A while ago a student of the Erotica Academy Course contacted me.
He wanted some help on improving his sales. The guy put in hours and hours of hard work writing his stories…but the sales weren’t coming in.
I took a look at this book catalog. The titles were good and the book covers were on point – seriously, they looked professionally made.
In fact, the covers looked like they could have been on New York Times Best Seller books!
And even his book descriptions were really good.
After I looked at all of this I knew what the real issue was…why he wasn’t getting any sales. The issue with his books were the keywords.
Erotica keywords are really important on the Amazon KDP platform. If you don’t have good keywords, your book will never be found!
What’s the fuss about Amazon KDP erotica keywords?
Keywords are really important because it’s what customers search for to get what they want.
Often times, new authors use VERY generic keywords for their books like:
- BDSM
- Sex
- Erotica
- Fetish
- …etc
Those are broad keywords. In fact, if you search those keywords into Amazon, you’ll get over 10,000 results!
If you use those very generic keywords, your book will get lose in the pages and never found by customers – which means no sales!
When it comes to keywords, you want to be very specific and target non-competitive keywords/phrases.
Keywords are more important than story content
So, a lot of authors will debate this, but I would say keywords are just as important as the actual book content (i.e. story) if not more important.
You could have the greatest story in the world and no one will ever buy it or read it if they can’t find the book in Amazon’s search results!
Now don’t get me wrong, both are important to drive long-term sales.
Keywords are important to get new customer sales and good book content/stories are important to get repeat long-term customers.
If you are just starting out as a new author or just creating a new pen name, don’t skimp out on the keyword research!
Because you are new, you have no “reputation” of being a great author so no one will buy your books based on your prior stories. All you can do to get sales is to make sure your KDP keywords are on point.
How to find the best Amazon KDP keywords
Keyword research is often a really big topic when it comes to writing and selling erotica/short stories.
The best advice I can give you is to think like your customer. If you were writing a gay cowboy story, that kind of words/phrases would they search for?
For example, if customers were interested in a gay cowboy story, they might search for terms like:
- Western
- Wild west
- Alpha cowboy
- …or
Once you have a list put together, search for those terms on Amazon and see what the search results are like.
I like to target keywords that have around 2,000 – 10,000 search results. I find that keywords within that range are pretty easy to rank for.
Final Thoughts
Keyword research is often an overlooked aspect of writing erotica short stories on Amazon. However, it is one of the most important things in the writing process.
If people can’t find your books, they can’t even buy them! Focus more on keywords and I’m 90% sure your sales will dramatically improve.
P.S. If you want my expert tips on picking the best keywords, check out the Erotica Academy Course.
I’ll teach you the exact strategies I used to rank on the first page of Amazon’s search results in several niches!