Stop Guessing. Amazon Knows What Your Book Is, Even if You Don’t.

NovelReport Review

Most of us treat the KDP dashboard like a slot machine. We pick seven keywords that “sound right,” choose two categories that look broad enough to catch everyone, and pray to the algorithm gods.

It’s a strategy built on hope. And hope is a terrible business model.

I just got my hands on NovelReport, the new tool from the Kindlepreneur team (the same guys behind Publisher Rocket and Atticus). I’m an affiliate because I actually use their stuff, but I wanted to see if this lived up to the hype.

Instead of a generic review, I ran my own book, Scent of the Silence, through it. Here is exactly what the “black box” of Amazon sees when it looks at my feline-POV apocalypse.

The Problem: We Think Like Authors, Not Shoppers

When I wrote Scent of the Silence, I thought of it as a “Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi.” That’s true. But that’s also what 50,000 other people are fighting for.

NovelReport didn’t just give me synonyms. It gave me data-backed clusters.

1. The “7 Boxes” Strategy

Amazon gives you seven keyword boxes. Most authors put one word in each. That’s a waste of real estate. NovelReport builds “Targeted Descriptive Phrases.”

For Scent of the Silence, it didn’t just suggest “Cat book.” It gave me:

• Box 1: Feline Protector Urban Zompoc Horror (96.0 Relevancy Score)

• Box 2: Nonhuman Viewpoint Apocalyptic Xenofiction (94.0 Relevancy Score)

I previously used various LLMs to search for right KDP keyphrases but this was the first time I saw the term xenofiction!

It uses all 50 characters to anchor the book to what people actually type into the search bar. No guessing. Just math.

2. Category Anchoring (The “Winnable” Fight)

This was the biggest eye-opener. Most authors pick categories based on gut feeling. NovelReport looks at the Sales to #1 and Sales to #10 metrics to tell you exactly how hard you have to work to win.

For my book, it identified a prime target: Kindle Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Suspense > Horror.

• Sales to hit #10: ~32 sales/day.

• Sales to hit #1: ~242 sales/day.

Contrast that with a massive category where you’d need 1,000+ sales just to sniff the Top 10. By moving to a “winnable” category, I can actually get that Bestseller badge without a Super Bowl ad budget.

3. Avoiding “Ghost” Categories

Amazon has “Ghost Categories” – sections that exist but aren’t visible to shoppers. If you land in one, you’re invisible. You can’t hit a list because the list doesn’t technically “live” anywhere a human can find it.

The report flagged that Kindle Books > Literature & Fiction > Horror > General is a ghost category for me. It’s a dead end. Identifying these early saves you months of zero-visibility frustration.

4. The “Similar To” Reality Check

We all like to think our book is “The Martian meets Watership Down.” But what does the A10 algorithm think?

NovelReport pulled a list of “Perceived Similar Books.” For me, it pulled The Female Breeders and Utter Darkness. These are my real competitors – books that collectively pull in over $1,700/month in sales. This is my target list for Amazon Ads. If people buy those, they’ll buy mine.

5. Blurbs that Actually Convert

It generates two versions of a book description.

• Description 1: Focused on the “Hook.” (The world ended while the cat was napping.)

• Description 2: Focused on “Genre Heavy” terms for the algorithm.

I’ve spent weeks agonizing over my blurb. This tool did it in seconds, and its “Wrong-Smelling Ones” hook is better than my original draft.

NovelReport also creates separate blurbs for your Amazon listing and for your paperback back cover.

Why it’s so awesome

NovelReport is basically the brain of Publisher Rocket applied to one specific book. You don’t have to learn a complex software suite. You just upload your manuscript details and get a 23-page roadmap.

It normally costs $59.99 per report. But since you’re reading this, you don’t have to pay that.

If you become a paid subscriber of AI Fiction Lab you get $20 Off Your Report!

If you’re tired of shouting into the void and wondering why your rank is falling, stop guessing. The data is right here.