KDP Title And Subtitle: Are You Doing It Wrong?

Are you inputting your title and subtitle incorrectly?

Titles and subtitles are something that I have certainly made mistakes with and that haunt me somewhat to this day. This is something I have been reminded of recently too.

I think sometimes people feel they want to have a creative title and so they put this FIRST and that may be all they do.

They then put their keywords in the backend slots and wonder why their book isn’t showing up for any of their chosen keywords.

At the same time, you do want your title to sound natural and this is something that Amazon have got much stricter about in recent times.

You want to ideally have your best keyword in the title.

Your title & subtitle are generally considered the important spots when it comes to keywords but you have to do it carefully and not in a spammy way.

If you get this wrong, it can mean your book is just not found by anyone on amazon and won’t rank in the niche you’re aiming for.

We are low content publishers and we target niches and keywords. This is vitally important for us, in order for our books to be seen. Especially if we are looking to make our initial sales without using Ads.

But even if we ARE planning to run Ads, Amazon takes info from our metadata to determine where to show our books when we run an Auto Ad. So, we want as much relevant information in that metadata as we can.

So, we need to have a well-defined niche and our target keyword needs to be right there in the no.1 slot available, which is our title.

This immediately tells the audience searching on Amazon that our book is what they are looking for.

If you have some vague and indeterminate title, that may be alluring for a fiction book but our aim as low content publishers, is to create books that people are already searching for.

But additionally, if we can fill in the subtitle without being spammy, an extra keyword or two in there can also help.

Especially if this means we may show up for some variation on our original idea.

Some people really add a lot of words in their subtitles and it looks unprofessional and wrong. People do still continue to do it, but Amazon is really cracking down on this now.

Watch Out For Repetition!

More recently, Amazon has tightened the rules when it comes to repetition. While I think Amazon did mention repetition previously in their meta guidelines, they were not as specific as they are now.

As you can see in the image below, they specifically reference a lot of LOW CONTENT related keywords. For example; “notebook, journal….”

Many of us that started on KDP, will probably have some books with titles that repeat certain words. Partly this is probably due to us seeing other established authors doing this and therefore, thinking it was OK.

Looking back at some of my own titles, I do question why I settled on certain ones and repeated words when it wasn’t necessary to do so. It’s just a shame that Amazon didn’t flag those things back then, prior to them being published.

But this is the sort of things many beginners did. Especially those who had already been on platforms like Etsy, where you would often have keyword stuffed titles. At least, you did back then.

In any case, (as of this updated post in 2024) Amazon bots will likely flag your title if you repeat any word twice – even if it seems to make total sense to you.

Important:

• Your title must be on your cover, or on the spine text of your book.

• The title must be exactly the same on your book, as it is in the title section you fill in on the backend.

• Try and make your title flow naturally, don’t keyword stuff or repeat words.

• Don’t reference other authors or trademarked terms.

• Don’t make reference to sales rank.

• Do not reference promotions – e.g. “free,” “bonus,” etc.

Check out the meta guidelines – which Amazon will change over time. What may be considered OK today, may not be in six months time.

Good Vs Bad Title Examples:

Apologies to any authors I’m calling out here.

I could even put myself on this list, as I have definitely created some subtitles that were too long and rambling in the beginning when I first started.

It’s just best practice to definitely avoid that and keep things as concise as you can, while still providing enough information and ideally – two or three keywords.

You don’t need to add details about the book itself, such as the size of the book or how many pages it contains.

So, you don’t want a title like the following…..

The above reads more like a list and is too long and rambling. It feels as though this person is just trying to stuff as many keywords in there as they can.

Another issue is, the book actually doesn’t match this description at all inside either.

The book, (from the first initial pages I saw anyway…)… Reads more like it’s a writing prompt book!

It didn’t appear to have anything to do with self care, mindfulness, or gratitude!

The title also holds has some repetition. It says Self-Care Journal twice – once in the title and once in the description.

This author also has a keyword in their author name, which is definitely something you need to avoid these days.

This author name was lucky to slide through in 2021… But I imagine that even if they tried to edit this book, they would run into issues now.

I go into more info about this book, in the above video.

By contrast, the title below is fine and still manages to fit in several keywords.

By contrast the above title has a clear long-tail keyword as their title. That entire title IS something that people would type in directly to amazon.

That is the ideal scenario and ideally, it will also be the no.1 keyword they are hoping to rank for and target.

But they also manage to fit in several other keywords in the subtitle, while still sounding natural.

All of the descriptive words in the subtitle, also work well to describe the book, (as long as what it mentions actually is relevant to the book – unlike the first example).

This author also has a brand name – which isn’t a keyword. It is fine to have a brand name like this, it doesn’t have to be the name of a person.

I largely use brand names/company names myself that I come up with, but I do have the odd pen name that sounds like a person as well.

Another Example……..

The above example just doesn’t sound natural, but they have used a lot of different words rather than repeating the same ones.

There was a while where you also shouldn’t add the dimensions of your book or reference the size – however, I believe Amazon has changed this with the introduction of low content.

As, sometimes with low content it makes sense to reference the size. I can’t see any reference now to size in the meta guidelines, (maybe I’m missing it) so I cannot be sure of their thoughts on this.

The above title still has PLENTY of information within it and several keywords as well but it is laid out in a way that makes sense.

The subtitle DESCRIBES the book, without sounding like they’re just packing in keywords.

The title again is a long-tail keyword in itself and will be something people are actively searching for.

But It’s Not Just About The Title:

You could have the best, well thought out and well formatted title on Amazon – but that won’t matter at all if your book doesn’t look any good.

Or doesn’t actually live up to customer expectations.

The number one thing you need to focus on, is creating a good looking book that people are actually going to be searching for on Amazon.

You could have a great design AND a great title… Again neither of those things matter in that case, unless the keywords you’re targeting are actually being searched for on Amazon.

It’s a shame that many of us do unfortunately make mistakes in the beginning when we are on KDP – including myself.

I made some of these errors with my own titles and once they are published, there is no way of editing them so — I hope I can encourage other people to get them right first time.

Do you have a specific strategy for creating a title & subtitle on Amazon?

Let me know in the comments!

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