Publisher Rocket Review 2024: Is Publisher Rocket Worth It?

This is a review of Publisher Rocket by Dave Chesson. If you want my long and short of my Publisher Rocket review, let me just say that it is one of the best tools for authors, period. And when you compare it to other keyword/category tools on the market, nothing else comes close.

In the past, I wrote my books and just threw them up on Amazon, hoping that something would stick. As you can imagine, that method didn’t work out very well. Then I discovered Publisher Rocket, and all that changed. I’ve since found good keywords that fit my books, as well as low-competition categories to put my book in.

This has resulted in a much higher number of sales for me, and I would recommend Publisher Rocket for every author. Check it out here!

Let me walk you through each feature so you know exactly what you’re getting.

Publisher Rocket review 2023: Is Publisher Rocket any good?

Yes, Publisher Rocket is great! It is everything you need in a search optimization tool for Amazon. It helps you find all the best keywords and categories that are low competition but high demand. Basically, it will help you to find your niche and thrive in it.

When I first heard about Rocket (formerly KDP Rocket), honestly, I blew it off. I figured it’s just snake oil. No way in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks could it work. After all, I’ve been burned before from programs and services telling me they’d help me sell more books.  Oh, please!

But, then a fiction author friend of mine told me, “It saves me sooooo much time!!”

Huh…time is important and I’d prefer to spend more time writing than working on my book marketing.  Plus, they have a 30 day money-back guarantee, So, I figured I’d at least give it a try. After all, if it saves me even a couple of hours of tedious book marketing work, it would be worth it.

And after that… well, here I am. And Publisher Rocket’s evolved into something much more powerful and determined.

In this Publisher Rocket review, I’m going to let you know exactly what Rocket can and can’t do for you. And if you’re interested in seeing how it shapes up to other platforms, see my KDSpy vs Publisher Rocket article.

How much does Publisher Rocket cost?

Publisher Rocket costs $97. Period. There are no subscriptions or payment plans. You get Publisher Rocket for life. What that means is that any future updates (of which there are many) will come to you automatically at no extra cost. It’s a pretty sweet deal considering what it does for authors.

Is there a free version of Publisher Rocket?

No, there is not a free version of Publisher Rocket. However, if you buy it and discover that it’s not for you, there is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Just contact their support and they can get that set up for you. However, I don’t think you’ll find the need.

Are there any Publisher Rocket coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

I did the research, and it seems there are no Publisher Rocket coupon codes or discount vouchers at this time. But given that the program is already at such a low cost for what it offers, and it’s a lifetime opportunity, I wouldn’t really be too concerned with this fact.

Publisher Rocket Overview: What is Publisher Rocket & What is Publisher Rocket used for?

Well, that’s the million dollar question isn’t it?

The best way I can describe Publisher Rocket is this:

Publisher Rocket helps you to lift that veil of ambiguity that Amazon’s presented and see what actually is going on–what people are looking for, how they buy books, how much money they are spending, and how your competitors are doing.

It does so through four majorly distinct features.

1. Publisher Rocket helps you find your relevant keywords to target or for new book ideas!
2. It helps you find categories that help you to have a better chance at being a bestseller
3. Rocket analyzes the competition to give you an advantage (but it doesn’t tell you what keywords they are targeting because Amazon doesn’t provide that info)
4. If you do Amazon ads (also called AMS ads), it helps you create AMS campaigns more effectively and efficiently.

(U/I and Display Score: 10/10)

Is Publisher Rocket just some lame extension or what?

It operates as a standalone application meaning you don’t need to be signed into your Google or Amazon KDP account. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. Now, I’ve heard some people say that other guys are a built-in extension so it’s easier to use. And I have a response to that… They must be crazy. Do you know what the least remembered things are in programming or the Internet in general are?

That’s right! Plugins, extensions, and widgets! These go straight to the back of the line. Why? Because there is always something bigger and badder around the corner. Like a standalone platform. From a programming perspective, standalone databases and query tools are the best because they don’t have to rely on anything else to do their job.

Publisher Rocket features list: how to use Publisher Rocket

1. Kindle keyword analysis
2. Finding new book ideas
3. Searching categories & exploration
4. Analyzing competition
5. Create AMS campaigns

1. Publisher Rocket keywords analysis

So, let’s tackle that first feature from earlier…

Remember how I told you about how I just threw down some random keywords in my Kindle campaign? Well, if that wasn’t a giant frickin’ mistake. Some of those keywords were just too general and couldn’t compete in the great Amazon bidding wars. Or they were just randomly obscure and specific. These words were worse. At least people were searching for the other ones.

But Rocket helped me solved that issue after the fact. (Wish I had a Publisher Rocket Review like this one earlier…) It allowed me to hone in onto my keywords and choose the ones that Amazon BUYERS were actually looking at! And if you’ve ever gone through the pain of manually searching and selecting profitable keywords… You understand just how much a pain in the butt that is. Literally hours of research and time in front of a computer.

Publisher Rocket keywords turns hours into seconds. And that’s no joke. Just head over to their AMS Keyword Search function and–Voila! You are on your way. And it can also help you find just the right niche to start writing your next book!

(And look how beautifully clean and well-designed it is…)

Let’s put it to the test.

2. Finding a New Book Idea with Publisher Rocket

First, we need to select Book or E-Book. That’s right. Publisher Rocket now has information for print OR E-Book!

We’ll go with e-Book. And now we need a subject… Cats it is. 🙂

Ok, so we’ll enter that in and push “Go Get Em Rocket”.

And these are our first results. Now, before we get into our Amazon keyword, let’s address the elephant in the room.

Why the heck are they blank?

I’m not a Rocket programmer, but if I had to guess… It would be for a few reasons.

With the exceedingly large amount of keyword hits I got from the phrase “cats”, it just might crash Amazon’s API with all that data. Like that’s seriously a huge data pull.

And also, it just looks cleaner. Less on the page I have to worry about. Obviously, I wouldn’t want a world without cats, and that keyword would never apply to me. So why clutter up my screen. Just saying.

Now, let’s go ahead and push analyze and see what happens.

After pushing analyze, we end up with some useful data.

First, I can see just how many competitors I have in the “cats” department. And that’s a whole heck of a lot. And there’s also a competition score of 46. Yikes. I better be ready for that stiff competition.

But maybe there’s another keyword that would be better suited for me.

Cats and Robots. Now… we may be onto something here. I like cats. And robots. And just maybe…the two together would make for an interesting story. Now, let’s look at the numbers.

Less competition. Easier competitive score. Decent monthly earning.

Guess who has two thumbs and just found her next book idea? This girl!

That took all of 30 seconds. Publisher Rocket can seriously cut your keyword research time way down.

But besides keyword analysis, what else can Publisher Rocket do?

Well, the next major area of concern is Amazon categories. And boy does Rocket come in clutch here.

3. Finding the Right Category with Publisher Rocket

Back when Publisher Rocket was released, they didn’t have category searching data. It actually came out as a later feature. And truth be told, KDSpy was the better option. It excelled at providing you with the best category. This was something that neither Kindle Samurai or  Rocket could do. But then, Rocket grew up. It started providing awesome category data.

But it was very different from KDSpy. Have you actually taken a look at the interface for KDSpy? Not trying to dog on it too much, but honestly… It needs some serious work. It’s very cluttered and hectic at times. It reminds me of looking at old lines of scrolling DOS back on Windows 3.1. (Sorry for showing my age…)

(Reminding me of my coding days and not in a good way.)

Don’t get me wrong though. KDSpy does have the category data. And for one point in time, there was no other option. KDSpy was king of the categories. Until Rocket came along with their categories. And their signature ease of use. SO… when given the opportunity to choose, it’s a no-brainer.

Rocket for the win. But this is a Publisher Rocket review, so let me get back to the point. (For more on KDSpy vs Rocket, click HERE!)

Now, in Publisher Rocket, there has been a major overhaul to the category system. If I’m not mistaken, it looks like they are completely current with Amazon’s database of categories.

But what does this mean for you? You have the best opportunities to find the right categories for your book to help you sell more books.

Imagine if you had the ability to openly explore all of Amazon’s 22,000+ categories at your fingertips. They have Audible’s categories too! No signing in. No trying to see just how far the rabbit hole goes from window to window.

Just raw data there at the click of a button. That’s remarkable.

Let’s check it out.

4. Category Exploration with Publisher Rocket

Just like before, the Category Hunter can be accessed from the home screen. Here’s where the Rocket team has implemented a super cool new feature! You can actually start to search and explore categories as never before.

Let’s explore categories for our robot cat novel from above.

After clicking typing in the word “robot”, Rocket gives you a whole list of relevant category suggestions.

As you can, the best bet for our book would probably be the number one on the list. And it’s really neat that the ABSR data and sales to top ten are clearly presented. With 14 sales needed at this time to get there…This looks like a great category to niche into.

But this new screen isn’t the only thing that changed. Previously, this category information tended to be a bit stale. Like updated every so often. But I’ve heard it from Dave Chesson himself that such is no longer the case. They have implemented a revolutionary new system that updates every single Amazon category 3x a day. Folks…That’s over 12000 categories updated three times a day everyday!

This category hunter is a definite upgrade from their previous version. And sets a new precedent for future Category Hunters to come.

5. Getting to Know Your Competition

Another one of the Rocket’s major features is its competition analyzer. This is truly an incredible feature. It can let me know exactly who I need to beat as an indie author and who I need to look out for.

Now, it doesn’t show your competitor’s keywords. (Found out why through another email dialogue with Rocket’s support. Apparently, Amazon doesn’t release that information. Good Guy Amazon? This must be a new thing.)

But it does show other important data such as:

• Monthly Sales
• Daily Sales
• Keywords in Title or Subtitle
• Age of the Book
• Book’s ABSR number

It also gives a link to the author’s sale page. This way you can really grind in. Read your competition’s reviews, and you’ll find it’s great for coming up with keyword ideas. Find out what you need to do to be the best.

Let’s take a look at my robot cats’ competition.

Same step as before. Head back to the homepage and click Competition Analyzer.

Next, select All Formats.

Publisher Rocket Review Gripe #1

• Honestly, the folks behind Publisher Rocket should definitely think about adding a fiction/non-fiction filter here. If you’re competing against fiction… you should have the opportunity to only pull fiction titles.

(Well folks, seems that this ole gal jumped the gun… I had the awesome opportunity to chat directly with Dave Chesson himself–creator of this awesome program. Turns out that you aren’t necessarily concerned about fiction or nonfiction when it comes to competition. Because the competition isn’t about your target audience. It’s about the keyword itself! So ranking above all genres is even better. Gripe resolved.)

Back to business… I’m going to be using the term “robot cat”. I’ll go ahead and click “Go Get Em Rocket!” and BOOM!

The results are in.

So, this is my competition. As you can see from the scroll bar on the right, there are more titles although not very many. Seems like robot cats might be a good topic to get into after all! But it even shows me the book cover, making research all the easier.

But what’s next? What happens after you make the decision that robot cats are the ones for you?

You write the dang ole book!

6. Creating Awesome AMS Campaigns with Publisher Rocket

For the sake of continuity, let’s say I wrote a book on Awesome-tron the Robot Cat. (Copyright and Trademark pending.)

Now, it’s time to get Awesome-tron out there in the great big world of Kindle! But will he be received with glad tidings or crash and burn? One thing is for certain. Awesome-tron has a much better chance of survival and prosperity with a great AMS ad campaign.

And Publisher Rocket can help us achieve just that.

One last time, we head to that beautifully crafted homepage and click on Keyword Search. This time, we are told to enter in a book title, keyword, or phrase and Rocket will generate for us a list of keywords. But before we do this, let’s stop for a second.

The creator of this software–Dave Chesson– has provided a series of tutorials and lessons on just how to select AMS keywords.

As a matter of fact, he has released an entire free course on how to find AMS keywords. So, before searching for said AMS keywords, this Nerdy Book Girl recommends taking that course first.

AMS ads are for intermediate to advanced users and I would do them a disservice to be crudely explained on this Publisher Rocket review. Dave does it just perfectly in his free course.

But the AMS features run just as smoothly as the AMS keyword, category, and competition features from above.

Publisher Rocket Pros and Cons

Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of Publisher Rocket:

Publisher Rocket Advantages:

• Incredibly affordable
• Guides you to the perfect keywords
• Helps you find low-competition categories
• Helps you find the AMS keywords for great ad campaigns
• Gives you a great sense of your book’s competition
• Easy to use
• Constantly being upgraded at no extra cost

Publisher Rocket Disadvantages:

• Some countries do not have book data yet
• No fiction/nonfiction filter

Publisher Rocket reviews (from real Publisher Rocket customer reviews)

There are countless Publisher Rocket reviews with glowing testimonials. For example, see these excerpts from reviews of Publisher Rocket.

“I’ve found Publisher Rocket to be an invaluable tool for my own books, giving me the data I needed to double or even triple my sales and publish bestselling books.” – Joe Bunting with The Write Practice

“Is Publisher Rocket Worth it? Long story short, Yes, Publisher Rocket is worth it.” – The Blogging CEO

“Publisher Rocket is a great tool for creating ads and uploading books. We use every feature and especially value the keyword generators for AMS ads. The newer feature to help find a book’s categories is invaluable.” – Kevin J. Anderson

“Publisher Rocket saves time and frustration when searching for keywords to use in my book’s meta data and Amazon ads, leaving me more time to write! I use it all the time. I love Publisher Rocket!” – Joanna Penn

“Publisher Rocket has saved me thousands of hours of research time. Any self-published author who wants to make their dream of becoming a lucrative, full time writer simply MUST have this tool.” – Shayne Silvers

Review of Publisher Rocket’s Support

The support for Publisher Rocket is absolutely phenomenal. I once had a small issue where I was seeing too many tabs, like duplicates of the tabs I wanted to see, and the data was all screwy. I contacted support and they helped me right out, plus an updates was quickly issued that fixed the problem completely.

And the response was fast! Like really fast. And the email support was really kind and polite. I highly recommend whomever they have working those lines.

Do any “Top Authors” use Publisher Rocket?

You’d be surprised at the sheer amount of support that Publisher Rocket gets. It’s not just us little guys here that are looking to get invested in Publisher Rocket. Here are just a few of the more prominent clientele:

• Joanna Penn, USA Today and NYT Bestselling Self published Author and creator of thecreativepenn.com
• Jeff Goins, USA Today Bestseller at goinswriter.com
• Pat Flynn, SmartPassiveIncome.com
• Derek Murphy, Indie-pub Rockstar of Creativindie.com
• Kevin J. Anderson, Award-winning bestselling author

What do I as a Rocket user want to see from this program?

Every single thing has room for improvement and Rocket is no exception. It is still early in their transition period between the old Rocket to this new Publisher Rocket, and I’m eager to see what lies ahead. Personally, I’m looking forward to international markets. KDSpy has them, and Rocket has a few, but could easily expand to more. I spent the early part of my childhood in Canada actually and would love to be able to market there.

Another change I would love to see is more filter and keyword search options. This might seem like more of an opulence than a necessity. And you know what… you’re right. But doing so would help to soften the blow when purchasing. Add these to my Publisher Rocket Review gripes.

Is Publisher Rocket worth it? The bottom line:

Without a doubt, this is the best Kindle and AMS assistance software available. And it looks like it’s gonna be a while before the King gets dethroned.

Sure, there are some hiccups. Especially in these early stages of Publisher Rocket. But each passing week since its release, I have experienced nothing but excellent service from the Publisher Rocket support team. They are kind, understanding, and patient even with a Obssessed Nerd such as myself. Honestly, if you can’t communicate peacefully with them… You’re probably not a nice person. HAHAHA!

Just kidding. But they really are awesome. They also seem to be well trained in Kindle book marketing and self-publishing as well and all my questions were answered in turn. Not only that, but they directed me to another nifty tool…the Kindle Sales Calculator!

OH SNAP! I never told you the end of my tale from the intro. Anyway, long story short… Rocket helped me get that orange Bestseller ribbon. And for that, I can’t thank Dave Chesson enough for. Now, I’m not gonna make any guarantees that this is for everybody. That’s just naive. However, it truly helped me. And I think if you put just a little effort and faith into the program… it can help you too. It’s by far the best keyword research tool for books.

Well, that’s a wrap for me on this Publisher Rocket review. So, go out and get your copy today!

Go Get Publisher Rocket Now!