EIGHT EFFECTIVE WAYS TO DISPOSE OF A BODY

A19According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, the worldwide human death rate averages nearly 8 per 1,000 in population. With over six billion people on the planet, that’s about 55.3 million deaths per year — 151,600 a day, 6,316 an hour, 105 a minute, and nearly 2 per second. That’s a lot of bodies to dump.

Conventional cemetery burial and fossil-fuel cremation are the two main means of corpse disposal but both have drawbacks by way of cost, use of natural resources, and effects on the environment. Today, many people are looking for alternate solutions in sending-off their dearly departed.

Here are eight other effective ways to dispose of a body.

A231. Promession is the process of freeze-dying human remains. Whereas cremation incinerates a body resulting in ash (ashes to ashes—dust to dust, as the saying goes), promession produces .04 inch (1 millimeter) diameter particles of organic material that can be returned to the earth in many ways.

The process is relatively simple… and gentle.

A24First, the corpse is frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celcius) and then placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen where the temperature drops to -320 Fahrenheit (-196 Celcius). A mechanical device vibrates the body which disintegrates in minutes, then the material is freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber, removing the water and reducing the weight to thirty percent of the original mass. Metals such as fillings and artificial devices are picked-out then the dry powder is placed in an urn and returned to the family.

2. Biodegradable caskets and burial shrouds are replacing exotic wood and metal coffins which used to be buried six feet underground in crowded, designated cemeteries. The thinking was to preserve the body as long as possible and delay the natural decomposition process.

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Today, innovative interment containers made of wicker, bamboo, seagrass, cotton, or banana leaves break down quickly when laid in the earth’s organic layer which averages two feet in depth.

A73. Green or woodland burials are becoming popular throughout North America where land space in rural areas is still readily available. Recognizing that a human body is designed to naturally recycle in the earth after death, families choosing green burials have their member return to the earth.

Green burial spaces respect the natural environment by encouraging grass and tree growth which are fertilized by organic compounds in human bodies. Gravesites are marked through GPS coordinates rather than by headstones.

4. Eternal Reefs combine a cremation urn, ash scattering, and burial at sea into one meaningful, permanent environmental tribute to life.

A3Reef balls have been used for years. There are over 700,000 reef balls used in more than 4,000 projects in over 70 countries and are considered the gold standard in artificial reef development and restoration—particularly in building coral reefs.

Brilliantly designed, the balls are made of Ph-neutral concrete and are round, hollow, and perforated to allow the flow of water and population by marine life. Eighty percent of the weight is built into the bottom of the balls preventing them from being washed away by currents or storms.

A26Human remains, whether diminished by cremation or promession, can be mixed with the concrete or set in individual pockets built into the reef ball. Creating a healthy and sustainable marine environment is a wonderful tribute to a passed friend.

4. Green Embalming replaces the toxic, carcinogenic method of using formaldehyde fluids in preserving a cadaver whether the purpose is to make viewing presentable or long distance shipping possible.

A27For thousands of years, civilizations have been using organic compounds in their mortuaries. They include essential oils like pine, juniper, onion, and palm, as well as resins like lichen, oloeo-gum, beeswax, cassia, bitumen, and myrrh. Frankincense was used to mask odors and bodies were washed in wine.

These naturally occurring precursor agents are non-polluting and environmentally stable, unlike the chemicals found in traditional embalming fluid. While initially retarding a body’s breakdown, the effects quickly wear off and allow decomposition to proceed, which is what mother nature intended.

A105. Bios Urns allow someone become a tree. This patented product is essentially a cone or a sphere which contains soil, the deceased’s ashes, and a seed. The urn itself is biodegradable so you just plant the entire container, water it, and watch a sapling tree sprout from what used to be a relative.

The Bios Urns website offers a choice of plantings including maple, pine, gingko, beech, or ash as well as providing for custom orders. There’s also an app which alerts your smart phone of a need for hydration or an automatic watering system can also be bought.

A86. Donating a body to medical science has been an option available for years and it’s always in demand. Anatomical students need actual human cadavers for study and dissection and it’s an honorable use of deceased remains to provide schooling for the next generation of doctors and researchers.

Although there’ve been huge technological advancements in anatomical models and computer generated simulators, there’s nothing quite like the real thing for practicing professionals.

A207. Donating a body to forensic science is another option and something relatively new. Since the success of The Body Farm, which was pioneered by Dr. Bill Bass of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility near Knoxville, six more farms were developed to study the decomposition process of human remains to aid in the forensic investigation of human deaths.

These farms accept over one hundred bodies per year and currently have in excess of thirteen hundred registered donors—when their time comes.

8. Human composting is a concept that’s proposed but not yet in operation. Architect Katrina Spade’s Urban Death Project is a dignified way to turn remains into nutritive compost as quickly as possible.

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The Urban Death Project is more than just a compost-based renewal system. It’s a new model for death care in overcrowded cities and is replicable, scalable, not-for-profit, and totally beneficial to the planet.

A25In a bold departure to the status quo—never before have humans been composted—the Urban Death Project will be an architectural first that’s built as a three-storey compost core. Ramps will allow a funeral procession to carry a shrouded deceased to the top of the bin and conduct a service before “laying-in”.

The body is not embalmed as fast decomposition is essential to the process. Over the span of a few months, aerobic and microbial activity transforms the deceased—along with others—into a rich, organic compost that can be used to fertilize urban spaces such as rooftop edible gardens.

A17The Urban Death Project is working with Western Carolina University’s Forensic Osteology Research Station (FOREST) in studying the human composting process to develop a safe, effective, and dignified way of caring for the deceased. Osteology is a specialized branch of anthropology that deals with studying bone structure.

The organization aims to “fundamentally alter the way that Western Society thinks about death. The goal is to un-do the over-commercialization and needless distance currently created between ourselves and this inevitable human event”.

The first human composting facility is being planned for the city of Seattle in Washington State. Check out their website at www.urbandeathproject.org.

DID A DINGO REALLY GET HER BABY?

A10Azaria Chamberlain—a nine-week-old infant—disappeared from her family’s campsite at Ayers Rock (now called Uluru) in the central desert of Australia’s Northern Territory on August 17, 1980. Despite a massive search, Azaria’s body was never found and the question of whether she was taken from the tent by a wild dog or whether she was killed by her mother, Lynne (Lindy) Chamberlain, lingered on.

Lindy Chamberlain was charged with Azaria’s first-degree murder and convicted of her daughter’s slaying. After thirty-two years, eight legal proceedings, and tens of millions spent in the investigation, Lindy was finally exonerated by a coroner’s inquest that declared Azaria’s death was an accident—the result of a wild animal attack, to wit—a dingo.

The case was entirely circumstantial and supported by incriminating points of forensic evidence that convinced a jury to find Lindy Chamberlain guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But how credible were these “forensic facts”? Where did the case go wrong? And what led to Lindy’s conviction being overturned?

A3Lindy Chamberlain, 34, her husband Michael, 38, son Aidan, 6, son Reagan, 4, and infant Azaria were on a family vacation and pitched their tent in the Ayers Rock public campground at the famous World Heritage site. At eight p.m. and well after dark, Lindy finished breast-feeding Azaria and took her to the tent—thirty feet from the picnic table where she placed the baby in a bassinet and covered her with blankets. She’d taken Aidan with her and Reagan was already asleep inside.

Lindy went to their car that was parked beside the tent and got a can of baked beans to give Aidan as a bed-time snack, then returned with Aidan to Michael at the picnic table. At 8:15 p.m Azaria cried out. Concerned, Lindy walked toward the darkness of the tent-site and claimed she saw a dingo at the opening of the unzipped tent door. It appeared to have something in its mouth and was violently shaking its head.

Lindy hopped a short parking barricade which made the animal flee into the night. She checked inside the tent.  Azaria was gone and there were fresh blood stains on the floor, bedding, and other articles. Lindy rushed out, yelling to Michael and the other campers “Help! A dingo’s got my baby!”

A19The adjacent campers formed a search party which was re-enforced by authorities and local residents, eventually totaling over three hundred volunteers including Aborigine expert trackers with their dogs. Dingo paw prints were noted in the sand outside the tent and a trail was followed which showed marks indicating a dingo was partly dragging an object, periodically setting it down to possibly rest or readjust its grip. (Azaria weighed just under ten pounds.) The trail indicated its destination was toward known dingo dens at the southwest base of Ayers Rock.

By daylight, no sign of the infant was found and the search was called off. The Chamberlain family cooperated in a preliminary investigation conducted by police from the nearest town of Alice Springs, then they returned home to Mount Isa.

A4Initially, there was no doubting the Chamberlains’ story. A dingo was seen in the campground before dark by campers. Others heard a dog growl minutes prior to the baby’s cry. They also heard Lindy’s scream “A dingo got my baby!” Further, the park ranger had warned that the dingo population was increasing and becoming very aggressive. And young Aidan backed up his mother’s story of going to the tent and the car, being with Lindy throughout.

The police investigation stopped. But, seven days later, a hiker found some of the garments Azaria was dressed in, nearly three miles away by the dingo dens. The clothes were a snap-buttoned jumpsuit, a singlet, and pieces of plastic diaper, or “nappy” as they say in Australia. Still missing was a “matinee” coat that Azaria wore overtop.

A17The examination found bloodstains on the upper part of the jumpsuit which showed a jagged perforation in the left sleeve and a “V”-shaped slice in the right collar. The singlet was inside out and the diaper fragments were shredded. The police officer who retrieved the garments failed to photograph their original position as had the original police officers attending the incident failed to photograph the scene. They also failed to properly examine and photo the tent’s interior which others reported was pooled and spotted with blood.

By now the Dingo’s Got My Baby case was getting international attention and the speculative rumor mill was alive in the media. “Dingos don’t behave like that!” self-appointed experts were saying. “It’s unheard of for a dingo to do this!” “Dingos can’t run with something in their mouths!”

A15Bigotry was emerging because the Chamberlains were Seventh Day Adventists with Michael being a professional pastor. “They’re a cult!” “They believe in child sacrifice!” “They were at Ayers Rock for a ritual!” “They always dressed the baby in black!” “The name ‘Azaria’ means ‘Sacrifice in the Wilderness’!”

When the first inquest was held in February, 1981, the media was in a frenzy and the police were covering their butts. The coroner ruled Azaria’s death was due to a dingo attack, despite there being no physical body to examine, and was critical of shoddy police investigation and of certain government officials of the Northern Territory who failed to provide the police with resources to investigate.

This threw fuel on the media fire and caused the authorities to start damage control.

A7A task force was formed to re-open the case, fittingly named Operation Ochre after the red sands of Ayers. It was headed by an ambitious police Superintendent with an aggressive field detective and was overseen by a politically-protective prosecutor. Collectively, they ran the investigation with the mindset that the dingo attack was implausible and that Lindy fabricated the story because she’d killed her own kid.

On September 19, 1981, Operation Ochre did a massive round-up of the original witnesses for re-interviews and raided the Chamberlains’ home. They seized boxes of items in a search for forensic evidence and impounded their car.

The investigation theory held that Lindy took Azaria from the tent to the car where she slit her baby’s throat, then stuffed her infant’s body in a camera bag. With husband Michael’s help, and after the searchers went home, they took their daughter’s body far away to the dingo dens, buried their little girl, then planted her clothing as a decoy.

There wasn’t the slightest suggestion of motive or any consideration of how the Chamberlains were stellar in reputation.

A6The vehicle was forensically grid-searched over a three-day period by a laboratory technician with a biology background. Suspected bloodstains were found on the console, the floor, and under the dashboard which was described as at trial as an “arterial spray” pattern.

Blood was also found on various items taken from the Chamberlains’ home, known to be present in the tent at the time Azaria disappeared. The lab-tech confirmed the blood on Azaria’s jumpsuit was not only human—it was composed of 25 % fetal hemoglobin which was consistent with an infant’s blood.

This was the forensic cornerstone of the prosecution’s circumstantial case.

A8A second inquest was held in February, 1982. It was run as a prosecution—an indictment with the focus on proving a theory, rather than discovering facts. The Chamberlains were not privy to the “evidence” beforehand and had no ability to defend themselves. “Information” was presented by the lab-tech that blood from the car was consistent with fetal hemoglobin and, therefore, the baby must have bled out in the car.

Another forensic expert testified the cuts and bloodstain pattern on the jumpsuit were caused by a sharp-edged weapon, probably a pair of scissors, and were in no way caused by canine teeth.

Despite all the civilian witnesses testifying consistently as before, and corroborating the Chamberlains claims, the inquest deferred judgment and referred the case to the criminal courts.

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Lindy was tried for Azaria’s murder in September, 1982, and her husband was accused of being an accessory-after-the-fact. Over a hundred and fifty witnesses testified, many of those being forensic experts—some of considerable note. The Chamberlains were forced to defend themselves, funded by their church and donations by believers in their innocence. They had no access to disclosure of evidence by the prosecution and were kept on the ropes by surprise after surprise of technical evidence which they had no time nor ability to prepare a defense.

A20This trial was not just sensational in Australia. It was carried by all forms of world news—TV, radio, print, and tabloids. As big as the O.J. Simpson trial would become in America, the public were split on the question of Lindy’s guilt or innocence.

The jury bought the prosecution’s case that science was far more reliable that eye and ear witness testimony and the Chamberlains were convicted. Lindy was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor and Michael was given a three-year suspended sentence. A pregnant Lindy went directly to jail where their newest baby—a daughter—was born. Two appeals to Australian high courts fell on deaf ears. They found no fault in the application of law.

The Dingo Got My Baby case never faded from public interest. Many groups petitioned, calling for changes in the law and for a new, fair trial to be held. Pressure mounted on the Australian Northern Territory officials.

A18On February 02, 1986, a British rock climber fell to his death on Ayers Rock. During the search for his body, Azaria’s missing matinee jacket was found—partially buried in the sand outside a previously unknown dingo den. The examination found matching perforations in the coat consistent with the jumpsuit cuts.

News of this find caused a massive public outcry against the Northern Territory government and they reluctantly released Lindy from jail pending a re-investigation. A third inquest was a “paper” review that recommended the matter be sent back to the courts.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry into Lindy Chamberlain’s conviction was held from April, 1986, to June, 1987. It focused on the validity of the scientific evidence, rather than on legalities of court procedure.

A21The jewel of the forensic crown—the fetal hemoglobin in the family car bloodstains turned out not to be blood at all. The drops were spilled chocolate milkshake and some copper ore dust while the “arterial spray” was overspray from injected sound deadener applied at the car’s factory.

The clothing cuts became an Achilles’ Heel and toppled the case because the expert witness by now was discredited in other cases resulting in wrongful convictions. New forensic witnesses, with more advanced technological expertise, testified the cuts were entirely consistent with being mauled by a dog.

In September, 1988, the Australian High Court quashed the Chamberlains’ convictions and awarded them $1.3 million in damages—far less than their legal bills, let alone compensating their pain and suffering.

A1The High Court never said Lindy was innocent, though. It rightfully set aside her conviction but made no amends in publically proclaiming innocence.

It wasn’t until 2012, that Lindy’s perseverance forced the fourth inquest. The presiding coroner classified Azaria Chamberlain’s death as accidental—being taken and killed by a dingo.

Coroner Elizabeth Morris had the decency to publically apologize to Lindy on behalf of all Australian authorities for a horrific, systematic miscarriage of justice.

Coroner Morris also had the class not to single out individuals. Without her saying, it was evident the police, prosecution, and forensic people instinctively reacted as they’d been trained to react—and that was to individually find evidence to support their case interest and not to follow what didn’t fit.

And Coroner Morris was careful not to burn the media.

A23Lindy’s situation was a media dream, having all the elements of a thrilling novel—mystery, instinctive fears, motherhood, femininity, family, religion, politics, and an exotic location combined with courtroom and forensic drama.

And it came at the expense of an innocent human mother who’s baby girl got taken by a wild animal—probably a mother dingo instinctively trying to feed her own family.

*   *   *

Here are links to more information on the Chamberlain travesty:

Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry  Click Here

Lindy Chamberlain – Creighton’s website  Click Here

HOW TO HIT #1 ON AMAZON’S BESTSELLER LIST—REPEATEDLY

B18Every writer dreams of hitting #1 on the big dog’s Bestseller List. Amazon is the world’s biggest bookseller and has the largest search engine capacity—second only to Google. Amazon offers over four million books in their online store and grows by 4,200 per day. That’s a whack of competition. But—in the last 3 weeks—3 of my Amazon Kindle eBooks nailed the #1 spot in their free categories.

How’d I pull this off? And how can you do the same?

Well, the Bestselling Secret is not in organic sales. It’s in manipulating SEO. Search Engine Optimization. It’s worked for me and here’s how manipulating Amazon’s system will work for you.

B6First, credit goes to my friend and fellow author, Susanne Lakin. Susanne writes as C.S. Lakin and under her pen-name, Charlene Whitman. She also hosts the popular website Live Write Thrive.

Susanne just released a new online course properly called Targeting Genre For Big Sales. I worked with Susanne as a beta-tester—an online lab rat—and came out a winner. I also did this without spending a dime.

Regular DyingWords followers know I’ve been blogging for the Huffington Post since November and now have thirty articles published on the Huff. That makes me a bit of a self-appointed expert on how the Huff Post works so I decided to share my experience with others by writing two straightforward, no BS guides.

Huff Post 21 RevisedOne’s a primer called How To Blog For The Huffington Post—21 Proven Tips for Getting Published on the Huff. It serves as a lead-magnet to the second book—a main guide not-surprisingly called How To Blog For The Huffington Post—101 Proven Tips for Getting Published on the Huff.

I researched the material with help from other Huff Bloggers who have way more Huff Post experience than me. I drafted the manuscripts in a Word.doc (Duhs). I did my own editing (Gasps!) by using the Grammarly app. I designed my own covers in Word (Groans!) and then sized them as a jpeg in Paint (Huh?). I did my own eBook formatting (How?) in Calibre and then uploaded to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (Simple!).

And nothing happened. Zilch. SFA.

Like most, I was near the bottom of the list and spinning fast into the black hole of self-publishing. I did some Tweets and a few blog posts which saved me from imploding and then went on to work on other projects.

A4But I’d been following Susanne Lakin’s emails promoting her course on Targeting Genre For Big Sales and she was making sense to me. I knew my problem lay in “Discoverability”. My Huff Guides were okay as technical publications and they’re definantly the right information if you want to get published on the Huffington Post, but nobody was hearing about them.

So, I decided to try something out.

Susanne generously gave me access to her about-to-be-released course—for free as a beta-tester—in exchange for sharing my results.

B7Now, there’s a lot more to this process that Susanne thoroughly covers in her course than I have room to tell you here. I highly recommend you pay for and take her lessons if you want to achieve the same success I have. It’s a hundred bucks off till the end of April 2016 if you use the DyingWords coupon code TARGET44 at this link:

http://cslakin.teachable.com/  Click Here

But, in a nutshell, this is what I did. And remember—it’s all about Discoverability.

1. Proper Key Word and Key Phrase Research

B8Amazon lets you enter up to seven “keywords” into your dashboard as metadata to allow the search engine to find and promote you. Go beyond the term “Key Word” because the trick is in “Key Phrases”. Amazon allows you to use any combination of words to make up seven phrases. The phrases just have to be separated by commas.

Finding effective key words and phrases is not difficult, but it’s time-consuming. There’s a tool called “KDSPY” that Susanne says is very effective and well worth the forty-seven bucks. But I didn’t use it. I looked at this as a money-making venture, not a money-spending one, so I did this the old-fashioned way. I used pen and paper. You could also use Excel but, personally, I hate that program.

The first thing to do is bring up Amazon.com Kindle Books on your browser. If it’s a Kindle eBook you’re promoting and not just a print book, make sure you’re searching in the Kindle Department. And make sure you’re at the Amazon.COM site (the American site) because that’s where the heavy traffic is specifically searching. Don’t worry—the information will work on all the Amazon sites worldwide.

Do not use the Google Keyword search tool, though. It’s too general and will lead you astray from what Amazon knows.

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Understand that Amazon is just like Google and, when you begin to type the word or phrase you’re looking for, it’s already thinking ahead and showing you the most-searched-for, similar matches. Copy the best of these down in a list with a priority number of where the term appears on the ten-space vertical window that Amazon is showing you.

This is where you have to be imaginative.

B10You have to think like a reader who is looking for your product. And, yes, your book is just a product to a reader who is a consumer. You have to give that consumer the best opportunity to discover and buy the product you’re offering for sale.

It took me a couple hours to play around with combinations and here are the key words and phrases I came up with for the Huff Post 21 Tip guide:

How To Blog For Huffington Post, How To Get Published By Huffington Post, Blogging At Huffington Post, Blogger, Huffington Post, HuffPost, Ariana Huffington

It makes no difference what order you put them in or if you use capitals. It’s the combinations that matter.

2. Product Description

B11Amazon’s search engine doesn’t care about what you say or how attractive you make it. It’s looking for relevancy to searches so they can sell something that’s being looked for and wanted. This is why you need to salt the description with your title, subtitle, and key words and phrases. Here’s my product description for the 21 Tip Guide with the key stuff hi-lighted in red:

Every blogger’s dream should be to get their blog published by the Huffington Post.” So says Huff Post signature blogger and bestselling writer, Garry Rodgers, who gives you 21 Proven Tips on how to get your blogs published on the Huff.
Serious bloggers know the Huffington Post is the world’s largest blog site. Getting published on the HuffPost is a significant badge of achievement — it’s the gold standard of blogging — social approval by a major media corporation that your work meets its mark of excellence. You just can’t buy this type of exposure.
As a blogger, you have something to say and you want to hear what others say back. If you have quality content — and that’s the key — you’ll want to say it on the Huffington Post.
“But how in the world do I ever get noticed?” you ask.
Well, it might not be easy, but it can be done. And it’s done by applying these 21 Tips On How To Blog For The Huffington Post in a holistic approach. In other words, applying these tips on publishing and journalism in an overall, systematic manner.
It’s also about building your platform — your brand and your profile. In this guide, Garry Rodgers gives you proven advice on elevating your platform and getting noticed by Huffington Post editors.
This guide is a primer for the more extensive book How To Blog For The Huffington Post — 101 Proven Tips for Getting Published on the Huff, also by Garry Rodgers, and is laid out in six clear, progressive sections:
SECTION ONE — UNDERSTANDING THE HUFFINGTON POST CULTURE
SECTION TWO — WRITING HUFFINGTON POST PUBLISHABLE BLOGS
SECTION THREE — BUILD A HUFFINGTON POST BLOGGER PLATFORM
SECTION FOUR — GETTING NOTICED BY THE HUFFINGTON POST
SECTION FIVE — PITCHING TO THE HUFFINGTON POST
SECTION SIX — LINKS TO RESOURCES
Can it happen to you? Garry Rodgers can’t promise anything, but shares everything he knows about improving your chances of being noticed by a Huffington Post editor.
How To Blog For The Huffington Post — 21 Proven Tips For Getting Published on the Huff contains basic information about the mechanics of writing and publishing blogs for the Huffington Post, as well as priming you for the advanced work 101 Tips for Getting Published on the Huff. If you work these professional blogging tips — and do the work — they’ll pay off in a way that’s so, so worth it.

B12While Amazon doesn’t care about what your message says or how it looks, your product searcher sure does. This is why it’s vital to set up the description with HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) coding by using bolds, italics, quotations, lists, headings, subtitles, paragraph structure and so on.

Here’s the bad news…

As my internet buddy, Johnny B. Truant, says, “Amazon’s dashboard sucks big, hairy donkey balls” and he’s right. Amazon’s little window for your description will accept 4,000 characters but it won’t do the HTML for you. If you try to cut & paste a nice italicized and bolded description from Word, it’ll just show up as Plain-Jane on your Amazon product page.

There’re two ways around this:

One is you can learn HTML coding and do all the <b><i><p> stuff yourself and it isn’t that hard. Susanne tells you how in her course and she has a pdf cheat-sheet for the universal HTML codes.

B13Susanne also refers you to a cool, free tool called the Amazon Book Description Generator that I used. Click Here

It’s very effective, but be aware of two things. You can’t input from Word with bold and italics already done or you’ll become very frustrated. Secondly, Amazon allows you 4,000 characters which include the HTML characters. If you write 4,000 characters in Word and then use the Generator to add your HTML, Amazon’s donkey-balls box will chop you short. So, depending on how much HTML you want to add, you need to write about 3,200 characters in Word.

Be sure to use as many of the 4,000 allowed spaces as you can. Even if your perspective reader doesn’t absorb them all, the extra words and phrases add up to discoverability through SEO. Also, don’t just write your description to favor your key elements. It still has to flow for your reader as it’s the ambassador of your material that should make the reader “Look Inside”.

3. Category Selection

B15It’s critical to slot your book in the proper BISAC (Book Industry Standards & Communications) category. This is not something Amazon invented. It’s universal, but you need to understand the primary and secondary categories.

This, too, takes a lot of time to find the right slots that have the balance of the most traffic and the least competition. Susanne recommends using the KDSPY but, because I was doing this venture as an experiment in free, I selected my categories manually—making lists until I got what I thought were the right ones.

Here’s how I did it:

B14Again go to the Amazon.COM Kindle Department and look at the categories in the left sidebar. Beside each, you’ll see a numeric figure in brackets which lists the amount of publications in that slot. You have to play around with the sub-categories until you find a fitting place with a relatively low number to compete with. Be aware that Amazon only allows you two entries so you want to make sure you get the proper, relevant ones and not go off into some obscure shelf that no one visits.

As with key material and product description, balance is important.

Here’re the two categories that I selected for the 21 Tips Guide:

REFERENCE > LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES > Journalism (3,245)

REFERENCE > LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES > Publishing (4,498)

Now I went back and salted the product description with the category keywords ie – Journalism and Publishing. This is vital to complete a loop for SEO.

This system sent How To Blog For The Huffington Post—21 Proven Tips for Getting Published on the Huff to the #1 spot in Journalism on all four of the English-speaking stores; USA, UK, Australia, and Canada and it climbed to #3 in Publishing.

Huff Post #1 BS Screenshot

So was this a fluke? Did I just get lucky and surf a good wave? Or could I do it again?

I tried the same process with the 101 Tips Guide and used the same key material and categories, although I tweaked the product description to match.

Sure enough. It went to #1 in both Journalism and Publishing. Like, right away.

Huff Australia

Now I knew I was on to something. I then took my eBook Best of DyingWords—Provoking Thoughts on Life From a Retired Homicide Detective and Forensic Coroner and applied Susanne’s process using these keywords:

Blogging, Forensic Psychology, Philosophy, Health and Happiness, Self-Help Books, Positive Mental Attitude About Life, Think And Grow Rich

And I selected these categories:

BIOGRAPHIES > PROFESSIONALS & ACADEMICS > Philosophers (1349)

HEALTH, FITNESS & DIETING > PERSONAL HEALTH > Aging (1071)

This type of book required a completely different style of product description, but I used exactly the same salting technique. Click Here to read the product description.

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Best of DyingWords—Provoking Thoughts on Life From a Retired Homicide Detective and Forensic Coroner went right to #1 straight from the gate and, as I write this, it’s still in first place in both categories on all of Amazon’s English-speaking sites.

My Amazon author ranking also increased over 1,000% from the start of this experiment 🙂

It’s important to say I entered these three books in the KDPS (Kindle Direct Publishing Select) program and set them on a five-day free promotion. Within half a day, I noticed enormous leaps in their list placings and, within a day, all three went to #1 in their slots.

Now I can hear some of you saying “Wait a minute, Garry. Being at the top of a free list is not the same as selling on the paid list.”

B3Ah, no. I think it’s way better for a new book to climb the free charts because that’s what generates traffic, gains new readers, starts reviews, and links to your other products including your website and mailing list. It’s all about Discoverability and that, in my opinion, is the name of the game in internet writing. You have to give in order to receive. Once you give enough, you’ll get noticed. And this carries on into your paid rankings once the promo’s over. That’s as sure as the law of friggin’ gravity.

Beyond these three elements of optimizing your book’s appeal to Amazon’s search engine, I highly suspect something else is at play. From what I know about search engines, they like two things—fresh, active content and hyperlinks.

DyingWords Life Cover jpegIn the past two months. I’ve uploaded eight new products for sale on Amazon and I’ve internally hyperlinked them to each other and to their respective Amazon sales pages, as well as to many other internet pages.

I’m damned sure Amazon’s search engine recognizes this and—combined with properly-done key words/phrases, descriptions, and categories—it’s saying “Hey! We like this Garry Rodgers guy. He’s slammin’ us with fresh content and makes it easy for us to sell all kinds of stuff. Give this boy a front seat on the bus!”

It’s worked for me—three books in a row—and it can work for you… if you want to Hit #1 on Amazon’s Bestseller List—Repeatedly.

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If you’re serious about getting your Amazon products discovered, I highly recommend you take Susanne Lakin’s excellent online course Targeting Genre For Big Sales. Although I simplified the process in this post, there’s a lot more to it and Susanne’s tutoring is worth every penny of the regularly priced $397 online course.

And you can get a $100 (25%) discount on Targeting Genre For Big Sales till the end of April 2016 by using this DyingWords coupon TARGET44.  Click Here

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BTW – Here’s a little plug for my friends at Grammarly who contacted me to say thanks for mentioning their app in this post –

“I’ve been using the Grammarly app for six months and couldn’t live without it. Grammarly is far more than just a spelling, punctuation, and grammar tool. It’s like having my old English teacher standing over my shoulder. Like her, Grammarly teaches me to become a better writer.”

Check out Grammarly. It helped me to polish my product descriptions as well as my content and it’s partly responsible for my Amazon success. I highly recommend the Grammarly app!  Click Here