Author Checkpoint

Author Checkpoint is a suite of book marketing tools, currently undergoing beta testing. These tools help you optimize the metadata for your book, to increase online sales.

Keyword discovery

One of the most challenging (and important) marketing activities for authors is to choose the correct keywords for a book. Many books, blogs and tools require you to start from scratch to devise a starting set of keywords, then spend hours searching for and guessing at whether they'll actually make a difference to online sales.

Author Checkpoint gives you a huge head start by reading the full content of your book, extracting the prominent topics from the text, then allowing you to search for keywords that directly relate to the topics. Once you've found a keyword that represents your book, Author Checkpoint allows you to see similar keywords.

keyword ranking

Author Checkpoint lets you rank keywords by multiple criteria, to determine the best keyword for your book. Relevance is only one factor that should be considered when selecting a keyword. If your book is new and you're a first time author, it doesn't make sense to choose keywords that are dominated by high selling books. Likewise, if you're book is selling well, it's important to target shorter tail keywords that mirror your book's ranking strength.

editorial quality and readability analysis

Compare your book to professionally edited titles to highlight areas that may require more editorial focus. Several metrics are generated from your book to help you benchmark your book as you edit.

If you're happy with the editorial quality of your book, then let everyone know! First time and self-published authors sometimes face an unfair stigma that their writing is of poor quality. Literary agents and prospective readers, with an oversupply of books, often make a judgement call for or against your work based on the surface data they see. Author Checkpoint (optionally) lets you generate a beautiful public report that positions showcases your writing's readability and quality.

and more...