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UPDATE: as of April 2018, Kindle Scout is no longer accepting new submissions. The program has shut down. While the advice below is specific to Kindle Scout, there are several bits of advice that still apply. Think of this post as, “How to make a book page that converts.”
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Some proven tips from a Kindle Scout winner…
How to Win Kindle Scout
Want to know how to get into the elusive Kindle Scout Hot & trending list? I’m going to give you tips based on three main points (for the TL;DR version): The Product, The Package, and The Promo. Fair warning, there’s no “trick.” No way to cheat your way into it.
My book CLOCKWORK SOLDIERS (to be published under the revamped title SHADOW SOLDIERS) entered Hot & Trending on the first day and stayed there for the rest of the month it was on Kindle Scout. Here’s how I did it:
The Product
First of all, I wrote a good book. When I say “good” book, I don’t mean that it’s a miracle of American literature. It’s a thriller that won’t win any literary awards. It’s good because it’s an extremely commercial book, written specifically to hook readers as soon as possible in the text.
Kindle Scout gives readers sample chapters to read on the website, so I wrote this book with each of the first three chapters ending on a cliffhanger. I knew that wherever Amazon decided to end the sample (since it’s not up to me), readers would be left at a tense, unresolved moment in the story. So, they’ll immediately want more. And they go up and click to nominate the book so they can get it for free if it wins.
Also, while this is the first book in a new series (I wouldn’t try to submit a book in an existing series… why would new readers want that?), it features a side character from an existing series, so my current fans are already familiar with this character, and more likely to want to read it. Standalones and series starters are a harder sell to an existing fan base. This is a way to make it familiar to them.
The Package
For Kindle Scout–and bookselling in general– the cover and description (blurb) are incredibly important. So, I wrote an initial draft of the blurb and then hired a blurb writer to polish it into something really hook-y.
Also, I bought an expensive cover. It’s the most I’ve ever spent on a book cover, and I didn’t tell the designer exactly what to do. I said, “I want something that fits genre conventions, but also stands out and will catch someone’s eye as they’re scrolling through the list of books.” Then, I trusted the professional I hired to do his job. I didn’t micromanage the process.
(After I won, Kindle Press made some suggestions about changes to the cover, so what you see above is not the final published version of that cover, FYI.)
The Promo
No matter how great a book and the package is, it won’t do well on Scout without driving traffic to it. But, I actually haven’t done all that much promo. The vast majority (70%) of the nominations for this book have come from internal Kindle Scout traffic, which I credit to the quality of the book cover, the book sample, and the book blurb.
My primary fiction email list is almost 4,000 subs. To keep traffic tracking clean, I’ve done almost no promo outside of my mailing list. Very little Facebook, no Twitter, no standing on the street corners pleading with strangers.
