How to promote your book: choosing the name of your book

Choosing your book’s name well can greatly increase your book’s chances of exposure on search engines (such as Amazon and Google).

On the Internet the use of “right words” is of enormous importance. One word or phrase can make a big difference in your book sales.

There are four components to consider when choosing a name for your book:

1) The name of your book must be attractive

2) Your keywords (book name) must be monetizable

3) Your book name (keywords) should have a reasonable number of searches

4) The name of your book (keywords) cannot be too competitive

It’s not enough if you hit one of these. You have to try to get them right. Let’s look at each point individually.

1) The name of your book must be interesting

The name of your book should be interesting and should reflect the content of your book. Imagine, if you sell a book called “Funny Dog Pictures”, but the content is about cars, you will get a lot of refunds, bad reviews and complaints.

Or think that the name of your book would be “Blaa Blaa Blaa”. Would that title be really interesting? I do not think.

When people are looking to buy a book, they are looking to solve a problem or enjoy themselves. “Blaa Blaa Blaa” does not address any issues.

2) The name of your book must be monetizable

The name of your book must be monetizable. People typing “Funny Dog Pictures” into Google are probably just looking for a quick laugh online, but they wouldn’t be interested in buying a book by that name.

For fiction books it can be a bit difficult to choose a “monetizable” name, but for non-fiction books it’s much easier.

The best thing to do is go to Google’s keyword tool (a free tool) and type your keyword in the search box. Next, check out Google AdWords cost per click price and see if people pay for your keywords? If so, you know that someone is already making money from those keywords. That’s a good sign.

Keywords that have a high cost per click can often be quite competitive in search engines as well, but more on that later.

A good rule of thumb is to choose a set of keywords that have a cost per click greater than a dollar. That’s not always possible, but if you can find that set of keywords, great.

Another great tip is to add “How” in front of your keywords. For example, if the keyword set is “Housetraining puppy”, convert it to “How to housetrain your puppy”. By adding “How” in front of your keywords, you often find that your keywords are less competitive but get more searches.

3) Your book name (keywords) should have a reasonable number of searches

This one is tricky. How much is a reasonable number of searches?

I never search for keywords that have less than 1000 exact monthly searches. I like to look for keywords that have around 2000-5000 exact searches.

How to check the search volume? Go to the Google keyword tool and type your set of keywords in the search box and choose “exact matches”.

4) The name of your book (keywords) cannot be too competitive

It’s very hard to find keywords that don’t have competition: unless you’re writing a book on “How to paint cars with cookies.” With that set of keywords, it would be easy to rank #1 on Amazon and Google, but it wouldn’t meet our criteria for a good set of keywords above.

So, we must accept that there is competition. The trick is to choose a set of keywords that has reasonable competition. But what is reasonable competition?

Do a KEI value analysis.

The KEI value stands for the Keyword Efficiency Index and measures the demand for keywords against the competition. In other words, it measures how many visa searches there are versus how many web pages compete for that set of keywords.

This is how the KEI is calculated:

1) Monthly Searches / 30 = X

2) Multiply: X*X=Y

3) Divide Y by the competitor’s web pages (broad search on Google)

Let’s do an example.

A set of keywords has 1,000 monthly searches and there are 50,000 competing web pages.

1000/30 = 33.3

33.3*33.3 = 1109

1109 / 50,000 = 0.022 (KEI)

The higher the KEI value, the better it is for you. In other words, the keyword has relatively more demand (searches) than competing web pages.

Try to find a gold nugget and look for keywords with a KEI value greater than 1, preferably even higher.

Summary

Book marketing is much more than choosing the name of your book. Choosing the name of your book is only the first step.

If you’re having a hard time coming up with a “good” book name, don’t worry, because there are plenty of other strategies to market your book.

Marketing your book on the Internet is a matter of success or failure.

A good book (content) is not enough. You need to market your book and do it the right way. The old methods, like going to book signing events and trying to get reviews for local newspapers, are very time consuming. There are much better and more effective ways to market books today, thanks to the Internet.