Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast

A brand that doesn’t line up is a silent sales killer. We dig into why readers make snap judgments in under a second, how confusion and inconsistency create friction, and the small, practical moves that turn browsers into buyers. Think of branding as a trust filter: the clearer your patterns, the faster the “yes.”

We start with the highest leverage fix—your bio. Using a simple four-line framework, we show how to match voice to genre, humanize your profile, and direct readers to a next step. From there, we tackle a deceptively powerful change: one clear, current photo everywhere. In a world of spammy accounts and AI noise, visual consistency signals “this is real,” boosting recognition and engagement across Amazon, your site, newsletters, and social.

Then we sharpen your book description so it stops burying the lead. Open with the promise and stakes, align tone to category, and mirror the best version across your retail page and website. We move into visual cohesion with a lightweight (and easy to implement) brand kit. You’ll hear why evergreen banners can save you work, how to align promo assets to the book’s typography, and what makes a series instantly recognizable at thumbnail size.

Finally, we unlock Amazon Author Central’s underused fields—From the Author, From the Inside Flap, and more—to deepen connection and feed the algorithm with relevant, brand-aligned copy. Overwhelmed? Use our 1% rule: make one improvement per week. Update the bio, unify the photo, polish the hook, build the brand kit. These small, steady steps compound into trust, discoverability, and sales.

If this helped, subscribe, share with an author friend, and leave a quick review. Tell us the first 1% change you’ll make, and text “podcast” to 888-402-8940 with your questions and ideas.
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Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
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Feeling like every promo is uphill? We unpack why marketing stalls when a book is presented to the wrong readers — and how smart positioning turns traffic into sales. Penny and Amy break down the signals that shape buying decisions in under five seconds: category choices, keywords that actually guide Amazon, cover conventions that telegraph sub-genre, and hooks that speak to what readers want right now.

We share real-world shifts that changed outcomes fast, including a romance that soared after moving from an overly spicy label to a truer contemporary slot and a mystery that found its people by swapping “cozy” for “amateur sleuth.” You’ll hear how to diagnose a mismatch when ads get clicks but no buys, why “too unique” covers quietly repel your ideal audience, and how to use reviews as free market research to refine your description and promise.

This conversation is a roadmap for authors who want to sell more without burning everything down. You’ll learn to niche with confidence, align title and subtitle with retail reality, refresh descriptions with language readers already use, and adopt the 1% rule: small, targeted improvements that compound. If you’ve been trying to reach everyone, it’s time to reach the right ones.

Ready to fix the foundation and stop wasting ad spend? Listen now, then text podcast to 888-402-8940 to share your positioning challenge, subscribe for upcoming deep dives, and leave a review to help more authors find this show.
Send us your feedback!
Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
Be sure you're following the show: by clicking the + Follow button on the top right of our show page. If you're already following you'll see a ↓ downward arrow.
Locate Ratings & Reviews: Scroll down on our podcast page until you find the "Ratings & Reviews" section.
Rate the podcast: Click on the stars to give the podcast a rating.
Write your review: Under the star rating there will be the most recent review and just below that click "Write a Review" and compose your review in the text box that appears.
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Want a simple, concrete way to sell more books on Amazon? We’re taking you inside A+ Content—the image modules beneath your description—and showing how smart visuals, tight copy, and brand consistency can raise conversions, reduce returns, and make your page feel like a pro built it. 

Together we map the shopper’s journey down the page: how the cover earns the scroll, how A+ tiles anchor expectations, and how crisp visuals plus one-line hooks close the gap between browsing and buying. We share real numbers from Amazon (yes, A+ content can help you sell more books!). You’ll learn the most common mistakes, the right way to quote reviews, and why fewer, stronger modules beat filling every slot.

We also cover the nuts and bolts of access—KDP’s Marketing tab for indie authors, and how to coordinate with your publisher if they control the page. For series authors, we explain how to showcase world-building and covers without turning your tiles into a tech spec sheet. 
Finally, we tackle a listener question: should you use an author photo or a brand logo on your Amazon Author Page? We weigh trust signals, genre expectations, and when a logo makes sense for pen names or corporate-facing nonfiction.

If you’re ready to turn your Amazon detail page into a conversion engine, this walkthrough gives you the blueprint. Subscribe, share with an author friend, and leave a quick review telling us the one A+ change you’ll make this week.
And here is the article on the KDP changes we mentioned at the start of the call: https://www.ibpa-online.org/news/717526/Amazons-2026-eBook-Download-Update-A-Reader-First-Change-that-Publishers-Should-Understand.htm
Send us your feedback!
Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
Be sure you're following the show: by clicking the + Follow button on the top right of our show page. If you're already following you'll see a ↓ downward arrow.
Locate Ratings & Reviews: Scroll down on our podcast page until you find the "Ratings & Reviews" section.
Rate the podcast: Click on the stars to give the podcast a rating.
Write your review: Under the star rating there will be the most recent review and just below that click "Write a Review" and compose your review in the text box that appears.
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You can run ads, post daily, and grind all week—and still watch your book stall. The missing piece isn’t more hustle. It’s positioning. We pull back the curtain on the quiet issues that throttle sales!

We start with the most common and costly mistake: treating categories like identity badges rather than traffic lanes. Amazon’s ecosystem pattern-matches behavior, so a miscategorized book gets shown to the wrong readers, earns letdown reviews, and falls into a negative feedback loop. From cozy mysteries that aren’t actually cozy to memoirs that read like prescriptive nonfiction, we show how small misalignments ripple into poor conversion and expensive clicks.

Then we reframe the hook as the reason to care, not a plot dump. If a reader can’t repeat your promise in one sentence, they won’t buy it and they won’t recommend it. We share practical ways to surface stakes, transformation, and genre signals at the top of your retail page. We also tackle covers: why “unique” can backfire, how milliseconds decide “for me or not for me,” and what it means to fit your shelf without blending into noise. Finally, we rebuild the description around a scannable promise and reader outcomes, and we tighten keywords to match how real readers search.

Walk away with a priority checklist: verify category and subgenre, pressure-test your cover against top sellers, craft a repeatable one-sentence hook, rewrite your description to promise value, and align keywords with market language. We’ve also added a quick alignment test in the show notes to help you spot gaps. If you’re ready to turn attention into sales and let the right readers find you, this conversation gives you the exact steps to get there.
And as promised in the episode here's your quick Alignment Test:
Score each from 1–5:
Category Fit
Cover Fit
Hook Strength
Description Clarity
Reader Fit
Interpretation:
20–25: You’re positioned well — focus on visibility next.
14–19: One or two areas need tightening.
13 or below: You’ve got significant positioning friction (totally fixable!).
Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe
Send us your feedback!
Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
Be sure you're following the show: by clicking the + Follow button on the top right of our show page. If you're already following you'll see a ↓ downward arrow.
Locate Ratings & Reviews: Scroll down on our podcast page until you find the "Ratings & Reviews" section.
Rate the podcast: Click on the stars to give the podcast a rating.
Write your review: Under the star rating there will be the most recent review and just below that click "Write a Review" and compose your review in the text box that appears.
Save: Once you've written your review, click "Save" to submit it.
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Six years in, we’re starting the year by cutting through the noise and zeroing in on what truly predicts book sales. We unpack a practical framework that helps you diagnose why a launch spikes and stalls, why great reviews don’t always translate to revenue, and how small, targeted changes deliver outsized gains. If you’ve ever felt busy but not better off, this conversation will give you focus, language, and a step-by-step path to momentum.

We walk through five core signals: reader response, visibility and impressions, conversions, retention and backlist behavior, and consistent author activity. You’ll learn how review language outperforms star counts, why keywords and categories must be chosen for buyer psychology rather than author preference, and how to hit a healthy 5–10% product-page conversion rate. We share practical fixes—leading with social proof, tightening hooks, clarifying payoff, aligning covers with genre codes—and explain why a 1–2% conversion lift can transform ad ROI. We also address the hidden costs of high click-through rates without purchases and how platforms penalize poor relevance.

For multi-book authors, we dig into retention: series branding that reads at a glance, back-of-book letters that tell readers what to do next, and content that nurtures your list between releases. Throughout, we make the case for consistent, strategic repetition over random hustle, showing how fewer tactics executed well outperform constant, scattershot activity. The result is a calmer plan that compounds: fewer vanity metrics, more signals that correlate with real sales.

If this episode helps you refocus your marketing, share it with an author friend, subscribe for the January series, and leave a quick review. Want to send us ideas or questions? Text the word podcast to 888-402-8940 and chat with us directly.
Send us your feedback!
Help shape our 2026 content by taking our 30-second listener poll!
📱Text Penny & Amy: send us your show feedback, burning marketing questions and new topic ideas!
Text the word PODCAST to (888) 402-8940 to sign up to send us messages and receive new episode announcements. And don't forget to save our number!
Check out our Book Marketing Jumpstart options if you're ready to take your brand, platform and SEO up a few notches.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
Be sure you're following the show: by clicking the + Follow button on the top right of our show page. If you're already following you'll see a ↓ downward arrow.
Locate Ratings & Reviews: Scroll down on our podcast page until you find the "Ratings & Reviews" section.
Rate the podcast: Click on the stars to give the podcast a rating.
Write your review: Under the star rating there will be the most recent review and just below that click "Write a Review" and compose your review in the text box that appears.
Save: Once you've written your review, click "Save" to submit it.
Can't use Apple Podcasts? Email us your review and we'll put it on our website: inf...