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How Rebecca Hamilton used KDSPY to create over 400 bestselling authors
Rebecca Hamilton, always had a knack for marketing. However, she used to spend countless hours on market research for herself and hundreds of her author clients. Then she found KDSPY – and that took out all the guesswork and freed up more time for her to focus on other areas of her career. Using KDSPY, she was able to help over 400 of her author clients hit ‘New York Times’ and ‘USA Today’ bestseller lists.
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Rebecca Hamilton
NY Times, USA Today & Wall St. Journal Bestselling Fiction Author
Facing a competitive market
The first time Rebecca aimed to hit a list with a ‘Solo Title’, she knew this would be her biggest challenge yet. She’d already helped many titles hit best-seller lists, but at that time, those titles were anthologies, and people were saying how “easy” it is to hit with a multi-author anthology.
Knowing what she knows now, she tells us that hitting with any title, boxed set or not, is no easy feat. A lot of factors play into marketing success, both in terms of visibility and sale-ability.
In today’s competitive market...
Having the right title is crucial
But it was true that hitting with a solo title would be harder. A sale of one book versus multiple was less impressive, and there would be less authors marketing the title.
She knew she would need a title that felt familiar, yet unique, and that would be genre appropriate. It was too important of a decision to have to guess what those titles would be.
With her big marketing plans, she wanted to know her titles were the right ones to use. With the right titles, she would not only get bigger results when spending money on marketing, but she would also be able to get more organic traffic by using smart keywords (or, as she calls them, marketable “buzz words”) as part of her book titles.
But how was she going to find which words those are?
That's where KDSPY came in
When KDSPY came onto her radar, it seemed like a more reliable (and faster) way to utilize a technique she was already exercising: naming book titles using “trending words.”
So she purchased the program, watched the tutorials, and then ran KDSPY on the ‘Urban Fantasy Category’ to develop a “word bank.”
It was this word bank that she used as inspiration for her book titles.
In fact, the titles in that series consist entirely of words that had been found in her “word cloud” at the time she was developing the titles using KDSPY.
Of course, there were many words on her list. In all, she says she ran the search on 2-3 genres and noted down over 30-40 keywords in all. From there, she played around with title combinations until she found titles she loved and that fit the concept of her title.
While Rebecca shares that for this title, she used only words from her word bank, she also expressed that sometimes she has titles that contain a word from the word bank with other words that aren’t.. She also says she uses this method for her series names, and not just the book titles themselves.
In fact, Rebecca is so confident in KDSPY for helping research book titles and series names, that using KDSPY is one of the crucial steps in her 12 Step Method for making six figures a year with a series!
How did the process work out?
Well, for one, Book #1 hit ‘New York Times’ and ‘USA Today Bestseller’ Lists…
And book #2 hit USA Today!
But those aren’t all the titles she got on the bestseller list with her methods! A semi-complete list can be found here.
Now, obviously, KDSPY is only part of the process of publishing a successful book, but it’s a vital part in the planning process that helps to ensure all the other work put in to cover design, concept development, writing craft, and marketing doesn’t go to waste.
We asked Rebecca to tell us about this process in action, and she gladly obliged!
See below as Rebecca explains in detail how she uses our software to develop timely, marketable series names and book titles on the spot!
In Rebecca’s own words below, she shares the KDSPY lesson she gives to her mentees and course students.
"There are words that, at any given time, are trending in your genre. All the bestselling authors know this. These keyword-friendly titles help them sell books with very little effort. Many get mad at me for telling people about these kind of industry secrets, but I'm going to share this method with you today! My clients who have put this advice into practice have sold anywhere from 3x-10x as many copies of their books when combined with my other marketing techniques!"
"For the series naming and book titling process, I like to use a tool called KDSPY to help. With KDSPY, you can also get an idea of how well books are selling, which can help you with everything from deciding which of your story ideas is currently the most marketable to helping you later in determining which targets will be best to use in your ads. But for now, even just the ability to select marketable series title and book titles will help you sell more books!"
"As an example, here's some words I found using urban fantasy a while back:"
I also keep a list of words relevant to my concept/idea. For example, I might use:
If my book is about an assassin, I'd put ‘assassin’ on the list. About a thief, I'd put ‘thief’ on the list, etc. Use these to create your WORD BANK.
From your word bank, try to create titles that work together and follow a pattern of some kind, while also fitting your story. There's a few structures that seem to work well for series development, such as using one same word and one different word in each title. Some examples are:.
Or, I might consider:
Or you might do something more a pattern, such as below:
Another method is doing a "play on words" such as...
Speaking of Shifted, one of my students used this word as a title after receiving this lesson from me, and look what happened!
Moving onto your series title, you would want to again choose strong keywords that relate to your concept. For example, if I had a series about Fae, I might use one of the following as a series title.
Finally, I want to point out that of course you don't have to use words from the word bank. Or you can mix words from the bank and words not in the bank. Or you can use ONLY words in your word bank. But using words from your KDSPY word bank can really help you MAKE BANK by assisting in creating a title that will sell your book for you!
That said, even if you are not using the word bank, I recommend using a repeating structure or pattern of some kind. I wouldn't recommend titling your books "A Shot in the Dark" "Vampire King" and "Hello, Marcus" for example. Readers are not likely to get a sense of a branded series with a combination like that. Which isn't to say no series has ever sold under such circumstances, but my goal with sharing this is to help you sell more books with tried and true methods.
I hope this sneak peek inside my master course and mentorship program has given you valuable information on how to use this groundbreaking software tool to grow your author career!
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Rebecca Hamilton is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. She is the owner of SixFigureAuthorCoach.com and has helped hundreds of authors on their path to a full time author career.
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