
Talking Book Publishing with Kathleen & Adanna
This podcast focuses on the business end of the pen. What does that mean? It's getting into the nitty-gritty of the business side of being a writer or publisher. We at Talking Book Publishing will bring in industry experts, Published authors, publishers, agents, and editors for conversations about what tools writers need to be as successful as they can on their publishing journey.
Talking Book Publishing with Kathleen & Adanna
On Winning Amazon: A10, AI & Author Tools with Penny Sansevieri
In this jam-packed episode of Talking Book Publishing, hosts Kathleen Kaiser and Adanna Moriarty sit down with book marketing powerhouse Penny Sansevieri for a revealing discussion on how Amazon's evolving landscape affects authors today. Penny, a longtime expert in Amazon optimization, returns to the podcast with timely insights on her latest release, The Amazon Author Formula Workbook, and the strategic changes every author needs to understand—especially in light of Amazon's algorithm shift from A9 to A10.
From navigating AI-generated book scams to optimizing your author presence for visibility, Penny outlines both the opportunities and landmines in today's digital publishing world. Listeners will get actionable advice on platform building, the ethical use of AI for marketing, and how to prepare for Amazon's tightening restrictions on book uploads. Whether you're self-publishing your first book or looking to refresh your Amazon strategy, this episode is a must-listen.
We’d like to hear from you. If you have topics or speakers you’d like us to interview, please email us at podcast@talkingbookpublishing.today and join the conversation in the comments on our Instagram @writerspubsnet.
00:00:03 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Hello, everyone. This is Kathleen Kaiser, along with my co -host, Adanna Moriarty and Talking Book Publishing. And today we have one of our very favorite guests. We haven't had her on since our first season, Penny Sansevieri, who I consider like my Amazon link, my person I turn to with things with Amazon. And she has a new book out, The Amazon Author Formula. We're going to talk about it, but what we're really going to talk about is everything on everything Amazon, because no matter where you are in publishing, Amazon is important to you. Even if you have a publisher, you still need to be doing your author page and all the things that need to be done. And she has a new, for that book, The Author Formula, she has a workbook coming out. So anyway, welcome, Penny. Welcome back.
00:00:54 SPEAKER_Penny
Thank you so much for inviting me to be back on the show. I love it.
00:00:57 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Thank you. So tell us, let's just update. What's going on with Amazon right now? They're always changing something. They're always changing something.
00:01:05 SPEAKER_Penny
always changing something. And Amazon, in May, Amazon went through an algorithm change. So they went from the A9 algorithm to the A10 algorithm. And there was a lot of really spooky stuff online. Like there were a lot of, in my view, fear -mongering. But it's really... a much more intuitive way to search, right? So that's something that Amazon changed. And then I know we're also, I know we're going to probably dive into that a little bit deeper too. And then Amazon also is making some changes with uploading books to KDP, which I know we're going to chat about as well. A lot of the stuff that Amazon does, I mean, We talked about this kind of in the green room before we started recording. A lot of what Amazon does, you know, generally always favors Amazon, but Amazon is also having some serious and significant issues with books generated from AI, right? Even not just quote unquote original content, which it's technically not really original content if it's created with AI, but. Books that are actually rewritten versions of existing books, right, that are showing up all over Amazon. So some of this, I think Amazon's system is going to get more strict. Because right now, when you upload your book to KDP, you just check a box. No, my book wasn't created by AI. Like, if you're already being super shifty and having a machine write your book and then publishing it. you're not going to check the box yes my book was created by ai do you know what i mean so amazon's going through a lot of changes i just want to clarify is that like i mean it's stealing like original content from other authors or it's taking like old books and you know reworking them and republishing them it's both it's actually all of the so i would say whatever you're imagining if you're listening to this it's all of the above so they're taking
00:02:55 SPEAKER_Adanna
just want to clarify is that like i mean it's stealing like original content from other authors or it's taking like old books and you know reworking them and republishing them it's
00:03:07 SPEAKER_Penny
both it's actually all of the so i would say whatever you're imagining if you're listening to this it's all of the above so they're taking with existing books and, you know, like you can, and I don't know how they would get a copy to upload to chat. I don't really know how they do this and I don't really want to know how they do this, but essentially like, so let's take, so I really fell in love with Farida McFadden with the book The Housemaid, right? And I don't know that that's necessarily been duplicated, but just as an example. So you would go into chat or whatever and you would... Maybe you upload the book. Maybe you figure out how to get it off your Kindle or I don't know what. Maybe you scan all 300 pages off the print book. Who knows? And then you tell chat, redo this book, essentially.
00:03:58 SPEAKER_Penny
And then they upload it. And so you have all these fake books. In fact, Jane Friedman reported at one point, this was a few months ago, that many of the books, many, let's say several of the books that were hitting, big bestseller lists were AI, were duplicates from the original. So not Frieda McFadden's housemaid, but some guy who got it all off a chat. Like it's the craziest thing. Are they using the same name?
00:04:27 SPEAKER_Kathleen
they using the same name?
00:04:29 SPEAKER_Penny
That I'm not sure of. There was a whole article that I was trying to deep dive on and then I don't know, I guess I got distracted or something. But Amazon is battling major, major AI issues, right? So, yeah, it's really a problem. And then also just content created by AI.
00:04:51 SPEAKER_Penny
So write a book on, I don't know, underwater basket weaving or something, right? And then throwing it up on chat and throwing it up on Amazon. And, you know, if you've ever worked with chat, and I... I freely admit that I love using chat GPT as a kind of a second brain. So you're bouncing stuff off of, you're kind of like, ah, you know, what do you think? But chat is not perfect. Like you really have to take what chat says with a grain of salt, a large grain of salt.
00:05:23 SPEAKER_Adanna
You have to be really good at being able to prompt it to get anything remotely what you want. Thank you. If you're just saying, write me a book on this, it's going to spit out some, if that's your whole prompt, write me a book on underwater basket weaving.
00:05:28 SPEAKER_Penny
you. If
00:05:38 SPEAKER_Adanna
You're going to get something really weird and not something that you could use. And if you do, I mean, everybody's going to know that. I mean, it takes a lot of work to get output from. you know, chat GPT or perplexity or whatever you're using. And I mean, we all know that I love chat GPT. Like it is my best friend.
00:06:00 SPEAKER_Penny
is my best friend. Same here. Like I call chat my second, my boyfriend, actually not even my second, my boyfriend. So, so I love it. But now, so as we are recording this, Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys just passed away. You will start to see, I would say probably by the time this podcast hits. Just go onto Amazon and take a look and see how many books there are. Like, so you could go into chat and say you're an expert biographer or something, whatever. Write a book on Brian Wilson. Boom. Publish it. Make money. So that's where a lot of these sketchy people are using something that's hugely in the news, whatever. using chat, and that's what Amazon's battling. And so a lot of the changes that we've seen and a lot of changes I think that we're going to see are because Amazon's really, and I don't know that there's a vetting system per se to know what's AI and what's actually written. I mean, again, Adana, as you pointed out, it really, like if the prompt is not good, you could pick AI written content out of a lineup easily.
00:07:13 SPEAKER_Adanna
I mean, even if the prompt is good, I mean, you know, you, I don't know. I mean, they're humanizer applications that you can take output from AI and, you know, run it through and make sure it reads human and not AI, which is something that, you know, I think that like for Amazon, I mean, they could run text through and see if it reads AI, but if someone's smart enough to. you know, humanize it. I don't know how they're going to determine what is AI and what's not, you know, I think AI is really great for marketing and stuff like that. But for original content, I mean, you know, I, you need to do it yourself.
00:07:57 SPEAKER_Penny
You need to do it yourself. I think it's really, it's a great brainstorming tool. And actually, you know, I, so I put my book into a, so I have a closed system on a, on chat where No, I don't want anything shared, blah, blah, blah. So I will put pieces or portions, huge chunks of my book into AI and say, tell me how this, so here's your reader market, right? Here's my reader market. Tell me how this book is perceived. And some of the stuff that it pumped out was just like, okay, thanks, but no thanks. But there were a few points before I released this book that I thought, oh, you know what? That's a really good point. I need to make sure I include that in the book. And part of the reason why I like that is because we're so close to our own stuff that sometimes it's really hard to see objectively what would be, you know, what could be really beneficial to the reader. Because at the end of the day, the reader's all that matters here. But I think at some point, it's not going to be this year, but I think at some point, chat, you know, somebody is going to have to stop chat from writing books. I just think that there's no purpose for that.
00:09:06 SPEAKER_Adanna
You know what I mean? You don't think that anybody's going to be able to do that. I mean, I don't even think open AI could stop it because it's all if you prompt it properly, you could have it write short stories and, you know, make those chapters in a book and then combine it all into a book. Like, you know, I mean, I think that there are always ways around that system because it is AI. But I mean,
00:09:31 SPEAKER_Adanna
mean, I don't know. I think that, you know, some of it is just things that.
00:09:32 SPEAKER_Penny
don't know. I
00:09:35 SPEAKER_Adanna
We're going to have to learn how to accept and move on because it's not going to go away. And it's a wonderful tool. Like, it really is an amazing thing that everybody could use to make their day easier. You can use it to meal plan. You can use it to help you, you know, plan content for your social media. You can, you know, have it find hashtags for you. Like, I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful tool. And, and I think that, you know, those of us that believe in it and want to use it ethically are going to have to pave the way.
00:10:13 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah, we, yeah, no, that's absolutely, you're absolutely right. There's always going to be a workaround if somebody really wants to crack the system and have it write books, there's always going to be, but you're right. And, you know, it's funny because I. I begrudgingly went into TikTok because I'm always like, oh, I don't want to do videos and make time for videos. You know, like you have to like look like I was going back and forth with Kathleen. I'm like, oh, are we going to be on video? Because, you know, there's so much pressure when you're on video. But, you know, when you're video recording and you're on YouTube. That's why we're not. Right. Right. Exactly. So I put up a video. So we just did a we did a podcast show on how authors can, you know, ethically and productively use Chat2PT. So I put this little video on TikTok, just kind of promoting it. And people were just like, oh my gosh, you're not creative. And I'm like, I got to tell you, listen, in a world where there's a book published every eight seconds, every tool that you can use to give you an ethical leg up should be used. Absolutely. Full stop, you know? And I've actually, we have an author and she was, she is like, oh, you know, I really hate social media, but I don't have the money to hire somebody for social media. So she went on to chat and asked it to give her like a 30 -day instruction plan. So I want to master Instagram. Not only do I want you to give me a lesson plan, but I also want you to give me prompt ideas. And then she put in links to like her author central page and her website. So, you know, man, it was great. And like six weeks later, she wrote me, she's like, I am rocking all the things on social media. So I think that, again, anytime that an author can get a leg up, with something in a world that is just so saturated with content. It is worth exploring for sure.
00:11:59 SPEAKER_Kathleen
And it's right for you. You know, some things are not, you know, you don't want, and then that's fine. So you've got to do it another way. You still have to market as an author. So you have a tool to help you save time and come up with things like coming up with hashtags as hell. You know, and it does it. There they are. You have 20 to select from. Right.
00:12:12 SPEAKER_Adanna
you have
00:12:26 SPEAKER_Adanna
Hashtags. I mean, I use it, you know, to help me find really good keywords for websites like, you know, so if you're an author who's doing your own website and you want to work on your SEO, you can have it help you do that. I mean, you know, so you're you're getting out there and, you know, like visible because visibility is the hardest thing as an author. I mean, it is the hardest thing. You are just in a sea of other authors. I mean, is that a real stat, Penny? Every eight seconds a book is released?
00:12:59 SPEAKER_Penny
Every eight seconds a book is published in this country, yes. Wow. That's the crazy, right? When you think about it, and I remember when I was first in business 25 years ago, so it's 25 years this September. 25 years ago, I was first in business. There were 500 books published a day. And I remember at that time thinking, oh my gosh. like this is just an enormous number now that now it's just and then you know you layer on top of that number you layer on top of that books that are created through chat right these crazy whatever topics that get thrown onto amazon the thing about it is though is that not you know not 99 of the books that are published i mean i know that sounds like a really high number but the majority of books that get published authors don't
00:13:48 SPEAKER_Penny
do anything with them, right? They throw them up on Amazon and they assume that it's the field of dreams and that they wrote a book and published a book. People are going to beat a path to their door. So it's not about the fact that everybody's marketing all at the same time. It's really about your bookshelf is a big cluttered mess and all of these books, even if they're not marketed, are still clogging the pipeline. So... You have to find a way to step up, you know, to get above the fray, right? And one thing that I will say, though, about chat is I went on there. I'm like, I want to see if chat can optimize my book on Amazon. Ixnay on the chat with it because Amazon, because again, when you think about an ecosystem where there's a book published every eight seconds and that book winds up on Amazon, everything is shifting all the time. with regards to the Amazon keywords, which is why I don't use, I never use software when I'm optimizing a book, not because like I'm from the 1930s and I just time traveled here, but because there's nothing quite like a manual search on Amazon to see what's trending, you know, and chat or any other, you know, sort of, there's a, I know there's a big software company that a lot of product come, you know, products use it and whatnot. And I forget the name of it now, but it's hard to keep up with that volume right it's really really hard to keep up with that volume so yeah chat's good for a lot of things don't use it to write books and don't use it to optimize your book on amazon because some of the stuff that it spit out was so sketchy it's like wow it's so interesting because we use it for that and it's worked really well for us well part of where i have where i have the disconnect with it is that chat doesn't
00:15:29 SPEAKER_Adanna
it's so interesting because we use it for that and it's worked really well for us well
00:15:35 SPEAKER_Penny
part of where i have where i have the disconnect with it is that chat doesn't update as frequently as i would like it to in order to pull like i've had chat seo our website and i wasn't i mean it was okay i would say maybe 50 of what it spit out i would actually use only because we spent an inordinate amount of time optimizing our site so a lot of the stuff was either done or was not appropriate right because a lot of like seo people really want to shove my website into book publishing. It's not at all where I want to be, right? Like that's not appropriate for like authors published, whatever that's better for us. So one of the things that I have found with the optimizations, I just, I haven't found anything that I, as I'm comparing it to the optimization that I've done on Amazon that I feel, I mean, I think it's usable, but I don't think it's the best that it can be in my opinion. Like, I don't think it dives as deep as I think that I that I would want it to be. Because the other thing, though, too, is chat doesn't really pick up on like chat doesn't pick up on nuances. Right. Or chat doesn't really know. Like, for example, women's fiction. So let's just take women's fiction, for example. Women's fiction is really a dying category. Like nobody's buying women's fiction. Literary agents aren't buying women's fiction. Like nobody like and it's not that it's necessarily a dying off market. Like it's not a genre that's going to go away. It's just become so overwhelmingly cluttered that nobody,
00:17:16 SPEAKER_Penny
like, you really don't want to try to rank for women's fiction because you're going to be at, like, 8 million and nobody's ever going to see you. So instead, you know, look at ranking for something that is more popular, that fits your book, that kind of thing. And chat doesn't have the ability to really pick up on... those types of things that are going on in the industry, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? That's where chat tends to be a little bit flawed, is that the nuances of the industry changes is not something that I find. Because, like, I went into chat and I'm just like, so what do you think of women's fiction? Oh, women's fiction, super popular, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, maybe it was popular, super popular, like... seven, five, seven years ago, but now it's been inundated with books. And if you put your book in women's fiction, it's literally never going to get found. I mean, it might, maybe, you know what I mean? Maybe I'm overstating that, but it's just, it's lots of popularity. So that's where you have to kind of be careful with chat, not just in Amazon, but I think in anything that is, you know, trending.
00:18:31 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah. Well, when we're talking now about, about the algorithms, which is You know, a lot of people don't even want to know about them, but you have to when you're on Amazon. What are the changes that took place in May?
00:18:44 SPEAKER_Penny
Well, so some of the changes, like I said, some of it, like I saw a lot of fear mongering online. So I decided, oh, I really want to take a look and see what's going on. So Amazon no longer wants you to keyword stuff your subtitle or your book description or anything on your Amazon book page, which honestly, keyword stuffing shouldn't have been allowed. But across the board, right? So they shouldn't have been allowed across the board. So Amazon wants to get rid of that. I think part of that is because, you know, you get maybe desperate as an author and you're like, oh, I have these great keywords. I'm just going to put them everywhere.
00:19:16 SPEAKER_Adanna
oh, I have these great keywords.
00:19:19 SPEAKER_Penny
And the problem with keyword stuffing is that you know when something has been sort of jammed in with keywords because it doesn't make any sense. Like you read it and you're like, I don't really know what that is. Whereas. you know, using keyword strings in a more conversant way as your subtitle, that's really what Amazon is looking for. Part of this also comes from AI, right? So part of that is also because AI will spit out a bunch of like subtitle keywords that maybe don't always really make sense and people just grabbing them, putting them on Amazon. The next piece of this is really related to AI. So the next piece of this is Amazon is prioritizing authors who have platforms off of Amazon, right?
00:20:11 SPEAKER_Penny
What that does is now, and you know, how much they're prioritizing, yada, yada, like, I don't really know. But that is one of the main considerations that Amazon is now giving to this algorithm is like, how much of a platform do you have outside? Because somebody who's trying to cheat the system doesn't have a platform. Because they're not going to go through that effort. So that's where I'm saying Amazon is really starting to pull in. Amazon's really, really starting to pull in, you know, face the challenges that AI -generated books are creating for them.
00:20:45 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah, they're sort of trying to get a bigger picture of, you know, instead of just putting your book up, are you for real? It's almost like, you know, do you have a website? Do you have a social media presence? Right.
00:20:58 SPEAKER_Adanna
So are they having somebody go through individually and do that? I mean, how do they know? And AI can do it. Yeah.
00:20:59 SPEAKER_Penny
are they having
00:21:05 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah. AI can do it. I mean, it's the same kind of AI. And again, it's not perfect, right? But it's the same kind of AI that over a few years ago was just yanking reviews off of Amazon because this person... is friended with you in some other way and the Amazon algorithm figured it out or whatever, which was problematic for authors because many of them have Facebook groups where they're connected to their readers. So they're not necessarily friendly with them, but they're connected to them in some way. And so that algorithm got, you know, really got it wrong and created a lot of problems for authors. I don't hear so much anymore about reviews getting pulled as much. I'm sure it's still happening, but it's not so top of mind. But yeah, I mean, it's the algorithm that's going to figure that out.
00:21:53 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Well, it makes it so that so many people don't go in and put their picture in and put their bio in and set up their author page, all of that. And if you put your website on there, then Amazon can see you're legitimate. Exactly.
00:22:08 SPEAKER_Adanna
Yeah, exactly. I also read with this switch from A9 to A10 that it also... Like part of the algorithm trigger now is like, you know, running off Amazon ads, like when you're running Amazon ads to also be running like social media ads and book promos and all of that at the same time where it used to not matter so much.
00:22:35 SPEAKER_Penny
The social media ads, no, it has not been my experience. that Amazon care. I mean, so Amazon's ads are, they, Amazon is beta testing their ads on Google, right? So Amazon really only cares about you advertising on Amazon. So I don't know that the Amazon ads, that ads off with Amazon necessarily, they really care about, but they do care about the presence. So, you know, because again, they're really trying to push their They're really trying to push authors into their ads. And one of the things that we've also seen with this algorithm change is that Amazon ads have always carried some optimization with it, right? They always, they have helped, they have aided in a book's optimization outside of obviously that it's a paid platform. But now the Amazon ads are doing more of that. And one of the things that we're seeing, because Google, if you've ever done Google ads, Google Ads doesn't, I mean, Google Ads are very expensive. They're very complicated. But Google Ads are prioritized, like the ads are prioritized over search, right? The ads are always prioritized over search. So that's really where Amazon is essentially going with this. So whereas you used to see sponsored ads. sprinkled in through, I mean, you do see them at the top where you see them sprinkled in through the search results. Now Amazon will eventually, I think, go to all the ads all the time at the top and the rest just goes at the bottom, which again is unfortunate, but ads is a big moneymaker for Amazon. Jeff Bezos was an early investor in Google. So a lot of what Amazon is changing is like, for example, the relevancy score, which Amazon has had for quite a while. But Amazon is really increasingly behaving like Google just in terms of prioritizing relevance, quality content, you know, authentic engagement over the things that a lot of people who are trying to cheat the system kind of do, which is manipulation.
00:24:58 SPEAKER_Adanna
Yeah. Well, OK, I think all of that segues into you talking about your new book, right? I mean, like you have for years done the Amazon by the truckload. And this is a deviation from that, right? I mean, it's.
00:25:15 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah. So last year, the Amazon author formula came out. And then this year I decided to do a workbook because one of the things I got a lot from authors was. I really want something that I can kind of sink my teeth into in terms of like worksheets and just really kind of breaking this down. So that's, yeah. So I did change from truckload. I thought, you know, it's time to rebrand it because I'd been, last year was my 10th year, if you can believe that, writing about the Amazon algorithm.
00:25:45 SPEAKER_Adanna
So. That's why you're Kathleen's guru.
00:25:50 SPEAKER_Adanna
That's so great. That's awesome.
00:25:51 SPEAKER_Kathleen
That's awesome. I've been leaning on you for at least 10 years. Yeah, that's awesome.
00:25:54 SPEAKER_Penny
that's awesome. I appreciate that. But that's where that's so the Amazon author formula was the newly branded, newly released book. And now in June, the Amazon author formula workbook comes out. So it's a companion book to the first book. And then, you know, at some point, you know, early next year, I'll probably have to release an updated version of. Amazon author formula, because every time Amazon changes something, you know, but the algorithm hasn't impacted anything that's in the original formula book, just because the algorithm, again, the algorithm changes really to try and shove the cheaters out of the system, essentially.
00:26:38 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah, it's their attempt at it. So tell me something. How much time, because you're a really well -known book marketer, you do a lot of that. How much time do you spend writing these books?
00:26:51 SPEAKER_Penny
A lot of time, actually. The workbook in particular was harder because I actually had to take the, you know, and I had to figure out what parts of the book that I was going to put in the workbook. So, and I know that we're not on video, but you saw the book. And by the way, thank you so much for your endorsement, Kathleen. I so appreciate that. I forgot to write you back that the other day, but you've seen the book. So you know the way that it's set up is you have the work, you have the breakdown and everything. And that took me, this book took me probably two or three times longer to write than the original book. Because when you're writing a book from start to finish, like it's a little bit different, but now like I had to really get into. the author experience as it relates to the work, you know, the worksheets and stuff like that. And so then all the worksheets, so because, you know, some people like to read an ebook, some people like to read in print. Typically, I do sell more print books than I do ebooks in my book, which is great. But everything, so there's a QR code, and then you can go online and all of the worksheets and whatnot are all available in drives. You can you know, make them your own. So you don't have to sit and write in the book. Yeah.
00:28:07 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Well, that's why it's reusable and you can use it. And what I like, I did look through it and because I had bought the book last year, your formula. So I'd read it. And then when you said, oh, I've got the workbook. I said, okay, but I'm looking at it. And what you did is you make it really simple and you have a couple examples for different genres. Yeah. When fiction and nonfiction and romance, I think, was one you used a lot. And it was like you you really broke it down asking you making the author think a bit about what they're really doing and how to go add some of these things. And the step by step through each part of the program there, you've got them in nice bite sized pieces. Yeah.
00:28:52 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah, that was really sort of my goal, because that was one of the challenges that I think a lot of authors had with anything that they're trying to learn, right, is that you have to break it down into something that feels a little bit more manageable. So you can take the book, you can pick up a chapter, you can work through the worksheet, you can take a break and kind of come back to it, but it's all broken down in a way that is a little bit more palatable. I think, because anytime I teach a class on optimization and Kathleen for your events and stuff like we've, I've done a lot of Amazon classes. When you do them in person, like you say the word optimization to authors and you can tell they sort of glaze over. They're like, that just sounds really hard. And I love that stuff just because I'm such a nerd, right? But not everybody feels that way. So part of what this book was a challenge to write was I had to really get out of my nerd brain. And make this such a way that anybody at any stage of their writing, publishing career could pick it up and, you know, work through the process and pick up some good keywords and things like that.
00:30:02 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah, I would recommend to anybody having read the book and gone through the workbook, if you're like... on your maybe third draft and you're thinking when you finish it, you're going to be able to get it to an editor. Now is the time to start going through this book so you don't overwhelm yourself, that you can go step by step through it. Like she said, work on it and then set it aside. Don't let it overwhelm you. And then come back to it and think about it so that you can slowly, so that by the time your book gets edited and everything else that happens in production and all of that, you've been doing this at least a year or so preparing yourself and working through all of this and getting it ready. Because I really think that most people... Put the book up on Amazon and say, now how do I market it? You know, that is like the most ass backwards way of doing it.
00:30:58 SPEAKER_Adanna
But also, I mean, Amazon's stat for that is 99 % of authors that have their book on Amazon do not market. 99%. I mean, so, you know, the idea that we've written the next great masterpiece, like you might have.
00:31:08 SPEAKER_Penny
mean, so,
00:31:16 SPEAKER_Adanna
But if you're not willing to go in and do that work, like nobody's going to know it.
00:31:21 SPEAKER_Penny
Nobody's going to know it. That's why I said at the beginning of the show, 99 % of authors just throw their book up on Amazon and hope for the best, right? And I talk to authors like that all the time where they're like, well, I've had my book up there for a year. And I asked them, like, what have you done? Well, nothing. Because I just figured, you know, it's in a store. So Amazon's got like, Amazon doesn't care about your book.
00:31:34 SPEAKER_Adanna
what have you
00:31:40 SPEAKER_Penny
doesn't care about your book. Amazon only cares about Amazon. I mean, sadly. you know,
00:31:46 SPEAKER_Kathleen
unless you're selling and then they're making money off of you.
00:31:49 SPEAKER_Penny
Well, and then they're, then they get super excited about all the things. Yes, absolutely. All right.
00:31:55 SPEAKER_Kathleen
There was something else you had mentioned before we started recording about getting around and uploading things.
00:32:03 SPEAKER_Penny
So there are, I have a little bit of a love hate relationship with all of the hybrid publishers that have cropped up. Some of them are very good. Some of them are shady. Right. So that's where I get a big disconnect. Amazon has now Amazon is implementing much more a much more rigorous process for uploading a book to KDP. So typically, like the the hybrid publisher would just upload the book,
00:32:29 SPEAKER_Penny
publisher would just upload the book, for example, to their account. Now it all has to be. And this is I don't think this is I don't think this process has completely been. rolled out yet. The process will be, when it's complete, that the author has to own the book page. And I think there obviously are some exceptions to this because you have traditional publishers that publish authors all the time. So that would make this a little bit difficult. But the idea is Amazon is really trying to implement where Not everybody can just upload another author's book because that's also part of the whole AI thing, right? That's also part of this problem. So Amazon wants to put metrics in place where you have to have like security code. You have to have this and you have to have that and all this other stuff. And that's going to prevent a lot of these hybrid publishers, I think, from uploading author books all the time because I think they're going to have to. You know, the author's going to have to upload it, which frankly, for a lot of the authors that I talk to, because I'll ask them, I'm like, why are you going through a hybrid publisher? You could just put this up on Amazon to yourself. I don't really want to upload the book myself. Well, I think that's going to come to an end. I really do. And I think that this rollout is going to be fairly gradual because I think if they just all of a sudden throw this out there, I think you're going to, Amazon's going to be fielding a lot of crazy customer service calls. But yeah, I mean, but again, it makes sense, right? You have to own the book or you have to show that it's your pen name, whatever, right? But if you're trying to write a book, again, to use Frida McFadden, if you're trying to write a book under Frida McFadden, you know, and, you know, John whatever is trying to upload the book, Amazon has to be like, yeah, that's not matching up here.
00:34:24 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah. And I think that's good because also so many of those shady hybrid companies, there was one I was dealing with a couple of years ago with an author. And this company had already done three of his books and told him he'd only sold a total of 40 books. And I could tell by his ratings he was selling more. And something like $70 ,000 deep, right? Yeah, yeah. And they went and we were able to get – it took a while, but we got Amazon to allow him to look at it. And he had hundreds of books he was selling, and she wasn't paying him, saying he wasn't selling. You know, she uploaded it. It went into her bank account.
00:35:09 SPEAKER_Penny
It's so shady. And then the other part of the other part that I also have a huge problem with is that as an author, so you're new in the industry, you don't know anything. It's a big, huge, like there's so much out there. You're very confused. So you go through a hybrid publisher and you trust them to put together a good cover, right? A good cover that's going to sell books. And I have seen, as I said, there are a lot of hybrid publishers that I've worked with that have done excellent work. But I have seen covers come from hybrid publishers where I'm just like, this literally just gives me a headache. Like, there's no other way. It just, it's so awful. And the authors will say, well, yeah, I didn't like it either. But, you know, I assume that they knew what they were doing. You know? So that's where I tell authors, I'm like, you know, if you're considering... going through hybrid publisher, do your due diligence. You know what I mean? Know what you like versus what you don't like in book covers. Take a look at some of the covers up on their website because it's so easy to put out a shingle now and say, oh, I'm a publisher and blah, blah, blah. And then authors will shell out so much money to get their book published. It's heartbreaking. I mean, it's really, it's really just heartbreaking. And you know, I mean, I know we're not talking about author scams, but there are so many. author scams out there that authors have to be aware of. We just got a call from an author who had gotten a call from, I think it was Barnes and Noble, quote unquote, Barnes and Noble, right? We want to stock your book. You have to print, I don't know, 20 ,000 copies of your book or something. And she did that and she paid the money and she's out all that money. So it's a new bookstore scam that's going around, right? authors are always have to be on guard for getting cheated because it's, you know, it's really, it's heartbreaking. I mean, you're spending all that money on books and then they're gone.
00:37:08 SPEAKER_Kathleen
I just said, you know, we are with the Writers and Publishers Network. I work with IBPA. We're affiliates. And they just contacted me two weeks ago. Because they're really trying to get rid of the scammers that are hybrid. They've come up with their rules and how to chop. And if you're talking to anybody, anybody go on the IBPA, that's Independent Book Publishers Association website, because they'll tell you who are members. Well, they called me and said, these people want to be certified. And they say they're associated with you. And they've been members of writers and publishers for 15 years. We've never heard of them. And they had us on their website. They had our logo on their website. You know, and it's like, OK, this is really good. They're just there. You've got to be careful. I'd say if you're considering them, check out IBPA. I have a very close friend I've known for years, wrote a children's book, put it up through page publishing. She's now sued them and won. But she's been able to get all of her rights back as of what they did. Yeah,
00:38:10 SPEAKER_Penny
it's really it. You know, you really and I've always I always tell authors, I'm like, you know what? when I see authors at writers conferences, just if you have, if you, if you question it, just email me, you know, check IBPA. Yes. Email me if you have a question, because I will give you the straight up truth on that because this infuriates me. When I heard about that new bookstore scam, that just infuriates me to no end, you know?
00:38:32 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Yeah. And everybody's dream is to be in Barnes and Noble. Of course.
00:38:37 SPEAKER_Penny
You know, and so, oh, my gosh. I mean, you know, and the screenplay scam, which, of course, has been going on for a while. So, you know, everybody in their own way is really battling these people who just kind of ruin it for everybody. You know what I mean? I mean, everybody. So the Amazon changes, like uploading the KDP and all of the algorithm changes and everything. We're going to see more of those because Amazon is Amazon's responsibility, in my opinion,
00:38:42 SPEAKER_Kathleen
while.
00:39:05 SPEAKER_Penny
to not allow this to happen. Like, we're all giving them a percentage of our book profits. And God knows Jeff Bezos has lots and lots of rockets. How about you take some of that cash and you put it towards safeguarding authors who both are getting their books stolen, but other people who are just throwing stuff up there and making a buck off of, you know, a celebrity passing away or some trend or something.
00:39:30 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Oh, yeah. Well, I'm sure you're right. We're going to see a lot of Brian Wilson.
00:39:34 SPEAKER_Penny
Oh, yeah. You're going to see so many. In fact, you know, checking another like week or two, you're going to see so many of them up on Amazon.
00:39:41 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Well, this morning, my whole Reels feed was all of these videos of Brian and the Paul McCartney talking about how one song, I forget it now, really it pushed him to work on Sergeant Peppers. Oh, OK. It's really good. He said that actually when Brian was inducted into something, but they're all over everywhere. So they're all yeah,
00:39:55 SPEAKER_Penny
Oh, OK. It's really good.
00:40:03 SPEAKER_Penny
all yeah, they're all over everywhere. So we always have to we always have to be we always have to be on the lookout. We always have to be on guard. Yeah.
00:40:13 SPEAKER_Adanna
I feel like that was a natural end to this.
00:40:18 SPEAKER_Kathleen
You know, there's so much out there. Penny, you are always a goldmine. And I'm so glad you generously share all this information with us. We need to have Penny on more often, not once every five years.
00:40:28 SPEAKER_Adanna
need to have Penny on more often, not once every five years.
00:40:32 SPEAKER_Penny
I got to tell you, ladies, I love this format with the three of us, because previously, Adana, you were not on. You were not on the show. Obviously, five years ago, you were. But I love this format. I think it's very conversational.
00:40:47 SPEAKER_Adanna
Yeah, we really, I think, I mean, both of us really enjoy it. And we have different perspectives and different areas of expertise. And I think it's made the podcast hopefully really comfortable for our guests. And it's really informal. And I love that about how we do the podcast. It's just, you know, wherever it goes is where it goes.
00:41:11 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah, I love that too. Because we did, we kind of went, we went all over the spectrum of Amazon and chat and everything. So that was good.
00:41:19 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Well, it's in conversation with, you know, that's what we're really doing. And in normal conversations, you go off, you follow, you know, something sounds interesting, you go that direction. And with you, there's so much knowledge and stuff. It made it fun. And I enjoy listening to you doing that. We will have all of the information, Penny's information up on the website and we will have about her new book, which came out, it's coming out this month in June, right?
00:41:50 SPEAKER_Penny
Yeah, it's coming out actually a week from Friday. So the 20th of June, it's kind of, it's coming out both the paperback and the ebook coming out the same day.
00:41:58 SPEAKER_Kathleen
Okay. So this will, this will be up the next week.
00:42:01 SPEAKER_Penny
Oh, that's great. That's so exciting. Thank you.
00:42:03 SPEAKER_Kathleen
I won't have it up for you. But anyway, well, thank you, Penny Sancervery, and all of your expertise. I always learn something when I talk with you, so I enjoy it.
00:42:15 SPEAKER_Penny
Thank you both so much. I really appreciate this. Thank you. This was really fun.