What is Publisher Rocket, and is it worth using?

​If you’re a self-publishing author using Amazon KDP, then you may have considered using Publisher Rocket at some point. They offer comprehensive tools that have been used by best-selling authors, publishers, and indie authors alike, giving up-to-date information and helping you to get your book in front of more Amazon customers.

So, what exactly does Publisher Rocket do?

The four main areas in which Publisher Rocket can help you with are:
Keywords – Competition Analysis – Category Search – AMS Keyword Search

​Once you sign up for their service, you can go to the main page and will see four options (listed below).

ONE - Keywords

This helps you to choose seven keywords that shoppers currently use, it will tell you the level of competition, the estimated Amazon searches per month for that keyword and the average money that top books (for that keyword) make.
 
With the keywords you start by typing in an initial word or phrase that you think your readers would use to find your book (keeping it in broad terms), from here Publisher Rocket will come back with a list of ideas and suggestions for your book.
 
Next to each suggestion you’ll have a button with ‘Analyze’ written on, click on this and it will show you details on how many searches are made for it on Amazon and Google along with earnings and competition for the keyword.
 

2 - Competition Analyzer

This lists books which rank on the first page of Amazon for a specific keyword, it will also give info on how successful those particular books are, along with what is going right for them and how you can outperform those books too.
 
Here you can see the top 10 books that show up on Amazon for a specific search term, you can break these details down into total for all editions, eBooks, paperbacks, hard backs or audio books. 
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THREE - Category Search

This section will enable you to see a list of all the Amazon book & eBook categories (and there’s over 12,000 of them), it will also tell you how many copies you will need to sell to become the number one best seller for each category.
 
Not only will this tell you how many books you’ll need to sell to hit number one in each category and sub-category, but it will also tell you how many books you will need to sell to hit number ten as well.
 
 
FOUR - AMS Keyword Search

​This will enable you to create a list of the best suited keywords for your Ad campaigns with Amazon Ads.
 
It will list Amazon’s suggested keywords for your ad, the A-Z of Amazon’s suggested keywords, Amazon’s list of similar books, this can help to make your ad more efficient, it will also show you the details of these other books (title, Author, and type of search result).

How much does it cost?

Currently Publisher Rocket is $97 (which is a one-time payment), with this you’ll have complete access to the service, and they include all future updates. The data it provides users currently is based on the US Amazon.com market only, but they do state that they plan to include international information in the future.

Is it worth it?

Well, they do have a lot of great authors who swear by Publisher Rocket, and the service does give you a great deal of incredibly useful data. If you are serious about reaching as many readers as possible on Amazon, then it is certainly worth considering, oh, and they do currently offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Alternatively, you can figure out some of this info by yourself, there are articles on Keywords, Categories and the metadata for your book on Amazon Publishing, but Publisher Rocket does seem to be able to get a lot more detail for you and it is a great deal easier too.