I’ve written in the past about the importance of presenting a polished first impression with your indie book. Unlike a Big 5 author, you don’t have the luxury of name recognition or publisher prestige, so you have to refine that first impression in other ways—and one thing you absolutely can’t ignore is your book’s product page.
While I touched on descriptions, comp titles, and pull quotes in the previous post, I didn’t really get into the nitty-gritty of product pages… but there’s more to them than pure text! On that note, here are four key tips to optimize your book’s product page for reader interest and conversions.
1. Emulate the Competition
This tip might sound obvious. Shouldn’t we all be trying to replicate our competitors’ success? But it’s crucial in the algorithmic world of book sales—a world in which a quick tweak to your Amazon categories could massively increase your discoverability.
Basically, whatever the bestsellers in your genre are doing on their product pages, you need to be doing as well. Note that “in your genre” is a key distinction here, because optimizing a book’s product page is a delicate process; what works for sci-fi won’t necessarily work for a genre like romance, and vice-versa.
Once you’ve found a few strong examples, take note:
- What do they have in common? Maybe the descriptions are all written in a similar tone, or all the niche subgenres are the same, or the pull quotes all use identical adjectives. (Yes, it can be this granular!) Whatever the common features, try to incorporate them into your product page… within reason (that is, don’t force it).
- What don’t they have in common? Though you’ll mostly want to stick to your genre’s tried-and-true methods, it also doesn’t hurt to think about how some of these books “stand out”. Do any of them have unique covers or exceptional pull quotes? How does the price look? Don’t overthink this; whatever grabs you as a reader of this genre should work for your own readers as well.
- What, specifically, do they have that I’m missing? If you’re looking to fix an existing product page that’s floundering, answering this question could be your best bet. Even if “what’s missing” seems tiny—an extra pull quote, an actual author photo instead of a gray silhouette, or a slightly lower price—it’s still worth a try.
2. Remember That Readability Is King
Though you don’t want to underestimate your readers, you also can’t take their attention for granted. No matter how literary or dense a book is—and therefore how knowledgeable its target audience—the product page still needs to be short, sweet, and “sales-y”.
To that end, a few simple-yet-effective tips:
- Start your product description with a very short quote or sentence. A single word of praise — “Enthralling!” or “Addictive!” — is like catnip to readers. (Needless to say, you can paraphrase from longer quotes!) But if you don’t have many reviews to work with, just make sure your first sentence is not overly long.
- One of my favorite examples of this is the book description for Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which begins: “This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It's not a romance, but it is about love.” Nice and concise!
- Space out the lines of your description. It might sound silly, but this really does make it more digestible to readers. I’d recommend 1-2 sentences per “paragraph” at most, with line breaks in between. Combined with the “short sentence” advice above, this has the added bonus of tempting readers to click “Read more” on online platforms—with so little information above the jump, they’ll be more keen to hit that button!
- Create striking images with quotes and other “grabby” features. Again, your product page isn’t just about the textual description… and one way to make things more “readable” is to weave snippets of text into eye-catching images.
- For some examples of this, just look at any commercial bestseller from the last few years; they all have splashy promotional images in their “From the Publisher” sections on Amazon. (A few of my own favorites, for reference: The Ministry of Time, James, and once again, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow—scroll down each page to see how these images are used.)
3. "Give Away" As Much As You Can Afford
Speaking of quoting your book in this type of content: another thing you’ll want to consider is just how much content you’re willing to “give away” on your product page (and beyond).
One thing you’ll definitely want to include is some sort of preview on your product page. Luckily, on most platforms, this is pretty painless and usually even enabled by default. You can still adjust what’s shown in preview, of course, and even remove the feature entirely—but I’d caution against the latter. If readers want to sample your writing, give them a taste!
What’s a bit murkier is just how much free content you should provide. On platforms like Apple Books, Google Play Books, and Amazon, you can customize your excerpt so readers can see more than 10%. And of course, a classic marketing staple for indie authors is to make your whole first chapter—or even the first couple of chapters!—available to read on your website, or via a newsletter signup.
The real million-dollar question (no pun intended) is whether you should give your entire book away for free. That is: should you make it downloadable via your website, and/or price the ebook at $0 on various platforms? As with the free-chapter method, this is a pretty standard promotional tactic among indie authors…though that doesn't mean you have to do it.
This choice is really about whether you would rather prioritize reader exposure (and hopefully emotional investment) over sales (financial investment). Most indie authors, at least the ones I know, are in it for the love of the game—and they’d rather have more people reading their (free) stuff than have fewer people paying for it.
But it’s really up to you. For more context on what a free book can do for you, check out these additional posts on reader giveaways and lead magnets.
4. Make Your Book Available in Every Format
Finally, a fairly straightforward tip: you can’t go wrong making your book available in multiple formats.
So besides just print and ebook formats, consider turning your book into an audiobook as well! And if you are giving your book away for free, you may even wish to make it downloadable as a PDF from your website, for extra-flexible file reading.
By having multiple formats immediately visible on your product page, you maximize your chances of conversion—you know you won’t lose any readers due to something as trivial as reading format. True, physical book printing and audiobook creation require more time and money than simple ebook distribution. But if you have the resources—and you feel passionate about reaching as many readers as possible—it’s worth a try.
Speaking of which, I hope that even the more-experienced indie authors among us have found a new product page idea that’s worth a try! Some of these concepts might seem basic, but I can guarantee that they’re effective… and if you continue to reevaluate your product page regularly based on these principles, you’ll eventually hit on just the right combination of elements.
Happy optimizing!
