KDP Rocket Review

KDP Rocket Review

Publishing an ebook is a daunting task.

On the one hand, you probably recognize the immense profit potential the ebook marketplace, in particular Amazon’s Kindle platform, represents. After all, there are millions of readers worldwide, hungry for the next great book to entertain them or solve some of their problems in life.

On the other hand, the marketplace is increasingly crowded. Writing, publishing and marketing an ebook represents a serious investment of your time and money. What if you go through the entire painstaking process, only for the ebook to fall flat on its face?

A new piece of software has just been released which claims to be able to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you in terms of researching your book idea and carrying out market research on your ebook competition. It’s called KDP Rocket.

In this review, we’ll take a careful look at KDP Rocket. All of its features will be explored and explained in order to determine whether it truly is capable of skyrocketing your book idea and competition research process, or whether its claims crash and burn under scrutiny.

What This Review Will Cover

KDP Rocket – Who, What and Why?
KDP Rocket Features
Who Is KDP Rocket For?
KDP Rocket Practical Info
KDP Rocket – The Prof Verdict

KDP Rocket – Who, What and Why?

In this day and age, it’s important to know the story behind a product, and the person behind the product, before parting with your hard earned cash.

So does KDP Rocket have a legit origin story?

The software has been created by Dave Chesson, who has shared his book marketing knowledge online and has grown to be a major name within the niche. You might even have used Dave’s tools before – he’s the man behind the widely used Kindle sales calculator.

Dave’s spoken of his frustration at the tedium of trying to validate a book idea before writing it . KDP Rocket was his solution to his own personal pain point. He claims that it automates and improves upon his own book idea and competition research process.

Enough with the backstory. Let’s get to it. We’ll start by checking out KDP Rocket’s features and seeing if they live up to their promise.

KDP Rocket Features

When you open KDP Rocket, you are presented with a nicely laid out home menu screen, which contains three options – ‘Idea Search’, ‘Competition Search’ and ‘AMS Keywords Search’. This review will explore the ‘Idea Search’ and ‘Competition Search’ features of KDP Rocket as advertising will be covered in a different, in-depth article at a later date.

KDP Rocket Review Search

By clicking on either ‘idea search’ or ‘competitor search’ in the above image taken from the start screen of KDP Rocket, you can begin your research process.

The video tutorial allows you to watch a runthrough of KDP Rocket’s key features. It’s useful but doesn’t really require any further attention here.

Instead, let’s look at each of KDP Rocket’s two main features in turn and see exactly how they work and what they are used for.

KDP Rocket Features – Idea Search

The Idea Search feature of KDP Rocket can be reached through the home screen, like this –

Or by clicking on the bright orange Idea Search button found at the top right of the software at any time, like this –

Clicking Idea Search allows you to enter a keyword into the search box, as shown here –

Think of this keyword as your ‘seed’ or ‘basic idea’ from which a more detailed topic will emerge.

For the purpose of this review, we decided to go with the example idea of ‘Twitter Marketing’, in order to illustrate Idea Search and show you how it works from the inside.

After searching for your initial book idea, you’ll come to a screen which looks like this –

So what exactly is happening in that image, and why is it useful for you? Let’s break it down.

When carrying out an idea search, you are presented with the following headings for each keyword displayed –

Keyword is simply the list of keywords generated by Rocket related to your idea. You’ll notice that Rocket took our initial idea of Twitter Marketing and really ran with it, showing niche variants of the idea like ‘Twitter Marketing Excellence’ and ‘Twitter Marketing Blueprints’.

Number Of Competitors is the number of books that currently rank for a given keyword on the Amazon platform. This gives you a useful way of initially gauging competition levels before delving any deeper into the competitive research process.

Average Monthly Earnings shows how much money the books ranking on the front page for a keyword are making a month. This is a good way of making sure your book idea is actually a profitable opportunity ahead of time.

Google Searches Per Month is, unsurprisingly, the number of times your keyword is searched for on Google each month. This is a good way of gauging general interest levels in your idea.

Estimated Amazon Searches/Month is one of the most impressive aspects of KDP Rocket. It calculates an approximation of how many people are looking for your idea on Amazon. After all, Amazon is a buyer’s search engine, so Amazon demand for an idea is a clear indicator of its profit potential.

Competitive Score gives you a value between 1 and 99 estimating how difficult it would be to rank for your idea keyword on Amazon. This is similar to some search engine tools. This is basically a great way of figuring out how much effort your project will require, and if it’s worth pursuing.

The final column of the idea search screen will show one of two options – ‘analyze’ or ‘check competition’.

Clicking analyze will pull all of the data for a given keyword. This is great as it keeps KDP Rocket running fast by avoiding pulling data on keywords you think aren’t right for your project.

Clicking check competition will bring you to the ‘Competition Searches’ feature, which we’ll get to soon.

KDP Rocket Idea Search – The Verdict

So is this feature useful and well put together?

The best things about KDP Rocket’s idea search are its clean layout, the fact it expands upon your initial idea for you, the average monthly earnings calculation, and its ability to estimate the number of Amazon searches.

If you’ve ever tried to figure these things out manually, you’ll know this is a real timesaver.

On the negative side, newbies might not immediately understand exactly why all of this information is useful.

Overall, Idea Search is excellent. It provides a wealth of information and, best of all, integrates seamlessly with KDP Rocket’s ‘Competition Search’ feature, which we will get to now.

KDP Rocket Features – Competition Search

Much like Idea Search, KDP Rocket’s Competition Search can be accessed in several ways –

Either clicking on ‘competitor search’ on the home screen –

Clicking ‘New Competition Search’ on the top right of KDP Rocket at any time –

Or clicking ‘check competition’ for a particular keyword on the Idea Search screen –

We’ll explore Competition Search by analyzing one of our Idea Search keywords from the previous section, in this case, ‘Twitter Marketing Tips’.

When reaching the Competition Search screen, you will see the following –

The screen consists of the following headings –

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

Title is the main title of each book, as it is registered on Amazon. It’s worth noting that each result on the Competition Search screen is an actual book found on the Kindle store at the time of your search.

Subtitle shows the subtitle of the book as it officially appears on Amazon. I say this, because sometimes the subtitle on the cover of the book and the official Amazon subtitle will slightly differ.

Author shows the author name for each title. If you see Stephen King or JK Rowling here, you know you are in for a tougher time!

Age displays the number of days since the book was released onto the Kindle store. This is useful in judging whether a title is evergreen, or whether there is a gap in the market for new titles.

ABSR shows the Amazon Bestseller Rank for each title. This is a number which shows how many copies a title has sold recently in relation to other titles. The larger the number, the less successful a given title is. For example, a book with an ABSR of 10 is doing amazingly, while a book with an ABSR of 400,000 is not doing so well.

KW T shows whether a book has your keyword phrase in its title. By placing a keyword phrase in the book title, you stand a better chance of ranking for that keyword, all else being equal, against a book which does not have the keyword in the title.

KW ST shows whether a book has the keyword phrase in its subtitle. This is a ranking factor similar to, but less significant than, having the keyword in the title.

#Reviews is, simply, the number of reviews a title has on the Kindle store. Books with a lot of good reviews are harder to beat than books with fewer reviews.

Review is the average review score on Amazon, out of 5. Books with a lower average review score are, of course, easier to beat out than books with a higher average review score.

Price shows you the price in $ for each title. You can gauge the market price for your idea, and potentially look for an opportunity to either undercut the competition and compete on price, or charge a premium price for a superior product.

DY Sales shows an estimate of the daily sales for each book, based on its ABSR number.

Mo. Sales shows an estimate of the monthly sales for each book, based on its ABSR number.

Sales Page offers you the chance to see a book’s Amazon sales page, in your browser, in order to see if it looks like a possible area where your title could gain a competitive advantage, or to see the general standard you’ll need to match or exceed in order to compete.

Clicking on any particular title will bring up a useful summary of its info, its book cover, and its reviews at the bottom of the screen, like this –

The above screen is super useful when considering competing against any particular book, as book covers are one of the main factors in whether a book sells or not, and offer a real opportunity to attain competitive advantage over another title.

KDP Rocket Competition Search – The Verdict

Competition Search is a seriously powerful weapon in your book marketing arsenal. Too many times authors fail to carry out basic business principles like competitive analysis before launching a title. To be fair, the process used to be so tedious that reluctance to carry it out was understandable, if not justified.

KDP Rocket makes everything so simple and straightforward that there is no excuse not to do due diligence before writing and launching a title.

The Competition Search feature is my favorite part of KDP Rocket as it gives you both quantitative and qualitative data upon which to base your book idea research. You can accurately judge how difficult your competition will be to beat across a range of key metrics such as price, number of reviews, average review score etc. You can also quickly and easily spot opportunities for competitive advantage in terms of book cover and weaknesses identified by the reviews.

The only real downside to Competition Search is the fact it may be a little intimidating for newcomers. The tutorials address this concern, but someone unfamiliar with marketing who comes across a screen full of acronyms like ‘ABSR’ ‘KWT’ and ‘KWST’ for the first time may be slightly overwhelmed at first glance.

Who Is KDP Rocket For?

Now that you know what KDP Rocket does, let’s consider who it is right for.

If you are any of the following, you will find KDP Rocket useful –

  • An aspiring author looking to write your first book, wanting to make sure it stands a chance of success ahead of time
  • An experienced self-publisher looking for a commercially viable opportunity in an increasingly crowded marketplace
  • An online entrepreneur who has no interest in writing a book personally, but is simply looking to make money through the process of outsourcing
  • Someone looking to grow their existing online business through an ebook, and wanting to get an overview of the commercial situation within your niche

The beauty of KDP Rocket is it allows you to go into the process in as much depth as you want. It would help you with a situation of any complexity, from something as simple as seeing if anyone is searching for your idea, to something as in-depth calculating the estimated monthly net profit you will generate over a period of time.

KDP Rocket Practical Info

KDP Rocket costs $97 as a one-off payment, no subscription required
KDP Rocket works on both Mac and PC
KDP Rocket comes with a 30 day money back guarantee

KDP Rocket – The Prof Verdict

Overall, I can safely say this is an absolutely solid product that is head and shoulders above anything else out there right now, including Kindle Samurai and KD Spy.

It manages to blend rich levels of numerical data with a crisp, clean interface which is easy to navigate and intuitive to use.

Finally, the creator of KDP Rocket is a trustworthy name. It’s reassuring to buy software developed by a genuine self-publisher with a spotless track record for quality content and advice related to self-publishing.

If you think ebooks represent a chance for you to increase your online earnings, KDP Rocket is a must have tool that gives you the best chance possible of commercial success.

The 30 day money back guarantee means there’s no reason not to check it out for yourself and see if it’s right for you.

 

COMMENTS

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    This KDP Rocket review is helpful for me, because I need to keep abreast of the ebook/book market. Now I can use KDP Rocket as a tool to find info about an author and novel faster and easier, instead of going to one book at a time. Time is precious to me, since I am an author. Wow, the time I’m going to save! After reading the review, I know KDP Rocket will educate me to broaden my marketing techniques.

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