Publisher Rocket Vs KDSPY: Which One Should You Choose?

Publisher Rocket vs KDSPY- which one is better for you and your writing career?

If you are a self-publishing author of fiction or non-fiction books, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform is where you need to be. This holds true whether you are publishing exclusively to Kindle Unlimited or choose to go wide with your titles by making them available through multiple online retailers.

During the past few years, succeeding in the self-publishing space has become more and more difficult as the competition has increased – it takes much more to make a splash, not to mention a living, as a self publishing author on KDP today than it did just a few short years ago, not to mention a decade.

But rather than bemoaning the shifts that are happening in the self-publishing market, it makes much more sense to adapt and roll with the changes. If you are among those who are willing to leverage the powerful tools that are available to help you stay ahead of your competition, you’ll have a much greater chance at not only surviving but thriving as a self published author.

Imagine having your very own Kindle spy, a Kindle software that could help you find the best keyword ideas, show you the estimated Amazon searches for any given seed keyword, help you aim your Amazon ads for success and even show you exactly what it would take to hit number 1 on the Amazon bestseller list. What would such a keyword tool be worth to you?

In this Publisher Rocket vs KDSPY review and comparison, we’ll be looking at two of the best keyword research and statistics tools that are available to indie authors today. We’ll be going over why, if you are a self-publishing author, you need a tool like Publisher Rocket or KDSPY if you want to fine-tune your author business for success. We’ll also be looking at the tools and other features that a membership to Publisher Rocket or KDSPY gives you access to, plus we’ll be weighing up the pros and the cons of both softwares before comparing them to each other and drawing a conclusion as to which one is more likely to give your author business the boost it needs.

Sound good? Then let’s dive in.

Why every self-publishing author needs a tool like Publisher Rocket or KDSPY

We’ve already established that the competition is merciless, but did you know that most self-published books on Amazon sell less than a thousand copies?

That’s why you, as an independent author without a publishing house to back you up- and let’s face it, perhaps without much of a budget to start – need to use every tool, every edge you can find to your advantage.

Gone are the days when authors could simply write the book that they themselves wanted to read, upload it to Amazon’s KDP platform and watch it take off. Today, so much more is required if you want to give your book the best chance at standing out in an oversaturated market. Now, more than ever, you need to consider what readers want to read, so that you can give it to them. In other words, if you want to thrive as an independent author today and going forwards, you need to learn how to write to market.

Helps you write to market

Writing to market requires that you know what readers are searching for when they go on Amazon to buy physical books or to download ebooks on their Kindles. You need to know, so that you can get your book in front of them and capture as many potential book sales and page reads as possible.

So how do you find out what readers want? While you can carry out some research manually by logging into your own Amazon account and perusing Kindle’s best-seller lists for different categories to see what’s selling, there is a much faster, easier and more reliable way.

Makes research fast and precise

Softwares like Publisher Rocket and KDSPY are essentially statistics tools that are able to gather and crunch a massive amount of data such as downloads, page reads and keywords, all in a matter of minutes.

Keyword research can be very difficult and opaque when you do it manually, and so leave a lot of room for human error. With a software to help you, you get a much more clear and accurate picture of what’s really going on behind the scenes on the Kindle store.

Saves you oodles of time

Gathering even a halfway decent overview over the ideal keywords and categories to use for your book is not only going to be difficult if you choose to do it manually, it is also guaranteed to be a massive time drain – time that you could, and probably should, be spending writing instead.

Makes marketing and advertising more effective

If you have ever self published a book before, you don’t need me to tell you that writing and uploading you book to Amazon’s Kindle store and other online retailers is only half the work – the other half is getting the word out there about your book, so that people hopefully will buy it.

If your book is not only well-written and has a great cover, but is also placed into the correct categories and using exactly the right keywords in the Kindle store, it makes advertising your book so much easier. If your book isn’t well-placed in the store, however, even a large marketing budget might be wasted because there is too much of a discrepancy between your book and the book readers are searching for on the store.

Publisher Rocket review

Now that we’re all clear on why it is essential for self-publishing independent authors to leverage a tool like Publisher Rocket or KDSPY in their author business, it is time for us to get into the meat of this article. Let’s start with a Publisher Rocket review, wherein we’l be going over its tools, features and functions, its pros and cons, and of course its price tag.

Publisher Rocket tools and features

On its main page, Publisher Rocket promises to help you get your book in front of more Amazon shoppers so that you can spend more time writing and less time marketing.

Publisher Rocket seeks to accomplish this by plugging their subscribers into four powerful research tools, namely a Keywords Feature, an Overview Feature, a Categories Feature and finally a very useful Ads Keyword Feature. Now, let’s take a look at each of them individually.

Keywords feature

Publisher Rocket’s keyword feature tells you exactly what Amazon customers are typing into the search bar when they are looking for books on the Kindle store. Not only are you able to see which keywords people are using, you’re even able to see how many people are searching for specific keywords each month.

In short, Publisher Rocket’s keywords feature can be used to find out which keywords people are typing into Amazon, the estimated number of time these keywords are being typed into Amazon on a monthly basis, how much money the books ranking for these keywords are making, as well as how many books are competing for the same keyword. Armed with all of this data, you’ll be well on your way to finding the most profitable niches to write in.

Overview feature

Publisher Rocket’s overview feature allows you to get a much more comprehensive overview over whats’s selling and why on the Amazon Kindle Store.

The overview feature enables you to discover your potential competitors, look at their book covers and the number of pages of each book, as well as view the daily and monthly income for any given book.

Categories feature

The categories feature on Publisher Rocket makes it easy for you to find and identify bestselling book categories to aim your books at in a matter of seconds.

The categories feature allows you quickly and easily find relevant niches to write for. You’ll even be able to see how many books you would need to sell per day in order to rank at number one in any given category. Now, all of a sudden, writing a best-selling book becomes a goal you can break down into little pieces and accomplish, rather than an impenetrable mystery or a seeming game of chance.

In other words, with the categories feature in your bag of tricks, it becomes easy to discover the niche categories that will fit your book the best, the categories that would help you sell the largest numbers of books, how many sales you would need to make to hit the number one spot for any category, as well as how many sales you would need to make to get your book into the top ten.

Ads Keywords feature

Finally, the ads keyword feature will help you find the best ads keywords to use, again in a matter of seconds. It’s as simple as generating a list of your best keywords at the click of a mouse, then exporting and pasting your keywords right into you AMS campaign and hitting publish!

To reiterate, the ads keywords feature allows you to generate a list of Amazon ads suggested keywords, access the titles and author names in the search results for your keywords, as well as giving you access to ASINs and ISBNs that will make creating targeted ad campaigns both smooth and easy.

Publisher rocket pricing and subscription options

Over on their website, Publisher Rocket state that access to Rocket and all of its tools and features will soon become a monthly subscription – but for now you can still get full access, for good, when you pay the one-off sum of $116.40 ($97 + 19.40 VAT on top).

If you are planning on having a career as a self-publishing author, the one-off payment to get access to Publisher Rocket forever is incredible value for money. If, on the other hand, you are a one-shot author or only writing and publishing as a hobby, the cost of entry might seem a little steep.

In case you sign up for Publisher Rocket and decide that the software isn’t for you, you are covered by Publisher Rocket’s solid 30-day money back guarantee.

Publisher Rocket pros

Publisher Rocket is one of the most powerful and fine-grained category and keyword research tools you can get your hands on. By giving you a detailed overview – as a well as a sweeping, broad over view – Publisher Rocket provides you with the data you need to be able to both aim and market your books effectively.

Publisher Rocket cons

As you will be able to see if you head over onto Publish Rocket’s website, plenty of professional, best-selling authors are singing the software’s praises, and with good reason. It is difficult to lever any harsh criticism at Publisher Rocket, as it is simply a solid and incredibly useful tool.

One thing that could be said, is that Publish Rocket limits you to run one search at once, rather than you being able to keep multiple tabs open that you can navigate between if you would like to carry out multiple searches at once.

There are other little details that some (especially those who were familiar with Publisher Rocket before its upgrade, when it was still called KDP Rocket) might find annoying, such as for instance the need to manually click on Publisher Rocket’s competition analyzer button repeatedly to get more search data on any given keyword, or the fact that there is no back button, which can make the keyword finder tool a bit tricky to use and navigate. All in all though, Publisher Rocket has seen much improvement since its KDP Rocket days and is only going to become a more and more sophisticated tool as its creators keep tweaking and upgrading it to make it an even more effective tool.

KD SPY review

Now that we have looked at Publisher Rocket in some detail, it is time for us to take an equally fine-grained look at KDPSPY, including its essential tools and features, price point, pros and cons.

Without further ado, let’s begin.

KD SPY tools and features

On its main page, KDSpy promises to deliver power tools for authors including revenue metrics, keywords and competitor research, book tracking and more, all at your fingertips.

Over 30,000 bestselling fiction and non-fiction authors are already availing themselves of the possibilities that KDSPY can tap you into. With the tools available through KDSpy, you’ll be able to grow your platform and skyrocket your book sales and your income by giving you the data you need to be able to find profitable keywords that inspire new book ideas and help you fine-tune your marketing strategy. This is how.

Browser extension

Unlike Publisher Rocket and other keyword research software, KDSPY is a browser extension that sits right in your browser and becomes your on-demand research tool when you are logged into Amazon’s Kindle store.

In other words, there is nothing to download, no separate tool, so using KDSPY

Detailed competitor analysis

KD Spy’s detailed breakdown tool helps you reverse engineer what it would take to succeed in any particular category. It even tells you how much you could make with a book or ebook that appears on the first page for any given keyword search. Now, that’s powerful.

Precise reverse-engineering

In order to make it to the number one spot within any category search on Amazon, you have to sell a certain amount of books within a 24 our hour window.

With KD SPY, you’re equipped to identify ideal categories based on revenue potential. A straight-forward roll over with your mouse on the red Information icon for your category search tells you the estimated daily sales you’ll need to make if you want to appear at number one.

Trending keywords discovery tool

KD Spy comes with a tool that lets you discover what’s trending in different categories and niches, right now.

Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to plan your next book better. KD SPY’s trends tool reveals the best niches to go after next, and even generates a compelling word cloud to help spark your next bestselling book idea.

In-depth analysis

KD SPY makes analyzing keywords in depth for their profit and ranking potential a breeze.

Any keyword search in KD SPY instantly reveals the profit potential inherent to the specific seed keyword you have entered, and as if that weren’t enough, KD SPY also generates hundreds of related keyword suggestions for you to try out.

On top of all of this useful data, you also get detailed competitor counts as well as their estimated monthly revenue. You can drill down even further by getting the KD SPY browser extension to reveal the likelihood of you ranking for the same keyword, too.

Your very own global Kindle spy

KD Spy really is about as close as you are going to get to having your very own Kindle spy and informant on your team. With KD Spy, spying on your competitors is easier than ever.

KD SPY lets you analyse any author page on the Kindle store. A single click reveals the sales rank for each of their titles and in all formats. You can also see estimated sales and total revenues, broken down by book title and book type.

You can even track the sales rank and revenue of any book over a thirty-day period.

KD SPY pricing and subscription options

Just as with Publisher Rocket, you can get access to KD SPY and everything it has to offer at a one-off price.

Priced at $97 + VAT, KD SPY costs exactly the same as Publisher Rocket. That is, unless you’re fortunate enough to run into one of KD SPY’s frequent half price sales.

Unlike Publisher Rocket, KD SPY comes with a bunch of free bonuses thrown in for good measure.

Bonus 1: The Book Publishing Cheat Sheets (Valued at $141), Bonus 2: Create an Author Website Course (Valued at $197 ) and Bonus 3: Book(s) ROI Tracking Spreadsheet (Valued at $27).

It is also worth noting that KD SPY comes with a very generous 60-day money back guarantee, so if after test-driving all the features that KD SPY has to offer you are not 100% impressed, you can get your money back, no questions asked.

KD SPY pros

One of the things that makes KD SPY really attractive to use is its seamless integration with your browser. While opening up a separate software to carry out your category and keyword search can create a bit of a mental barrier, with KD SPY, it’s all right there and available to you whenever you are logged into Amazon. In other words, you are likely to use a browser extension more than you are a stand alone piece of software.

KD SPY’s simple red light, yellow light, green light system makes it very easy to gain an overview – even over complex data.

Another really cool feature of KD Spy is that you can use it from anywhere in the world. KD SPy can give you country specific data from Amazon stores in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India, Japan, Mexico and Brazil.

KD SPY cons

Despite being a solid choice of keyword software, KD SPY is not entirely without its faults.

Occasionally, the data you can pull from KD SPY is slightly less accurate than the data that the simpler but more robust Publisher Rocket software can give you.

Publisher Rocket and KD SPY Q & A

We have taken a detailed look at both Publisher Rocket and KD SPY, but you might still be left with a few unanswered questions. With any luck, you’ll find them answered here.

Is there a free version of Publisher Rocket?

Publisher Rocket, formerly KDP Rocket, offers no free trial or free version for those who are still undecided as to whether or not they want or are ready to invest in a Kindle keyword research tool.

However, it is very much worth noting that both Publisher Rocket and KD SPY come with generous money-back guarantees so you have something to fall back on if you sign up for either keyword research tool only to discover that it isn’t for you.

How much does KDP Rocket cost?

Publisher Rocket and KD SPY are both priced at $97 + VAT for a lifetime membership, at least for now. Publisher Rocket, for one, have a disclaimer on their website stating that the tool will soon only be available as a monthly subscription.

In other words, don’t delay signing up while you can still get lifetime access with one single payment.

How much is Publisher Rocket?

Publisher Rocket is priced at $97 + VAT.

Publisher Rocket or KD SPY – which is the better keyword research tool?

Every self published author needs a keyword search tool like either KD SPy or Publisher Rocket.

Being able to carry out detailed competitor, category and keyword research is crucial for authors wanting to understand the market and what readers want. To maximise your chances of self publishing success, you have to be able to aim your book titles correctly by getting your book data and ebook data just right, and by getting your titles into the categories where people are actually searching for them on Amazon.

Keyword tools like KD Spy and Publisher Rocket were created to help self published authors like you find the right Kindle keywords to use in their metadata and AMS ads, analyze keywords, see the Amazon search volume for any given keyword, and come up with profitable book ideas that will help you take your author brand and career to the next level and maximise your monthly revenue.

But which one should you pick?

While Publisher Rocket comes without the frills and bonuses that KD SPY has to offer when you sign up, it is still the slightly more solid choice of software. Its four tools give you all of the detailed data you could hope for.

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