Stop, stop, stop. Stop
creating the problems I'm about to show you. Now, a lot of people contact me because
they're not making sales of their books. They're getting errors when
they try to upload the books. When they do upload them, they're
getting them rejected. And in some cases, getting their account
outright banned or terminated. So I'm going to give you my top seven
areas that are causing people problems and how you can prevent
these issues yourself. Now, if you've not been to this
channel before then welcome, my name is Paul Marles and I do videos
on how to make it, keep it and grow it. And that's your money I'm talking
about. If you do like videos like that, then please do give it a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button and smash
that notification bell to receive notification of when I
produce more videos like this. So let's get into these
seven areas straight away, and this is all part of the KDP, no
content, low content book upload process. Now the first area is with regards titles. And we can see I've got two
titles here. The top one is good. The bottom one is not so good. And the first issue is
around the use of keywords. Now using keywords in the title
is a good place to get your main keyword, which can help customers who are
looking for your book, find your book. Now the top example is mileage log
book, and this is a good keyword. If we go over to the Amazon search
platform and put in mileage log book, we can see here from the Amazon
suggestions that this is one of their suggestions. So they're telling us that people
are actually searching for this book and people that are searching for mileage
log books are obviously looking for mileage log books. And
so if they find our book, there's a good chance of making
a sale. With the second example, and I see this quite frequently, people try to be more original
with the titles of their books. So wil l do something
like in this example, call it help the tax man
and in the subtitle put
something like mileage log book for taxes and business. Unfortunately, they're wasting that most important
spot to get their keyword in. And if we go over to Amazon and look
at help, the taxman, we can see here, there are no suggestions. So first of all, Amazon is telling us that no one is
actually searching for this particular keyword or not many people anyway, but the other issue would be if someone
was putting this into the search bar, help the taxman. Well, it could be looking for any number
of different types of things. It could be books on taxes
could be books on accountancy, not necessarily mileage log
books. So if our book did appear, even at number one for that search term, it may well not be a book
that someone's looking for. And so we won't get the sale. Second issue is with regards
capitalization of the words in the title. Now you may not think this
is a big thing, but it is. And often a lot of time it
can be if English is not your first language, which is
entirely understandable. And the first example we've
got all the main keywords here, capitalized in the second
example one of the main words, taxman is not capitalized and it
should be now small words like the, and, it, of don't need to be capitalized, but the main words do. Now the reason why this is important
is because it gives your book that professional look. Now when people do find your book
and they see it on the search page, if it's not capitalized, it say's subconsciously
to the customer that this isn't particularly professional and it
can cause your book to get overlooked and stop people clicking on it. Now,
as I said, it is a big issue. The other issue is regards trademark, and I get problems. I get
questions about this a lot. And unfortunately, a lot of the issues and the questions I
get are around people's accounts being banned. And, you know, Amazon has a zero
tolerance policy on this. And two of the main areas that causes
issues are around using Disney characters in the title or Marvel characters
or using the word Disney and Marvel. For some reason, those seem to
be the main areas. What I say is, if you are trying to make money off
someone else's creation or another company's creation, then it's likely that you're going to
be breaching copyright and be breaching trademark. So don't do it if you want
to cherish your account. Now, if you're unsure whether your
title is going to breach trademark or some component of the title
is going to breach trademark, then go over to uspto.gov,
click on trademarks, click on tess to search the trademark
database, click on basic word, search and put in the
word or search term or title in that box and do a
search and see what comes up. You also need to look at the class and
also the goods and services under which a trademark appears to see
if that is in, you know, the printed book matter,
that type of thing. My advice is even if you
then are still unsure, then contact a copyright
or trademark lawyer. My general advice would
be if you're still unsure, don't use it because there are so
many opportunities in this business. If you start looking at words that
you're not sure are a trademarked or copyrighted, the quickest thing
and best thing to do, reject it, go onto something else.
Second area the subtitle. First example, good example of a subtitle.
Second example is a poor example. The first example, simple auto mileage
tracking notebook for tax and business. It reads like a normal sentence. The issue with the second example is
something I see often and that's keyword stuffing. We can see mileage log book,
notebook, auto mileage, tracker, planner. It's just stuffed with
keywords. One, when you read it, it doesn't make sense
which puts customers off. And there's a chance that you're
not going to get your book. Listed for any of those key words,
because Amazon will just look at that. And you know, the algorithms do know if you're
just stuffing a subtitle with keywords and quite often it will
get your book rejected as well. So I'd avoid doing that. Just try and get maybe one or
maximum two keywords in your subtitle and make it read like a normal sentence. Second issue with this
second example is again, capitalization of the main words. And we can see these words
here and not capitalized. It looks odd when a customer,
particularly an English speaking customer, which is your biggest market in the
US when they come across that it just doesn't look right. And so again, stops people clicking on your books and
prevents you from getting your sale. The other option is using
strange punctuation, characters or symbols within the subtitle here. You've got these,
are they characters or
punctuations? I'm not too sure, but whatever they are, the biggest issue here would be that
the spacing between the words and that symbol is incorrect. You
need to put a space there. My advice is don't use them at all.
If you're going to use anything, maybe just use a hyphen, a single hyphen within the subtitle, but avoid using commas, you
know, punctuation. Again, it doesn't make the subtitle look right, and then we'll put customers off
and just looks very amateurish. Third area that causes some consternation
is around the use of series and gets people's books rejected. Now series are designed
primarily for fiction and non-fiction works. Think of a series
of films fast and furious one, fast and furious two,
fast and furious three. They're designed mainly for stories
or works that have a follow on to each previous or following book. So an example I get is someone's
created maybe, you know, six, seven notebooks, all similar titles,
subtitles, but in different colors. And they want to, or think that is a series and want
to include that in their listing, but they get that rejected.
And that's the reason. Series are not designed for no
content or low content books. It's mainly for fiction and non-fiction
works that follow on from each other. So avoid using series. Fourth area is around
the use of author names. First example is a reasonable example. The second example is an example
that will get your book rejected. And the reason is the use
of keywords in the author name. Now, when I first started,
you could get away with, you know, having an author name,
like mileage log book, but Amazon has cracked down on this. So if you start using things
like notebooks, journal, log book in your author name, then it's likely to
get your book rejected. And yet you just have
to go and change your. Author name. So avoid using keywords in
your author name. Just come up with a, you know, a pen name or a brand
name that doesn't have keywords. Fifth thing that causes issues is around
categories and picking categories. And lately I've seen books rejected
because people are publishing in categories that are not
related to their book. My biggest piece of advice
is don't overthink this. Just go through the categories. Most of them will be in the non-fiction
section and pick out two categories, which closely resemble
what your book is about. The biggest problem usually
is things like, you know, just general notebooks and journals, trying to find something
that's mostly relevant. Just pick something that's closest to
it. If your book does get rejected, then yes, you'll just have to change
the category. But yeah, just pick two, don't overthink it. Sixth
thing that causes issues. Now this causes issues with
trying to upload your book. When you get to launch previewer
stage and you get those errors. First area is around bleed or no bleed. And that comes from a lack
of understanding about what
bleed or no bleed is and not creating the correct interior
size if your book has bleed. In general, if you have
content on your pages, that goes to the edges of the
pages, like these two examples here, your book has bleed. If
the content on your pages, doesn't go to the end of the pages. Then your book has no bleed. Now,
if your book does have bleed, you need to make the pages
larger here. In this example, we've got a six by nine
inch page. And for this, you would need to increase the
page size by adding nought 0.125 inches to the top, not 0.125 inches to the
bottom and not 0.125 inches to one side. So if this was
a six by nine inch book, the interior would now
become 6.125 inches by 9.25 inches. This would also be the same. If you're doing an 8.5 by 11 inch book, the interior would then become 8.625 inches by 11.25 inches. So
that's an important area. And the second issue
comes around margins. Now, when you have your
interior page like this, you have to have important content, that you don't want cutoff
during the trimming process, within a border. Here, we can see
this red border, which is the margins. And all important content
has to be within that margin. Otherwise you'll either get the
error when trying to upload, or you will get your book rejected. Now this applies to whether you're
creating a notebook or journal with some important written content in there,
whether it's a log book or even, and this causes some confusion,
if it's a coloring book. Now, if you've got coloring book and you've
got content that goes to the edges of the pages, but you've got content within the
center that is important and you don't want to risk getting cut off
when the page is trimmed, that has to go within the margins. Now
you need to calculate those margins. Now you can go to the KDP help page where
it'll tell you what the margin should be. Or I've created a video on this
about bleed, no bleed or margins, where I'll tell you about the margin
sizes that you need to calculate. So I suggest going to watch that if
you need further information on that. And the seventh and final issue is
with regards the cover. And again, this causes errors at
the launch preview stage, and that's using the wrong
size units when creating your blank templates in the
software where you're creating the the cover. And this is usually
when people are using Canva, which is a common software platform
that people use to create their covers because it's free. And this
is the issue. We can see here. If you download your template
from the KDP template creator, we've got this figure here, which is the overall
dimensions of your template, which is what you use to create
your blank page in your software platform. So what a lot of
people do, when they go to Canva, is go to the right-hand side, here, click on custom size and
put in the dimensions of the page or the cover. Now you can see
here, it actually comes up with an error, which I don't think it used to do. Just
used to have the create new design. You click on new design, create your
cover, upload it to the KDP platform, go to launch previewer. And
it comes out looking odd. I think it usually comes
out looking and enlarged. And the reason for that is
here, the right-hand side. Most people just leave this as is,
which is px, which stands for pixels. Instead, what you need to do. And this is vitally important
is change that to inches. And then you would have to
put in the dimensions again. So now your cover template will be
in the right dimensions of 12.52 by 9.25, five inches or whatever size
you are creating from your template. That's a big issue. Many people, most people don't realize what's actually
happened. Everything just looks odd. That's the major cause. Now if
you're new to the whole book, publishing business, particularly
no content and low content books, I would suggest starting at my
book tutorials playlist here, where I go through all the different
stages of creating the books and how to do it correctly. Thank you very much for
your time. It's very much appreciated. Don't forget to hit that subscribe
button. And until next time goodbye.
