Decisions, Decisions!
Before you begin the process of uploading your manuscript to Draft2Digital, there are a few decisions to consider.
1) Is your book part of a series?
This seems simple enough. A yes or no answer, right? Not so simple for me, actually. I already had Uncovering Norman published in 2018 with Balboa Press. Now I was self-publishing Lady. Did I want to actually call this a series? I have a few more manuscripts for similar stories already written, either complete or waiting for final editing. The determining factor for me was whether there was a benefit for creating a series for these books.
I decided No. I would let each book stand alone, since one didn’t really intersect with another. I left the question for “Series” blank and moved on through the process.
As I continued, second thoughts started to creep in. A lot of people loved Norman and many continue to ask about him even six years later. His book was extremely important to me. The premise and format guided my writing of Lady and the other stories. Why not call it a series since that was essentially the nature of these books? A series of narratives describing my interactions with ghosts and the subsequent research to prove their existence. The success of Norman would continue to drive its readers (and followers) to read Lady and the later books. Of course it was a series!
I returned to the initial page on D2D with the basic book info and changed the classification to series. Then I had to choose a name for the series. That wasn’t too difficult. I stayed with the theme and chose True Ghost Story. I’m considering re-publishing Norman on the D2D site in the future so all the books in the series will be in one place, but I’m not ready to do that yet. I’ll wait to see how Lady does first.
2) Identify the search terms
Keywords help readers find your book in a search on each of the various sales sites. D2D encouraged the keywords be listed by priority. Most vendors accept a limited number of keywords. For example, Amazon accepts the first seven keywords. The keywords are critical. They need to be simple yet descriptive. Some authors use terms they feel will propel them into top seller slots so they can announce their book is a best-seller.
My consideration was different. I wasn’t so concerned about being a top seller. This True Ghost Story series of books has its own niche, not something the average reader would be looking for. I had to make the keywords simple enough that my typical reader would think of them when doing a search, yet succinct enough to narrow the search results on each sales site. GHOST as a search term would bring up thousands of book titles to choose from and many pages to browse through. Too much!
I decided on seven keyword phrases that included words such as reincarnation, ghost, mystery, historical, non-fiction, new age, genealogy, and others. I copied some of them from Norman’s Amazon page since these were selected by Balboa Press when it was published, including Occult Astral Projection, and New Age Reincarnation.
I hope these keywords actually do lead readers to my books, especially new ones who might never have read Norman. I suggest searching for the actual title, if you can remember it, and maybe add on the author’s last name. There are at least two other authors named Susan Rogers on Amazon and I don’t keep an author page on their site, so just an author search isn’t very helpful. I think the easiest way is to go to my author page on Books2Read.com
What's Next? Undercover!
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