# Is KDP Rocket worth the $97?



## Ethan Jones (Jan 20, 2012)

Hi folks:

Is KDP Rocket worth the $97? If you've used it, have you find it valuable?

Thanks in advance,

E


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## Norman Steele Taylor (Nov 26, 2015)

What makes it any different from other keyword / genre detection tools out there?

Any success stories with screenshots from members here?


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## Paul Kohler (Aug 14, 2013)

Eh. I paid for it but wished I would have got it when it was on sale. I think it has its advantages for AMS keyword generating, but that's all I use it for. There are couple "other" features that seem like added sparkles and glitter to make it look more useful. I'm sure that there are others that use those other features, but it's not for me.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

OP, I recommend that you join 20BooksTo50K and search for KDP Rocket.

Lots of members use it. There are many threads in which they share their opinions (and tactics).

I don't use it, so I have nothing to share in that regard.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

I've had considerable success with KDP Rocket.  It's a huge time-saver when it comes to amassing thousands of relevant keywords, really simple to use and the email support from the inventor is excellent.

Definitely worth it for me. YMMV.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

I got it because I was lazy. It is so easy to generate hundreds of relevant keywords using the tool vs me trying to do it manually (ugh, yeah, not happening.) I have no clue whether it will pan out or not. It's like other tools I purchased for this self pub business. At least now my AMS ads have a lot of keywords to mess around with. I consider that an improvement.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

The UI certainly looks much nicer than Kindle Samurai's, but I don't know whether that makes it worth the price or not. Feature-wise it doesn't seem to be all that different. I would like to set whoever designed his website on fire, though.


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## meholstein (Feb 5, 2018)

I bought it, and immediately turned around and returned it three days later. The interface wasn't well designed, and the keywords it brought up for me felt almost completely irrelevant. 

But since they do offer returns, just buy it. Then if it ends up being useless, you can get your money back.


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## Ethan Jones (Jan 20, 2012)

Thanks so much, everyone. I'm going to hold off buying it for the moment, as my assistant already has found/collected a lot of keywords.
Blessings,
E


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## whistlelock (Jun 30, 2015)

Do you write to market or target specific categories on Amazon?

Yes: then it's probably worth it. 
No: no. It's not worth it.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

I bought it, and am happy I did. Dave, the owner, offers great support. When I had trouble figuring out how to use Excel with the software (only because I’d never used Excel), he immediately emailed me step-by-step instructions. And when I wondered why the software generated some keywords (books/authors) that seemed unrelated, he made me a video showing how KDP Rocket was scraping Amazon for results tied to my specific request. (In my case, the bestselling book in TRAVEL (the keyword in question) at the time was also #1 in some obscure subcategory relating to Maine, so the tool was drilling down and, in addition to the more obvious travel books, was returning books/authors about Maine and New England.) 

Before KDP Rocket, I hand-curated a list of 300 keywords. I got exactly what I wanted, but it took many hours. When I realized how quickly the relevant Amazon bestseller lists/also boughts/etc change, and that I’d need to frequently update my keywords, I knew that assembling them by hand was too much work. Now I can generate a list of 1000 in minutes. I still have to go through the lists and weed out keywords that are too far afield, but it’s still way faster.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

I kicked around buying it until this month and am now kicking myself for not buying it sooner. What a great time saver. 
I found the interface pretty simple to use, and was generating keywords etc within minutes after completing the installation.

I've used Samurai, and only looked at Rocket when a buddy here on the boards suggested I look at it. 

I can't say anything about Dave's Cust Service b/c, frankly, I haven't needed it. Great product.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> I kicked around buying it until this month and am now kicking myself for not buying it sooner. What a great time saver.
> I found the interface pretty simple to use, and was generating keywords etc within minutes after completing the installation.
> 
> I've used Samurai, and only looked at Rocket when a buddy here on the boards suggested I look at it.
> ...


Desmond, what features does it offer over Samurai that make it worth the extra cost? Samurai is OK at it's price, but if this one really is that much better I'd be willing to drop the money on it.


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## Desmond X. Torres (Mar 16, 2013)

KelliWolfe said:


> Desmond, what features does it offer over Samurai that make it worth the extra cost? Samurai is OK at it's price, but if this one really is that much better I'd be willing to drop the money on it.


I really liked the competition search. I don't think it's spot on, but in a back of the envelope kind of way, it ballparks the numbers for me in just a couple of clicks.

But the big one for me was the Amazon KW search. I'm not sure b/c I haven't seen prev versions of Rocket, but this one does a great job. If you check out Dave's pitch on the website, it really walks you thru it. And judging from the earlier comment re a refund, Dave stands behind his product.

(quick side note- I THINK he might have tinkered w/ his calculator on his website. I say that b/c I ran it on our own stuff, and his numbers were spot on. I then ran my buddy's rank (he's killing it- top 300 overall) and told him what his numbers were for the prev 24 hrs. Cool.)


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Desmond X. Torres said:


> I really liked the competition search. I don't think it's spot on, but in a back of the envelope kind of way, it ballparks the numbers for me in just a couple of clicks.
> 
> But the big one for me was the Amazon KW search. I'm not sure b/c I haven't seen prev versions of Rocket, but this one does a great job. If you check out Dave's pitch on the website, it really walks you thru it. And judging from the earlier comment re a refund, Dave stands behind his product.
> 
> (quick side note- I THINK he might have tinkered w/ his calculator on his website. I say that b/c I ran it on our own stuff, and his numbers were spot on. I then ran my buddy's rank (he's killing it- top 300 overall) and told him what his numbers were for the prev 24 hrs. Cool.)


Thank you! I'll have to check it out.


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## Norman Steele Taylor (Nov 26, 2015)

Paul Kohler said:


> Eh. I paid for it but wished I would have got it when it was on sale. I think it has its advantages for AMS keyword generating, but that's all I use it for. There are couple "other" features that seem like added sparkles and glitter to make it look more useful. I'm sure that there are others that use those other features, but it's not for me.


Are there any alternative products you wish you had bought instead of it?


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## Kindlepreneur (Sep 28, 2014)

Hi guys, I'm Dave Chesson, the creator of KDP Rocket and Kindlepreneur.com. So, take anything I have to say with a grain of salt - I'm biased. But also present and approachable. I am an author after all.

One of the questions I get a lot and saw above was "how is it different?" Here is one of the biggest answers:

1. Unlike all the rest, KDP Rocket tells you the estimated Amazon Searches per month for keywords. Here's why that is huge: 
If you used KD Spy for the term "Rich man romance" it would tell you that those books are SELLING like crazy and it would report lower competition making it a definite recommended target or keyword. However, if you were using KDP rocket, you see the same thing, but thanks to the Est. Amazon Searches Per Month number, KDP Rocket would tell you that less than <100 people per month type that into Amazon. So, the truth is, the books that show up in Amazon for that term are making money, but because you know that no one searches for it, you KNOW that that keyword is not the reason why they are selling and it would be a terrible keyword to target.

2. In the past 1.5 years we've improved and added to KDP rocket 36 times. Since it's launch we added the AMS Keyword Feature, and now the Category Feature. The category feature is brand new and will easily pull all of the category strings for any book that shows up on the first page, and tells you how many books that day you'd need to sell in order to be the #1 bestseller for that category. Which is a real time saver. We've got plans to add even more.

3. Someone mentioned this, but support is REALLY important to me. We man it like crazy and are really fast in responses. Also, when I say "no questions asked" full refund, that's how we roll. If KDP Rocket was completely useless, or not worth it, there would be a LOT of refunds. So, give it a try.



KelliWolfe said:


> The UI certainly looks much nicer than Kindle Samurai's, but I don't know whether that makes it worth the price or not. Feature-wise it doesn't seem to be all that different. I would like to set whoever designed his website on fire, though.


Ouch - especially since it was I who designed the website. But I've been an author for a long time, and I've had my work reviewed...although never so 'hotly' contested before  However, I'd love it if you could turn that into constructive feedback. Let me know.



Fleurina said:


> I had to go and see for myself - I doubt any judge or jury would convict you!


 You too? Any constructive feedback?


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## schttrj (Jul 26, 2018)

Kindlepreneur said:


> 1. Unlike all the rest, KDP Rocket tells you the estimated Amazon Searches per month for keywords. Here's why that is huge:
> If you used KD Spy for the term "Rich man romance" it would tell you that those books are SELLING like crazy and it would report lower competition making it a definite recommended target or keyword. However, if you were using KDP rocket, you see the same thing, but thanks to the Est. Amazon Searches Per Month number, KDP Rocket would tell you that less than <100 people per month type that into Amazon. So, the truth is, the books that show up in Amazon for that term are making money, but because you know that no one searches for it, you KNOW that that keyword is not the reason why they are selling and it would be a terrible keyword to target.


The question here is, how can KDRocket find keyword data when Amazon does not let that data out? How are you getting those data? Are you using some sort of mathematical model by extrapolating on the Google keyword data instead?


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## Andrew Raymond (Mar 12, 2018)

Rocket for me has been about saved time for AMS keywords. Manually keeping track of all the derivations of keywords you want is a real suck on time. Extrapolating out from each new search I want to do x time saved, Rocket is a fine investment.

I think the category search and competition are better for writers not writing in a fairly straightforward genre like mine (political thriller). Other than some setting details there isn't a lot to research in the way that maybe romance or sci-fi does with its many subgenres. I can still see the value in it though, and it might prove useful researching down the line.

Dave is also extremely quick to reply to emails, and just a really nice guy. I highly recommend it.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I use it. I sometimes get some really odd keywords that seem completely out of place, but for the most part, it's given me some good lists. I doubt there's any software that can be more accurate for choosing the best books/authors to target other than a person, but it's a useful shortcut and cuts down on time. I've also used KindleSpy to generate keyword lists by scraping the Top 100 categories and one of the nice things about KDPR is that the spreadsheets it generates are far, far, far more AMS friendly, whereas with the KS-generated spreadsheets, I have to do a bunch of edits on before I can drop those keywords into AMS.


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## P.T. Phronk (Jun 6, 2014)

I use it a lot for generating AMS keywords. At that price, it only has to save me a few hours over its lifespan to be worth it, and it's definitely done that. My ads are probably much more effective because of it too.

And I think the web site is fine. It's not a work of art or anything, but it looks roughly like every other B2B web site right now.


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## A. N. Other Author (Oct 11, 2014)

I've found it useful. I threw a ton of Amazon ads up using this and saw an immediate uptick. You do have to refresh your ads every so often, but that's an AMS thing, not this software. 

I have no way of seeing if it's paid for itself, but it is definitely useful. You can do most of the stuff yourself but it saves many, many hours. It's time for me to look again at these, so will be using it shortly. 

You can get a refund if it isn't for you, so pretty much risk free. 

Not exactly affiliate level recommendation from me, but I'd certainly recommend trying it out.


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## Designist7 (Aug 13, 2014)

ADDavies said:


> I've found it useful. I threw a ton of Amazon ads up using this and saw an immediate uptick. You do have to refresh your ads every so often, but that's an AMS thing, not this software.
> 
> I have no way of seeing if it's paid for itself, but it is definitely useful. You can do most of the stuff yourself but it saves many, many hours. It's time for me to look again at these, so will be using it shortly.
> 
> ...


I'm trying to get better performance from AMS before spending a lot of money and was wondering what did you mean by refresh?


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Designist7 said:


> I'm trying to get better performance from AMS before spending a lot of money and was wondering what did you mean by refresh?


AMS seems to have a preference for new ads, so when an ad starts losing impressions, terminate it and start a new one or copy it to create a duplicate ad.


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## 39416 (Mar 18, 2011)

Dave--I've thought about buying your product but haven't because I'm not convinced it would help me (I'm a prawn). I wish you had something like "Try it for free for one book for one day" kind of thing. I'd try it once, do a campaign, and if your keywords worked better than mine, then I'd buy it.

Just sayin'.


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## OnlyTheGrotesqueKnow (Jun 10, 2018)

Mike McIntyre said:


> I bought it, and am happy I did. Dave, the owner, offers great support. When I had trouble figuring out how to use Excel with the software (only because I'd never used Excel), he immediately emailed me step-by-step instructions. And when I wondered why the software generated some keywords (books/authors) that seemed unrelated, he made me a video showing how KDP Rocket was scraping Amazon for results tied to my specific request. (In my case, the bestselling book in TRAVEL (the keyword in question) at the time was also #1 in some obscure subcategory relating to Maine, so the tool was drilling down and, in addition to the more obvious travel books, was returning books/authors about Maine and New England.)
> 
> Before KDP Rocket, I hand-curated a list of 300 keywords. I got exactly what I wanted, but it took many hours. When I realized how quickly the relevant Amazon bestseller lists/also boughts/etc change, and that I'd need to frequently update my keywords, I knew that assembling them by hand was too much work. Now I can generate a list of 1000 in minutes. I still have to go through the lists and weed out keywords that are too far afield, but it's still way faster.


This was super helpful to me. Thank you.


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## Designist7 (Aug 13, 2014)

I've had it crash often and ended up either re downloading it or finding my keywords manually., So for me, I would n't recommend 


Ethan Jones said:


> Hi folks:
> 
> Is KDP Rocket worth the $97? If you've used it, have you find it valuable?
> 
> ...


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## MMSN (Feb 27, 2019)

39416 said:


> Dave--I've thought about buying your product but haven't because I'm not convinced it would help me (I'm a prawn). I wish you had something like "Try it for free for one book for one day" kind of thing. I'd try it once, do a campaign, and if your keywords worked better than mine, then I'd buy it.
> 
> Just sayin'.


I second.


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## Glis Moriarty (Jun 20, 2018)

39416 said:


> Dave--I've thought about buying your product but haven't because I'm not convinced it would help me (I'm a prawn). I wish you had something like "Try it for free for one book for one day" kind of thing. I'd try it once, do a campaign, and if your keywords worked better than mine, then I'd buy it.


How is that better than a 30 day money back guarantee that gives you 4 weeks to try it?
It's very easy to fail to get to grips with any program in one day. And I doubt there'd be enough time to get the results in anyway.


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## Bookread (Mar 8, 2016)

I've heard good things about it, but I haven't used it personally.


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## psnew (Jul 8, 2019)

Does KDP Rocket give you exact keywords that put you in certain categories? Or is it up to you to figure out how to get into the categories they suggest?


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## lea_owens (Dec 5, 2011)

I bought it and I think it's great. The analysis of key words for your book details were great - I thought I had chosen seven good keywords for each book, and when I checked them on Rocket, I could see that almost no one searched for them, so I went through the suggested keywords one by one, picking out ones with high search numbers but lower numbers of authors using them. My sales (never much, anyway - we're not talking 'main income' here) had dipped badly before buying Rocket because the AMS/AA goalposts had been changed and they were not working well, and changing those seven key terms for each book helped bring them back to some sales. It made it easy to come up with a thousand AMS search terms, too - though a lot of erotica type romance comes up so I do have to carefully go through and delete those. I'm sure if someone thought  my books related to erotica books, they'd be sadly disappointed.

All in all, I'm a very happy user and recommend it. The support videos are great, too.


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## Patrick Skelton (Jan 7, 2011)

No luck at all for me.  The software generated all sorts of bizarre keywords and Books not related to my genre.  I found it was better for me to do the research myself and plug in the appropriate keywords and related books. Honestly, three or four hours of research will get you the keywords you need.  I returned mine after several weeks.  That was last year. Maybe the software has been improved since.  I will say this, they have excellent customer service. They issued a refund with no questions asked.


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## Kenneth Rosenberg (Dec 3, 2010)

With Amazon's pricing tweaks on AMS, that advertising option lost all usefulness for me.  It used to be that some of my ads worked ok and some didn't, but now it seems that any AMS ad I try to run is a major ROI loser.  I gave up on AMS and stopped using it, so for that reason Rocket (now Publisher Rocket) did lose some usefulness for me.  That said, I still use it to test KDP keywords.  It is nice to see how many people search each potential keyword in a given month, and how many other authors are using that keyword.  That is certainly helpful, though I haven't seen any noticeable boost in sales from switching my keywords based on using it.  Is it worth the money?  I don't know.  Maybe if you have a lot of books, and are therefore testing a lot of keywords.  For one or two books, definitely less so, but if you're in this for the long haul you can keep using it for each new book you come out with.


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## DCP123 (Aug 12, 2019)

Just avoid Kindle Samurai. It doesn't work now for me and they won't answer any emails. Very poor product.


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