Clue to Cart™Listing forensics for mystery authors
Case file № 002 · Open investigation

Case study: grading my own listing first

Before asking anyone to trust these tools, I'm running them on my own book, in public. Here's the baseline. The changes and results come next.

In progress
Work in progress. Results are coming soon. This page shows the baseline only, and nothing has been changed yet. Disclosure: this is the author's own book. Christine Burke, who runs Clue to Cart™, wrote it and earns royalties from it.

The book

TitlePolice 101
SubtitleFor The Pro Per Or Pro Se Criminal Defendant (Lesson One: Police Reports)
AuthorChristine Burke
GenreNonfiction (legal / criminal defense)
Format checkedPaperback, $19.99, 128 pages, ISBN-13 978-1685640699
PublishedOctober 15, 2021 · Publisher listed as PublishDrive
Best Sellers Rank#1,808,246 in Books · #226 in Legal Services (Books) · #4,859 in Criminal Law (Books)
Ratings5.0 out of 5 · 2 global ratings
CapturedOct 17, 2026, from the public Amazon.com page (amazon.com/dp/1685640699)

Rank is a snapshot of one moment. It moves hourly and isn't a sales figure. We'll log it daily for a baseline period before changing anything.

The description as it reads today

Are you facing criminal charges or worse yet, been arrested and stuck in jail? Have you been convicted and don’t know how this happened? Are you feeling frustrated, confused, and as if there is no one to help? Do you know something is wrong in your case but can’t get anyone to listen, understand or do anything about it? These questions and the answers to them are at the core of the tips, techniques and examples in the educational and inspiring book, Police 101: For The Pro Per Or Pro Se Criminal Defendant, Lesson One: Police Reports. This book evolved from criminal defense investigator and police expert Christine Burke’s many years work with defendants and defense counsel. In this book, a first in the series, Burke introduces the various types of police reports that may be included in a criminal case, how they might apply to situations and the different areas of investigation to be considered. If you, a loved one, or friend has been arrested, or are facing criminal charges, and you want to know more about the police and how they impact a case, this is the book for you.

This is a nonfiction book, so the mystery-specific checks (sleuth, crime, subgenre signals) are switched off. Only the general checks ran. The main case study will use one of my mystery novels.

75/ 100
Strong lead

Blurb score from the Clue to Cart grader in “Nonfiction (general checks only)” mode, run on the live description on Oct 17, 2026. 192 words.

Blurb evidence

  • Clear
    Length
    192 words. Most genre-fiction blurbs land around 150–300 words.
  • Fix
    Opening hook
    Opens with a generic or rhetorical lead-in (“Are you facing criminal charges or worse yet, been arrested …”).
    Open on one short, concrete line: who, plus what went wrong. e.g. “The body in the bakery freezer belongs to the man who tried to buy Maggie’s shop.”
  • Clear
    Specific, not vague
    No stock vague phrases found.
  • Clear
    Shows instead of praising itself
    No self-praise in the body copy.
  • Clear
    Skimmable paragraphs
    4 paragraphs.
  • Check
    Sentence length
    Average 24.0 words per sentence.
    Split long sentences. Short sentences build tension.
  • Clear
    Ending leaves a question
    The last line leaves the reader with tension or a question.
  • Clear
    KDP metadata guidelines
    No URLs, prices, time-limited promos or review requests found.

Title line evidence (title score 100)

  • Clear
    Title + subtitle length
    85 characters combined. KDP allows 200 or fewer.
  • Clear
    Easy to scan
    Title is 10 characters. KDP notes shoppers tend to skim past titles over 60.
  • Clear
    No sales or promo claims
    No sales-rank or promo terms.

What I plan to change

Planned, not yet applied. Before-and-after results are coming soon.

  1. Description · openingReplace the four opening questions with one plain, specific hook about what the reader will be able to do. Readers see only the first lines before "Read more."
  2. Description · credibilityMove "criminal defense investigator and police expert" into the first paragraph. Right now it's buried in paragraph two.
  3. Description · structureAdd a short list of what's inside (report types covered, what to look for), formatted with KDP-supported HTML.
  4. Description · seriesIt says "a first in the series." Link the next lesson if it exists, or soften the line if it doesn't yet.
  5. Keywords & categoriesReview the 7 keyword boxes and categories. They aren't visible on the public page, so they need to be pulled from the publishing dashboard. The book is distributed through PublishDrive, so changes may need to go through PublishDrive rather than KDP directly.

How we'll measure it

  1. Log Best Sellers Rank once a day for 14 days with no changes (baseline).
  2. Change one thing, the description, then log daily for another 14–30 days.
  3. Then keywords, then categories, one at a time, so we can tell what did what.
  4. Publish the before/after text, the daily log and, if I'm comfortable sharing them, the sales numbers from the distributor report. If nothing moves, that gets published too.

Rank alone can't prove cause and effect: ads, seasons and promotions move it too. We'll note anything else that changed during each window.

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