Rocket Science vs. Spy Craft: Mastering the Art of Keyword Selection

In today’s competitive self-publishing landscape, effective keyword and category research are essential to maximize a book’s visibility and reach its target audience. Publisher Rocket and KDSpy are two popular tools that provide essential data for making these decisions.

Keywords have a direct impact on visibility and discoverability on platforms like Amazon. With KDP's limit of seven keyword selections, choosing these carefully is crucial. Last week, while using both tools simultaneously, I noticed they often yield different results for the same search terms, sometimes even appearing contradictory. This raised a question: when faced with conflicting data, how do we decide which tool's insights to follow? I discovered the answer lies in understanding each tool’s strengths and unique focus.

Forecasting Power vs Tactical Precision

Publisher Rocket is a standalone application with an API connection to Amazon’s backend, providing insights on competition, keyword suggestions, monthly search volumes, and sales estimates. KDSpy, on the other hand, is a browser extension that scrapes data directly from Amazon pages, capturing real-time metrics like current rankings, recent price changes, and immediate sales estimates.

This fundamental difference means that while KDSpy reflects the present Amazon landscape, Publisher Rocket gives a broader view by analyzing keyword demand trends over time. Each tool thus offers unique advantages depending on your needs—Publisher Rocket for a strategic view and KDSpy for real-time, tactical insights.

Scenarios

In the following scenarios, I’ve compared Publisher Rocket and KDSpy’s results on specific keywords, interpreting any variances and concluding whether to retain, reconsider, or discard the term based on the combined insights. Each term here has Publisher Rocket’s favorable “green/green” rating, which signals high potential and low entry barriers. I uncovered them during my keyword research for my recent book.

[ Example 0 ]

search term - “books about belonging for kids“

In Publisher Rocket, green in both columns signals that this search term is primed to capture fresh interest with minimal competitive resistance:

KDSpy largely agrees, displaying green for Potential and Competition but noting weaker Popularity, meaning that the term is not currently trending (see lower right hand corner of Fig. 1):

Given Publisher Rocket’s indication of long-term viability, the term appears promising overall. It could certainly pay off in the long run.

Decision: Retain for keyword selection.

[ Example 1 ]

search term - “book about friendship for kids“

Publisher Rocket indicates strong interest, here (see top row of Fig. 2):

Running it through KDSpy gives a red for Competition:

This means that there are many established books that are ranking well for this term, at the current time. The combined results tell us that despite the immediate competition, this search term still has strong long-term potential.

Decision: Retain as a keyword despite current competition.

[ Example 2 ]

search term - “childrens book about adventure“

Publisher Rocket shows this term has promising reach potential, allowing a new book to rank effectively without much pushback, as expected:

KDSpy warns of high competition with low short-term profitability:

With Publisher Rocket’s data suggesting longer-term promise, I’ll consider it “undecided” for now, possibly revisiting if better-performing terms aren’t uncovered.

Decision: Undecided, pending further analysis.

[ Example 3 ]

search term - “childrens book about moving“

Publisher Rocket highlights strong visibility potential and low competition:

Conversely, KDSpy indicates significant competition with limited demand:

When there’s significant competition in the face of low demand, there’s likely a few titles that dominate this term, which are challenging to outrank. The weak potential tells us that our book is not lucrative for immediate sales, but this term does have a steady but limited audience.

Overall, this combination of results indicates your book will start out with moderate sales and a smaller targeted market, but the long-term niche opportunity is alive and well.

Decision: Use if the book’s niche or subject matter is esoteric; discard if targeting a broad audience.

Conclusions

The differences between Publisher Rocket and KDSpy underscore that no single tool can address every keyword research need. Publisher Rocket provides long-term viability and demand analysis, while KDSpy is invaluable for gauging real-time competition and immediate market trends.

By strategically combining the strengths of both Publisher Rocket and KDSpy, you can create a more comprehensive, data-driven approach to keyword selection, category placement, and audience targeting, giving your book a greater chance of being discovered and succeeding in the marketplace.