PARANORMAL ROMANCE GUILD

The Amazon Effect

Posted by Mayor of Book Town  May 14, 2011

In a few short years e-readers like Kindle, Nook, and Sony along with self publishers like Smashbooks and Lulu have drastically changed how books are sold.

What is even more stunning is the explosion of new authors and books that are now available in various forms including audio books.  On the surface this sounds like good news for the non-published author however if you examine this new technological landscape you will see a different story.

Competition for sales is growing at a rapid pace.  In short, we have an ever expanding number of new books and short stories hitting the market with roughly the same number of readers as a few years ago.  The solution seems obvious, find ways to sell more books than the other guy, but that’s easier said than done.

Amazon.com has been slowly tweaking its author’s tools.  I will get to that in a moment but first let’s look at a few basic things you can do to up your sales’ numbers.

If you ask 10 different book buyers what they look for before purchasing a book from Amazon.com you will most likely get ten different answers.  For most of us money is tight and potential buyers need to be sold on you or your story.  Why should I buy your book?

Let’s begin with the page selling your novel on Amazon.  Scroll down the left side of the page and you will see What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Example - 50% buy the item featured on this page. 

If this percentage is low it is an indication that customers do not like what they see or in most cases what they don’t see.  What you may feel is not important may be important to the buyer.  In many cases it is a thought process that includes various factors such as:

1.  Book descriptions

2.  Average Customer Review

3.  Amazon Bestsellers Rank

4.  Book Tags

Even the number of times the Like icon has been hit on your Bibliography page may be included in the decision making process.

What’s on your Bibliography page?  Do you have photo’s of yourself?  What about a blog.  By using the RSS feed Amazon will automatically upload your blog to their site.

This is basic stuff but you would be surprised how many authors skip over these useful sales tools.

Have you ever gotten a negative review?  If so you probably know that it's next to impossible to have it taken down even if it’s inaccurate but you do have an option.  Click on the Comment link and you can add your own remarks to sort of level the playing field.

Did you know you can add book trailers to your Amazon page?  This feature is not new; originally you could only upload one video now that number has been increased to eight.

How many sales have you lost because your friends don’t own a Kindle?  Well, they don’t need one.  Amazon has an application where you can download a simple file (to your hard drive) that will allow you to read Kindle books.

I have just given you a few ideas on how you can convert your Amazon.com visitors into customers.  This list is by no means complete.  Feel free to join the Book Town discussion by adding your ways to use Amazon.com to beef up your sales.

The Mayor of Book Town

One thing authors are coming to understand in this new era is niche writing and target marketing lead to better long-term results.  Building a fan base and adding books available to it is the key to obtaining and maintaining a somewhat steady income.  I don't mean genre and sub-genre.  Those are too broad, with the number of books that will be available, and continue to be available, at the end of 2013.  At that point, most authors with backlists and many previously un-published books, who are now publishing them, will have them on the market.

I write for a known market of 240,000, worldwide.  Of that market, I expect about one fourth to like both stories and style.  Since I'm the only one who writes specifically for it and there are others outside it who are buying my books, my aspiring to a moderate steady income is realistic per business models.