Found or Invisible: How Keywords Drive Discovery on LinkedIn and Amazon

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) joins Book to Bestseller TV for a practical conversation on the business of authorship: using LinkedIn as a discovery engine, defining an author brand, the mechanics of ghostwriting and work-for-hire, why indie publishing beats traditional on speed, and where advertising money actually pays off for books.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written more than 113 books under his own name and ghostwritten over 54 more for clients, and a LinkedIn branding specialist who has written well over 150 profiles. Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Focus on LinkedIn: why the book exists

Host: Welcome to Book to Bestseller TV. Today I’m super excited to have Richard Lowe with me. Richard is a bestselling author who has written 113+ books, ghostwritten 54+ more, and produced several hundred articles. He’s the owner and senior writer of The Writing King, which provides ghostwriting, book coaching, WordPress implementation, blogging, and copywriting, and he’s a senior LinkedIn branding specialist who has written over 150 LinkedIn profiles. Let’s start with your LinkedIn profiles book. Tell us what it’s about and why you wrote it.

Richard Lowe: The book is called Focus on LinkedIn. I got hired by a company called LinkedIn Makeover to write LinkedIn profiles, got pretty good at it, and did about 150 of them. I realized there were common threads: most people’s profiles are either copies of their resume, which is actually pretty bad, or empty, or full of stuff that makes no sense in a profile. So I wrote the book for someone who’s on LinkedIn and doesn’t know what to do, here’s how you fill in your profile, what you should do, what you shouldn’t, and how you use LinkedIn. It’s a beginning-to-intermediate book on how to use it.

What LinkedIn is actually for

Host: I’m on LinkedIn but I don’t think I’m really using my personal profile. Why would somebody maintain a presence there? We know Facebook is for social and news. How would somebody use LinkedIn in their business, and who is it for and not for?

Richard Lowe: LinkedIn is a professional network, different from Facebook, which is more social, for friends and family with business thrown in. On LinkedIn you talk to other professionals. Take my own writing business: I’ve got a customer in Brazil, one in South Africa, one in Saudi Arabia, and one down the block. They found me all over the world by searching for ghostwriter or blogger, finding my profile, seeing I’m a technical ghostwriter, liking what they saw, and contacting me.

Richard Lowe: For an author, it should be part of your branding. You describe your experience as an author, fill it in with your books and information, make a company page for yourself as an author, and add showcase pages describing your books or services. Tying it all together gets you a bit more exposure to a whole different audience, especially for nonfiction, though it works for fiction too. The audiences on Facebook and LinkedIn are very different.

Branding: define it before the world does

Host: You mentioned branding. How do you define branding on LinkedIn, or really anywhere, especially from an author’s perspective?

Richard Lowe: It’s the way the world views you, and if you don’t come up with the brand, the world will. You have the choice: come up with the brand and portray it, or have one forced on you. It might be the clothes you wear, how you present yourself, the books you’ve written. Louis L’Amour was a Western writer, a very precise brand, so readers knew exactly what kind of book they were getting. You see Agatha Christie and you know what you’re going to get. That’s branding: people understand who you are and know what they’re getting into, which makes them more likely to buy your books.

LinkedIn is a search engine: keywords and content

Host: When somebody is searching for someone on LinkedIn, what can you put in your profile or bio to help them find you versus someone else?

Richard Lowe: Your headline is most important for being found. Remember, LinkedIn is a search engine, but not like Google. Google is very picky because it has millions of websites and people gaming it constantly. LinkedIn is a much more primitive search engine that deals more with keywords and phrases, while Google is moving toward understanding what a page is really trying to say.

Richard Lowe: Use your keywords a couple of times in your headline and titles, and do the same with each of your experiences. I separate keywords with a bullet, checkmark, bar, star, or period. Then you write articles on LinkedIn, post statuses, and do things with those keywords that attract people to your brand. For me it’s ghostwriter, ghostwriting, technical ghostwriting, ghostblogging, everything related to the brand, plus recommendations on my ghostwriting. LinkedIn builds a picture that I’m a ghostwriter, and then it sends people who want technical ghostwriting over to me. That’s how it works.

The indie publishing advantage: fix it tonight

Host: I noticed your book is in its seventh edition on Amazon. With technical writing, you can’t have a static book; you have to stay on top of every advance in technology. Is that a correct assumption?

Richard Lowe: Yes. I purposely wrote the book without many screenshots, so the changes Microsoft made after buying LinkedIn aren’t in it, but the concepts are the same, so the book works fine. Occasionally I learn something new and update it, and because I’m an indie publisher I just upload it. That’s a major advantage over traditional. If someone says there’s a grammar error on page 256, I’ll have a new paperback and Kindle version up tonight, and the hardcover in a couple of days. A traditional publisher can’t do that; they have to put out a whole new edition, and it takes months.

Host: That’s a good point. It used to be you’d go to press for 10,000 copies, and if you had an error, you had to blow through all 10,000 before you got an error-free version. I remember books with errata sheets. Now you just re-upload.

Walking through the ghostwriting process

Host: You talked about being a ghostwriter. Can you lead us through the process?

Richard Lowe: There are multiple kinds, but the typical project: say you came to me wanting a book. I’d interview you, get your notes, your audio recordings transcribed, and whatever other materials you have. Then I’d write the book, usually chapter by chapter, sending you chapters as they go. Some ghostwriters send the whole thing at the end, but I prefer to catch what’s wrong as I go rather than at the end. When it’s done, you’ve got a book, the ghostwriter goes away, and he’s been paid. That’s how it works.

Host: And the copyright remains in the author’s name, not the ghostwriter’s?

Richard Lowe: Correct. It’s considered work for hire. It’s the same as if you hired somebody to make a quilt for you; the quilt is still owned by you.

Change orders and scope creep

Host: So your job as ghostwriter is to form the author’s information, in whatever form it exists, into a cohesive book, starting with an outline and approval, then working through each chapter.

Richard Lowe: That’s correct. Usually about the middle of the book they want to reduce a couple of earlier chapters, which produces more money because it’s a change. That’s very important in ghostwriting or freelance writing: change has to be built into the contract. I’m a computer person by trade and I used to do project management. You get to the end of a project and everybody wants to change things, and they want to change it again and again. You have to have it in the contract that changes cost more money, or you’ll lose money on the project.

Host: We call that scope creep.

Richard Lowe: Scope creep is the exact word. Things suddenly become bigger than you could have imagined. I’ve been in software projects that started at $100,000 and wound up costing $23 million.

Building the author platform: they’re buying you

Host: Part of your bio is that you worked at Trader Joe’s, then retired to become a writer. One of your books is How to Make a Living as a Professional Self-Published Author. What would you like other authors to pick out of that book?

Richard Lowe: That book is aimed at an author who wants to publish their own books, so it doesn’t include the freelancing. Most authors say they want to write a book, spend a year or two writing it, take courses they often paid too much for, struggle through publishing, and then their mom buys it, their friend buys it, and they’re at three sales wondering what happened. What they don’t know is there’s a whole process, and the biggest part is building your brand as an author, well-defined and narrowly focused.

Richard Lowe: You have to do the pre-work: videos, interviews, all the things that build an audience who cares. Whatever book you wrote, there are at least a hundred like it, some better, some worse, and some free in the library. So people aren’t buying your book, they’re buying you, and you have to sell you, especially as an indie publisher. The biggest thing missing is building the blog, the website, the LinkedIn and Facebook presence, the author platform, and finding the right media. Some people hate video, so don’t do video. Some hate mailing lists, so find another approach that works for you.

The social media time trap

Host: What about social media in general? Should we be active on multiple platforms or pick one and hit it hard?

Richard Lowe: You have to find the channel or channels that work for you. For me, social media is dead on arrival; it doesn’t sell well for my nonfiction books. LinkedIn is an excellent market for my books because they’re professional people who want to learn LinkedIn or eBay. For fiction authors, Facebook may be great. One caution everyone knows: social media is a black hole of time. You intend to post that you wrote a book, and suddenly 15 people are commenting and you’re chatting. You’re in business mode, not play mode, so set a timer. I’ve lost too much time on social media; I’m glad I didn’t keep track, because I’d be embarrassed.

LinkedIn ads versus Amazon AMS

Host: LinkedIn has pay-to-play now; businesses can run ads. What’s your opinion? Does it work?

Richard Lowe: As a freelancer, pay-per-click advertising can work very well, because I can pay $500 and get $1,000 jobs. But as an author selling a book, I can’t put that kind of money in. If I’m paying $14 for a Google click or $5 for a LinkedIn click, I’m not going to make that back on a book where I earn two to five dollars, especially since it takes multiple touches to sell one. So I wouldn’t recommend pay-per-click for books unless you’re very good at it, except for Amazon Marketing Services.

Richard Lowe: On Amazon Marketing Services, AMS, I make a steady $1,000 a month without thinking about it. It’s pay-per-click, a couple of pennies up to 15 cents a click, and about every second click sells. I pay around $200 a month to make $1,000. Once a month I go in and tune some keywords. I use the keyword version, not the comparable-titles version, because comparable titles doesn’t work for books, from my experience and from other people’s. I actually have a product about it called AMS ATM, on my website, under ten dollars, a PDF case study of what I did.

The networking book, and getting out into the world

Host: Anything else you’d like to let us know before we wrap up?

Richard Lowe: I’ll mention one other book, about networking: Network Your Business to Prosperity. One of the things authors need to do is network, not online but in the real world. Speak, go to libraries, do book signings, talk to people. This book tells you how to do that and make it work. It’s about getting people to know, like, and trust you. If they know you and start to like you, they start to trust you, and once they trust you, they’ll buy in. It’s a short one.

Host: Thank you so much for being with me today. It’s been a pleasure to pick your brain about your books, LinkedIn, and writing as a business.

Richard Lowe: My pleasure, anytime.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

How do you get found on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a keyword-driven search engine, more primitive than Google, so your headline matters most. Use your key terms a few times in the headline and in each experience entry, then reinforce them by writing articles, posting, and collecting recommendations in that specialty. Over time LinkedIn builds a picture of what you do and starts routing relevant searchers to you.

Who owns the copyright to a ghostwritten book?

The author does. Ghostwriting is work for hire, the same as commissioning a quilt: you paid for it, so you own it. The ghostwriter is paid for the work and does not retain rights to the finished book, which carries the author’s name.

Why is indie publishing better than traditional for updates?

Speed and control. An indie author can correct an error or release a new edition the same night, uploading fresh paperback and Kindle files immediately. Traditional publishing requires a whole new edition that takes months, which is why technical and evergreen nonfiction especially benefit from staying independent.

Does paid advertising sell books?

Rarely through LinkedIn or Google, where per-click costs dwarf the few dollars earned per book, especially since it takes several touches to make a sale. The exception is Amazon Marketing Services using the keyword approach rather than comparable titles: modest per-click costs and a high enough conversion rate can turn a couple hundred dollars a month into roughly a thousand in steady sales.