Publisher Rocket Review – New features & Upgrades

Publisher Rocket (formerly known as KDP Rocket) is new and improved. If you have Publisher Rocket, all updates are a free upgrade because who likes paying more every time a good software adds a new feature or upgrades? Not this guy.

If you want to upgrade, just contact Rocket support…they're really great.

However, if you're unfamiliar with what Publisher Rocket is, or exactly how it will help you to sell more books and what new features Publisher Rocket brings, then let's check that out in this Publisher Rocket review.

KDP Rocket and Publisher Rocket Upgrades over the Years

One thing that I promise every Publisher Rocket owner is that my team and I are always working to improve Rocket so as to make it better over the years. To really show this, below is a bit of a timeline showcasing how many things Rocket owners have benefited from thanks to our free upgrades and free new features:

• July 2016: KDP Rocket was launched with only the Keyword Feature and Competition Feature
• December 2016: Overhaul of the system to increase speed and accuracy
• June 2017: Added the AMS Keyword Feature to help authors effectively and efficiently build Amazon book ads
• November 2017: Added the Unleash the Categories capability to the Competition Feature
• March 2018: Added the Category Feature to help authors efficiently find bestselling categories
• May 2019: Version 2.0 Publisher Rocket was launched with Book Data, new interface, faster speed, and more
• July 2019: Many improvements to 2.0 as well as additions to the category feature, and more to come
• August 2021: Additional improvements to the keyword and category features
• January 2022: Addition of Audible features and data

As you can see, we've been committed to improving and adding new features.

Recent Updates to Publisher Rocket

With the latest releases of Publisher Rocket, we made some major changes to the program that should really help authors even more:

Audible Search Data

\With this new update comes a slew of new data from Audible, which makes Publisher Rocket one of the only tools to do this. Now you can search for keywords and see how books are ranking on Audible, gain valuable insight of your competitors through the Competition Analyzer, and know exactly how to optimize your audiobooks for the best results.

Audible Categories: When Rocket first came out, it was meant for just Kindle information. But now you can see everything you need to know about Audible as well, including categories. Rocket now lets you look up the categories for any given book, and lists all of the Audible categories out there so you can easily find one with high sales and low competition.

Improved Dropdown Menu (w/Audible): Before, when performing a search in Rocket, you'd be given two categories: Book and eBook. But when searching under “Book” you actually weren't searching just books. You were searching for all formats, including books, eBooks, and Audiobooks. So to clear up confusion, and to add Rocket's new Audible features, the dropdown now has three options: All Formats, Kindle Only, and Audible Only. (Note: Amazon doesn't actually let you search for just physical books, so there is no fourth category for that).

Historic Category Data

With Rocket's new historic category data, you can now see the history of the performance of all 16,000+ categories over time, as well as additional insights to help you make wise decisions for your book and how it should face the competition.

With this new data, you can now see the following in one convenient place:

• The # of sales to get to #1 or #10
• The percentage of bestsellers enrolled in KU
• The percentage of bestsellers that come from large publishers
• The average price for both indie and large publisher books in that category
• The average age of books at the top of that category
• The average rating of books at the top of that category
• The average page count of the top books
• A trend line of sales for books in that category
• Unique overview and insights data tailored specifically to that category

So, with that, let's take a look at each Publisher Rocket feature and how it can help you sell more books.

How Publisher Rocket Can Help You Sell More Books

There are many things Rocket can do to help authors with the marketing of their book or ebook. However, here are the four most important ones that users rave about:

1. Helps to get your book discovered by more Amazon shoppers
2. Finds the best categories for your book to help you hit bestseller status faster
3. Shows you what other authors are doing, how much they earn, and more
4. Creates effective and efficient Amazon Book ads for you, saving you time and energy

Let's jump into each as I show you how Rocket does each of those things.

1. Helps Get Your Book Discovered by More Amazon Shoppers

One of the biggest ways shoppers find their next book on Amazon is by typing into the Amazon search bar phrases or words that describe what they are looking for. Based off of this, Amazon chooses which books to show those shoppers.

In order to get your book discovered by your kind of book shoppers, you need to choose Amazon Keywords for your book. But not just any keywords. In order to have your book benefit from them and make sales, you need keywords that:

1. People actually type into Amazon when shopping for a book
2. People actually end up buying books that show up for it
3. Aren't too competitive so that you actually show up for them

You see, most authors just guess at their keywords, thinking of terms they think are fitting. But if those ‘guesses' don't fit perfectly into any of the 3 criteria above, then you won't get your book found by those hungry book shoppers.

So, how do authors find keywords that people type in, make sales, and aren't too competitive?

That's where Publisher Rocket shines.

All you have to do is give Rocket a phrase to start off with and it will not only find other terms that shoppers have used, but it will also show you:

1. How many people actually type in that phrase – This is huge!
2. How much money books are making that rank for that term
3. How competitive that term is with an easy score of 0-100, with 0 being easy and 100 being hard
4. Give you separate information for eBooks and Audiobooks

Just like that, no more guesswork and no more thinking or hoping. This unveils the information you need in order to make the right choices and get your book in front of more book shoppers.

2. Finds the Best Categories For Your Book

Choose the wrong category for your book, and you could be hard pressed to ever make it as an Amazon bestseller. Choose the right one though, and you can not only become a bestselling author, you can maintain that bestseller rank and keep the awesome orange bestseller tag to make your book stand out more and, ultimately, make more sales.

So, how does one find those awesome Categories?

You can follow the steps here to learn how to choose the best categories and even some extra secrets about categories that most authors don't know.

However, for the purposes of this article, there are two really hard things for authors when it comes to Categories:

1. Since you can choose 10 categories for your book (3 for Audible, and here's how)
2. There are over 16,000+ Categories on Amazon

So, how does Rocket help you with this?

->Want to see every Amazon Book and eBook category in a list, and even use filters to quickly find the best for your book?

->Want to know how many books you'd need to sell in order to be #1 for that Category?

Well, with Publisher Rocket 2.0, you can:

3. Reveals What Other Authors Are Doing and How Much They are Making

Wouldn't it be nice to know how well other books are doing on the Amazon market and what's working for them?

Even better, wouldn't it be nice to know who your book would be competing with on Amazon?

Well, now you can. Using Publisher Rocket's Competition Analyzer, you can gain key insight into other books and how well they are doing.

As you can see, knowing this information can help you make better decisions about what niches to focus on and what is hot in the market. It can also help you to see which books are doing well and help you to analyze what is working for them so that you can either emulate and improve upon those areas.

4. Creates Effective and Efficient Amazon Book Ads

Amazon Ads are an incredibly powerful way to get your book in front of book shoppers. If you don't know how to do them, no worries, I've got you covered. I created a fully free video course on how to create effective and efficient Amazon ads here.

However, the problem with Amazon Ads is:

• You need to have lots of keywords in order to get traction
• You need to keep monitoring, updating, and adding to your campaigns

Therefore, to help authors save time from tedious searching, copying & pasting, and researching, we created the AMS Keyword Feature.

Just type in an initial phrase that describes your book, and Rocket will get to work finding hundreds of pertinent keywords plus their ASIN numbers (a new feature that jives well with Amazon's new ads system).

Pretty neat, right?

Publisher Rocket Will Pay For Itself

Bold statement I know, but here are two concrete ways that Publisher Rocket will pay for itself, especially since Rocket is lifetime access to those who purchase it now:

1. If you make 45 extra sales* in your entire author life because of the data and features, then Rocket just paid for itself. 
2. If Rocket saves you from doing 5 hours of research** for Categories, or Keywords, or Amazon Ads in your entire author life, then it paid for itself. 

* assuming you're priced at 2.99 and we figured in Amazon's 30% cut – so this is the most conservative estimate
** This is assuming that 1 hour of writing is worth $20 to you but for many, their time is worth more to them.

So, Is Publisher Rocket Right For You?

Are you an author who falls into any of these categories?

1. You have a great book, but it isn't selling as well as you'd like or believe it should.
2. You have a book idea, but aren't sure it will sell and want to know before you invest time, money, and energy into it.
3. You spend hours looking for keywords, categories, or finding keywords for your book ads.
4. You just want to know what's going on in the Amazon market and see how others are doing.

If so, then yes, Publisher Rocket is for you. It's a mirror into the market place, and it's a major time saver.

Cheers,

More Keywords and Categories:

If you're interested in more articles like this one, we've got a whole hub of content related to finding the right keywords and categories for your book. Check these out!

• How to Choose Kindle Keywords
  • 7 Kindle Keywords
  • Keyword Strategy for Non-fiction Authors
  • Keyword Strategy for Fiction Authors
  • Broad vs Niche Keywords
  • How to Change Your Kindle Keywords and Why You Should
  • Kindle Keyword Ranking Percentages: #1 vs #2
• How to Choose Amazon Categories
  • Kindle Rankings: Categories vs. Keywords
  • Do You Need Keywords to Get Into Certain Book Categories?
  • International Book Categories
• The Amazon Algorithm
  • Amazon Popularity Effect
  • The HoneyMoon Effect
• Other Tools
  • Amazon Book Sales Calculator