KDP Also Boughts – they are the elusive prize most new authors are trying to chase.
And that’s because the power of also boughts can really change your income trajectory.
If you see that you don’t have any also boughts in your book catalog yet, here are some strategies that can get you on the map so you can increase your sales.
What are also boughts?
One of the really great things about Amazon is they always try to upsell customers.
Have you ever seen Amazon recommend products for you to use? I was buying a pair of shoes the other day and they recommend I also get some shoe cleaner too.
Pretty amazing, right?
Well, it’s the same thing when customers are looking for books.
Here’s an example of the also bought section of a book below:
Basically, Amazon is saying “hey, customers that bought this book also bought these books!”
This is a really cool thing if your books are featured in that list for someone else’s books.
Typically when this happens, you should notice a pretty big increase in your sales.
I mean it’s pretty much like free advertising, right? 🙂
How do you get on the also boughts list?
So you’re probably wondering how to get on the also boughts list of other books?
In general, it takes a while to show up on also bought lists and there’s really no hard and fast rules for your books to appear in other author’s also boughts.
The most obvious way to get on the also bought lists is to make MORE sales.
Now, I have asked Amazon about this in the past – like is there a certain amount of books I need to sell (20? 30?), but they said it all depends on the algorithm.
Never a straight answer with Amazon, right?
Well, don’t worry, because over the past few years of self publishing, I have found some strategies that (I think) will result in more also bought listings for you.
How do you get Also Bought features on Amazon?
Over the past few years, I have found three things that can help you improve your chances of getting that sought after also bought listing.
The first strategy is to enroll your book in Kindle Select. If you don’t know that Kindle Select is, check out this blog post for a list of the pros and cons of enrolling in this Amazon program.
One of the nice things about Kindle Select is that you will get book borrows from readers. This is pretty much treated like a sale in Amazon’s book rankings.
And obviously if you have more sales (or book reads), it will increase chance your books will show up in the also boughts.
Even if you find that you’re not making much money off the Kindle Select program, you can always take the books off the program after you get some also boughts.
The second strategy is to actually give a shout out to your newsletter subscribers (or social media) to check out other authors in the same niche.
What? You mean promote your competitors?
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying…
This sounds counter intuitive at first, but the more mutual books customers buy between the same authors, the more likely you will show up in also boughts.
Something I have done in the past is actually cross-promote with other authors. This helps you both increase sales and will really help you show up in the also boughts.
A lot of authors are actually willing to do this…more than you would think! So give it a try and see what happens 🙂
Finally, the last strategy is to create an Author Central account. This will aggregate all of your books in one place.
And best of all? The Author Central page also recommends similar authors.
So if you have a page, you can get a lot of traffic to your author page and book pages as well – meaning more sales in the long run.
Amazon KDP Also Boughts – Final Thoughts
Overall, also boughts are a really powerful thing…they can vastly improve the sales of your book over a week.
And best of all? It’s pretty much like free advertising.
If you follow these strategies, I’m confident you can make some improvement in your also bought rankings!