Make Your Book Stand Out in a Crowd

Nov 10, 2014

6 min read

DISCLAIMER: Let me just start by saying that this is completely within Amazons rules and guidelines. It's not cheating, it just seems like it should be.

I have stated many times before that there is no singular secret to making your book sell. There are however, plenty of little things you can do to give your work a fighting chance. This is one of the great little tips that anyone can take advantage of but few actually do.

Let’s take a look at an average Amazon book description.

This was our original book description for “Songbird” on Amazon.

Now, ignoring the actual content because that’s not what we are focusing on here, it’s not a bad description. It looks roughly like any other book description on Amazon. But that is what we want to avoid right? If your description looks like every other book on Amazon, what is going to grab someone’s attention and entice them to even read your description? That’s what we are going to fix right now!

Let’s take a look at another book description.

This is our current description for "Songbird".

First off you will notice that the body of the description is the same. Again, we aren’t really focusing on content right now. There are plenty of tips and tutorials available online to help you write a powerful description. What we are looking at today is the formatting. In this description we have added an engaging heading, a sub heading, some sample reviews, and a call to action. Once again the content isn’t our focus today, the formatting is. By default everything you enter in to the description box in your Amazon bookshelf profile or Author Central page is set to plain text. What most people overlook, or just don’t understand enough to use, are the approved HTML tags available through Amazon. These HTML tags are what allow you to have a bold Orange heading and a bold subheading in italics. The little things that make your description stand out in the crowd. So why aren’t all authors taking advantage of these tags? Many authors shy away from the option because, at first glance, the HTML scripting can appear complicated and scary. Hopefully we are going to simplify the process for you today.

Here are the approved tags for the Amazon KDP bookshelf:

Allowed Tags

Text Style Tags

<font> (align, color, and face)

<pre>

<sub>

<sup>

<u>

Formatting Tags

<p>

<br>

Now let’s break down what this means and how to use it. Your main tags we are concerned with are the various heading tags. Amazon stores 6 different heading styles in its database. Just like if you were assigning a heading style in a word document. <h1> is the tag for heading 1. This would be the largest heading. <h6> is the tag for heading 6. This would be the smallest heading. And of course <h2> through <h5> will all fall somewhere in between.

So if we want our first heading to stand out, how do we apply this HTML tag?

Here is our heading in plain text:

Can those left behind endure?

Now if we want to add a heading tag to this line we have to "bookend" the line with the tag. It is very important to both start and stop the HTML tag so that the effect only applies to this line. A start tag looks like this: <h1> And a stop tag looks like this: </h1> We are going to apply the <h2> tag to this heading, which in Amazon is a slightly larger font with the Amazon orange. Here is how we type it in:

<h2>Can those left behind endure?</h2>

Notice that the stop tag has the additional backslash to indicate that it is a stop.

In your description it should appear like this:

Can those left behind endure?

To make this heading stand out a bit more we will now add a “Bold” tag. It looks like this: <b> When stacking tags we simply layer them at the beginning to start the tag and reverse them at the end to stop the tags. Here is how we type it in:

<h2><b>Can those left behind endure?</b></h2>

And the resulting heading will now look like this:

Can those left behind endure?

Now we just apply the different tags to the different sections to make them stand out.

The sub heading gets a <h3> tag with an added “Italics” tag and a “Bold” tag.

Here is the typed input:

<h3><i><b>When the travesties and social changes of World War II confront a small southern town, faith, family, and love sustain the lives of one young woman and her family.</b></i></h3>

And here is how it should appear:

When the travesties and social changes of World War II confront a small southern town, faith, family, and love sustain the lives of one young woman and her family.

The body of your description can be entered without any tags and will appear as normal text. Be sure that you have stopped the tag in your last heading so that style doesn’t continue into your body.

The sample reviews or whatever additional info you add after your body can have the same tagging as the subheading. We chose to list a couple of reviews.

Here is how they were typed in:

<br><h3><b> >>>>>Five Star Amazon Review | The author has done a wonderful job taking me back to a much simpler time and place, yet one filled with anxiety, concern, and love of family. It brings out the family values and love of our United States that has disappeared from current life...

<br>

>>>>>Five Star Goodreads Review | A true historical fiction novel. The history and the characters were so well presented. I really felt that feeling of being sucked into an entirely different time and place. After the first few chapters I just didn't want to stop reading. Can't wait for more.</b></h3>

And here is how they will appear:

>>>>>Five Star Amazon Review | The author has done a wonderful job taking me back to a much simpler time and place, yet one filled with anxiety, concern, and love of family. It brings out the family values and love of our United States that has disappeared from current life...

Notice in this example that the tags start at the beginning of the reviews and stop after both reviews. It is not necessary to stop the tag between the 2 reviews since the style continues the same for both. Also notice we have added a couple of page breaks <br> between to get the spacing how we wanted it. This required a bit of trial and error to determine exactly how Amazon would translate the tags.

And finally we added a call to action to close. This was done with the same <h2> tag from the main heading returning us to the bold orange text.

Here is how it was input:

<h2><b> Discover The War Song Series today!</b></h2>

And here is how it appears:

Discover The War Song Series today!

It is not a difficult process, but it is a very detailed process and may take some trial and error to get your listing to look exactly as you want it. The most difficult part to grasp is often the spacing between the headings and paragraphs. This gets confusing because Amazon varies in how it handles the spacing from platform to platform. If you are making adjustments in KDP, the spacing you add will show up as you have added it. If you are making adjustments in Create Space, your spaces have to be inserted with page break <br> or paragraph <p> tags. Again, this is where a little trial and error will come in to play. Edit your description, publish it, check it on Amazon, and make adjustments as needed. Luckily Amazon is pretty quick about getting the changes up on the site. And if you are editing in Create Space the changes are immediately updated in your Create Space eStore.

Again, it’s not a super confusing process once you understand the basics, but it can be quirky. So be patient. Try different things. And feel free to ask questions. I am by no means an expert on HTML scripting but if I can help I am glad to do so. There are some great websites out there that explain HTML in more detail. And there are even template services you can use that make the process even more simple if you are willing to pay a bit for it. Author Jim F. Kukral offers a great template style tool for Amazon descriptions on his Author Marketing Club site. Simply enter your information and the tool magically generates your HTML coded Description for you. The tools is available to premium members of the Author Marketing Club. So whether you want to give it a try on your own or go with a paid tool there is no reason your book description shouldn't be helping you to stand out in the crowd.

Let us know what you think. Are you going to try and incorperate some HTML into your listing? Does it still seem like a daunting task? Do you think it will make a differnce in your books visibility on Amazon? Leave us a comment. Let us know.

#publishing #html #selfpublishing #jimfkukral #authormarketing