research.
If you’re just starting out, and you target something tighter, like the space opera sub-genre/niche — there are only 1,200 competitors — not 66,000! Having aha moments? Yeah. I know. I get it. I remember when I first learned there was a tool like this.
Get your foot in the door.
Don’t get lost like a drop of water in the ocean.
A lot of what helps when you’re just starting out is positioning. That means you know where you want to target, you know precisely where you want to land…and why. If this is a hobby, ignore me completely. Do your thing, little rock star!
And full-disclosure, as a happy customer for years since 2017, I’ve partnered with Publisher Rocket and earn a small commission if you choose to buy it. It’s the way they say thanks for sending over people who might be interested in using their writing tool.
If this is something you’re hoping to make money from, you want the best chance at success. That means knowing which keywords will help you, and what sub-genres aren’t so intense, that your book gets lost among the millions of others.
Ready for a super, duper, extra gold nugget of coolness?
Oh yeah, here we go…
One of my favorite things it shows you is a competition score.
If you noticed it blocked out on the screenshot earlier (can’t give away everything, but you can see more on the their tutorial page, which has snippets of videos showing you everything), you’ll see a score that ranges from 1-100. If it’s 100, that means it’s a really tough market to compete in. When starting out, you want to aim for lower numbers so you have a better shot at building visibility.
Seriously, there’s a reason I’ve had this writing tool for so many years. I bought it in…went to go look, then took a screenshot (see below).
I bought it back in 2017 for ONE PRICE, not some yearly subscription, it’s pay once, use it forever. And they constantly upgrade it. Like I said, I just used it in May. Note: the name changed…it used to be called KDP Rocket, now it’s Publisher Rocket. Same thing.
If you’re interested in checking out Publisher Rocket, you can check it out here.