When you’re in your KDP dashboard there’s not much help or guidance offered by Amazon to optimize your book descriptions.
They do tell you why a book description matters:
Customers view your book description as they shop on Amazon. Often, it is a reader’s first experience with the content of your book. A well-written description piques readers’ interest and assures them that your book is of high quality.
But there’s no other information or prompts in the Description block to help guide a novice author.
Tip 1: Use HTML Tags in your Amazon Book Description
Amazon don’t mention that you can format your book description to improve the look and readability. They let you use a clearly defined set of HTML tags to format your book description that appears on your book page.
Here’s the list from their help page so that you can see which tags you’re allowed to incorporate (TIP: don’t forget to add the closing tags!)
| HTML Tag | Description |
|---|---|
| <b> | Formats enclosed text as bold. |
| <br> | Creates a line break. |
| <em> | Emphasizes the enclosed text; generally formatted as italic. |
| <font> | Determines the appearance of the enclosed text. |
| <h1> to <h6> | Formats enclosed text as a section heading: <h1> (largest) through <h6> (smallest). |
| <hr> | Creates a horizontal “rule” or line. Often used to divide sections of text. |
| <i> | Formats enclosed text as italic. |
| <li> | Identifies an item in an ordered (numbered) or unordered (bulleted) list. |
| <ol> | Creates a numbered list from enclosed items, each of which is identified by a <li> tag. |
| <p> | Defines a paragraph of text with the first line indented; creates a line break at the end of the enclosed text. |
| <pre> | Defines preformatted text. |
| <s> | Formats text as strikethrough. See also, <strike>. |
| <strike> | Formats text as strikethrough. See also, <s>. |
| <strong> | Formats enclosed text as bold. See also, <b>. |
| <sub> | Formats enclosed text as subscript: reduces the font size and drops it below the baseline. |
| <sup> | Formats enclosed text as superscript: reduces the font size and places it above the baseline. |
| <u> | Formats enclosed text as underlined. |
| <ul> | Creates a bulleted list from enclosed items, each of which is identified by a <li> tag. |
Tip 2: Use all the characters available in your Amazon Book Description
You get 4,000 characters to write your Amazon Book Description, but just take a look through some Amazon descriptions and you’ll be surprised by how many authors only write a brief paragraph.
Your book description is an important opportunity to let your readers know a little bit more about your book, but it also helps with discoverability. Make sure to include the keywords your targeting in your description and it’ll boost your description’s SEO, so that more potential readers can find and buy your book.
One thing to take into account is that the HTML codes in your book description also count towards your character limit, so make sure to leave enough characters so that you can add your HTML code after you’ve written the first draft of your book description.
Book Description Generating Tool
The Kindlepreneur team have created a book description generator that anyone can use, without having to know HTML. Their Amazon Book Description Generator will help you to create those beautiful descriptions with just a couple of clicks of a button.
https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-book-description-generator/
Here's 2 Tips for improving your #AmazonKDP book descriptions. #amwriting Click To Tweet
I agree with you Jay, It has given me fresh perspective on this topic tackeld, Thanks. Have you ever wondered about the important sections that all nonfiction books contain?