Refresh Your Metadata Twice a Year
Think your book description is locked in stone once you hit publish? It’s not—and treating it that way could be costing you sales. Here’s why every major platform expects you to update it, and why twice a year isn’t optional.
A Series Bible Is Launch Infrastructure
What if the continuity errors in book two were already written before you even started drafting it? A series bible turns memory into infrastructure—recording ages, distances, and rules so future books don’t silently break canon.
The Errors That Ship, and How to Find Them
What if the flaw in your manuscript is invisible to you by design? A contradiction ran through my novel’s premise for seven chapters, surviving two full reads. Self editing continuity errors don’t announce themselves. Neither did a careful reader.
Reviews and Promo Sites: What They Can and Cannot Do
Are book promo sites worth it, or just paid email blasts dressed as reviews? Amazon publishes its review rules in writing and enforces them. Promo sites publish only their own numbers—and sell the very placement those numbers are meant to justify.
Do Not Bid on the Obvious Keywords
What if the keywords you picked in five minutes are the same ones every competitor chose too? Amazon tells book advertisers to start with 100 keywords, not seven obvious ones—yet almost nobody does that, and it’s costing them ad budget and sales.
Categories Are a Pace Problem, Not a Prestige Problem
What if the category you picked has nothing to do with what your book is about—and everything to do with a daily sales rate you can’t sustain past Friday?
Answer-Engine Optimisation for Books
Ask ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini about your book and you’ll get three different answers—wrong genre, invented plots, confident lies. Here’s why AI assistants can’t agree on your book, and what determines whether they’ll ever recommend it at all.
Non-Fiction Comps: Get the Lane Right Before the Level
What happens when a devotional study gets shelved next to scholarly commentary? Readers expect Greek parsing and footnotes, get warm prose instead—and one-star reviews follow. The real culprit isn’t quality. It’s a lane problem hiding as a level one.
The Seven Keyword Boxes, and What Each One Is For
Seven boxes. Fifty characters each. Almost no instructions from Amazon. So why do so many authors swear there’s a secret ranking hierarchy hiding inside amazon kdp keywords?
Fiction Comps: Get the Audience Right Before the Theme
What’s the most expensive comp-title mistake a writer can make? It isn’t choosing a book that’s too famous—it’s choosing one written for an entirely different reader. Miscategorized audience follows a manuscript for years. Here’s why audience must come before theme, every single time.