Training #314 – Hot Seats and Ask Us Anything

The COVID-19 coronavirus is still keeping much of the planet in a lockdown, and with schools closed around the country, children's book sales are on the rise on Amazon while parents try to find ways to keep their kids occupied all day without watching television.

Amazon has also made a change about how you can reference categories with keyword requirements; we will be putting our own resource together related to that and will update the site once that's ready.

For topics, this week we covered:

• Karen Fredericks question about where to find our Amazon Ads training from last week.
• A hot seat for Vicky Wong's children's book.
• Nancy Fox's question about the author name and title matching between the cover and the metadata.
• Carolyn Drew's question about selling box sets or bundles of paperback books through Amazon print on demand.
• Collins Aigbogun's question about book marketing strategies.
• Mike Eastman's question about how to use each tool and do each step of the book publishing process.
• A hot seat for Carolyn Drew's children's book pre-order.
• Karen Fredericks' question about whether we should use camel case to capitalize titles and subtitles or not, and using all caps in the book description instead of using formatting.
• Linda Zallen's question about using all caps on a cover versus in the metadata.
• A hot seat for Helen Heavirland's title & subtitle for her 1950s “Little House on the Prairie” style book.
• Mike Eastman's question about illustrating books yourself.
• Carole Sheldon's question about using the Facebook Group to get reviews for your book.
• Carolyn Drew and Mike Eastman's question about shipping speed and printing paperbacks given the delays caused by COVID-19.
• Helen Heavirland's question about selling ebook and print books.
• Carol Sheldon's question about building a list.