You Too Can Be An Amazon Bestseller 73
Steve1960 writes "For $10,000 to $15,000, you, too, can be a best-selling author — on Amazon.com. Here's a cautionary tale on how easy it is to game Amazon's sales ranking numbers, and why authors who pay for this might be wasting their money. 'The targeted marketing campaigns contribute volatility to sales-ranking numbers that are inherently unstable. Outside the top 1% or so of books, few sell multiple copies a day, so little separates books with rankings tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, apart. Morris Rosenthal, an author and publisher based in Springfield, Mass., who has studied the Amazon charts, says a day without a sale can send a book ranked 10,000 to as low as 50,000.'"
maybe (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not really new? (Score:5, Interesting)
But that could have just been a malicious story. Point is, buying your own books to boost apperant popularity is nothing new.
Re:Not really new? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd never looked at his fiction so I picked one up and pretty much just laughed out loud and put it back.
We never sold any of them. Not even one. It was crappy, even worse than the Honor Harrington series.
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Mission earth had some interesting ideas going on, but the the the whackos at scientolifist took it over and made it pretty crapps. I think there ended up being 10 books in the series. I was a security guard at the time, and I was pretty much reading a book a night. I also got them for about 5 bucks a book. Those are the only two reasons I suffured through the series.
Thee are worse books.
I
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Re:Not really new? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, my girlfriend got a job interview the other day. Phone interview, went in for an actual interview, all gussied up in her business suit, for a consultant job looking for people who had communications and management background. The interviewer handed her a paper to read and sign at the beginning of the interview, and one of the items on it was "I will read, learn, and obey the rules of L. Ron Hubbard." I'm not sure whether they were recruiting for the church or recruiting communications majors with psychology backgrounds to become recruiters for the church, but either way that's not how you want an interview to go. (She walked out.)
Whew ! (Score:1)
That's simple (Score:5, Funny)
You have to, ah, 'service' Oprah. Candidates are advised to bring a snorkel. Trust me, you really don't want to know what it's for.
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You wouldn't happen to be a B3tan, would you?
Pitiful. (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, a cheap rifle with a scope, a perch in a high building - you can be somebody for a lot longer...
Re:Pitiful. (Score:4, Funny)
TFA summed up (Score:5, Informative)
* Shitty authors get top Amazon ranks for a little while
* Ranks drop back down because, well, the authors are shitty and in the end, what they write doesn't sell and no amount of astroturfing can change that
* Shitty authors disappointed
Well, duh...
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Yes, they're deceiving themselves. But taking advantage of that is just downright rude.
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Does ranking mean that much on Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
What definitely gets more customers looking is the "Other customers that purchased also purchased
Spending $10k to bump up a ranking that not too many care about seems to be a misdirected waste of resources.
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In general, I tend to think a sizeable majority of the populace is a sad, ill-educated, TV addicted, if-my-neighbor-bought-that-I'll-buy-it-too bunch. As a result, I tend to avoid whatever seems popular, unless I have plenty of evidence that what people like en-masse is actually good. Therefore, I'll only buy things that I reckoned by myself are really what I want/need, or I'll buy afte
Re:Does ranking mean that much on Amazon? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, that definitely drives people to see the book. What sells the book, in my opinion (assuming it has a decent sized market and a lot don't), is the customer reviews. I read the customer reviews and if the book is crap, it comes out in the reviews.
Re:Does ranking mean that much on Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, they can't un-post a negative review -- which is why negative reviews are more useful information to have.
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"that is, to purchase a number of copies to kick off sales, since people are less likely to buy a book that only one or two people have purchased"
Re:Does ranking mean that much on Amazon? (Score:5, Informative)
True, which is why if you're going to try to game the system, you might be better off spending that money buying multiple copies of your book along with a few selected, sustained best sellers. Then when someone looks at the best seller, they your book listed as something that other customers also published.
Or if you'd like to participate in a more honest way, I recommend these tools on Amazon, which I've used to promote my Moodle [amazon.com] and Training books [amazon.com]:
Create a So you'd like to... [amazon.com] guide with your book on the guide. Make the guide relevant, not just an excuse for self promotion, and people will actually use your guide. The more people who click into items from your guide, the more Amazon will display it.
Create a Listmania [amazon.com] list with your book on it. Again, make it relevant and you'll get better results from that list.
Make search suggestions that are relevant and accurate for your book. "You can specify the search for which you think the item should appear, along with your explanation of why it is relevant. Once approved, we'll show your suggestion in Amazon search to everyone."
Participate in Amazon's Search Inside! [amazon.com] program.
Add descriptive content [amazon.com] to your book's Amazon listing.
Ditto for adding a cover image [amazon.com].And one that I've been too busy (lazy?) to use, participate in Amazon's blog program, AmazonConnect [amazon.com].
These are all much longer-lasting ways of improving the sale of your book on Amazon. And they're much cheaper than paying someone thousands to game the system for you. But if people really thing it's worth all that money for one hour of dubious fame, I suppose it was inevitable that someone would offer a service to do it for them.
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This is a nice feature, but usually I look at it and say "I've already got those".
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Rationally speaking, you are absolutely correct.
However, the fact is that publishing a book is not an entirely rational act. My co-author and I have had two books published by a well-respected publisher, who was pleased enough with our sales to buy
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You know how sometimes people who are dieting will shift around while they're standing on a scale, trying to make it register less weight, even though they know it's completely irrational to do so?
Paying to inflate your Amazon sales ranking is just like that. (Only $10,000 more expensive.)
hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'm not a publisher, but I am skeptical that there exists a volume of sales could ever make a $1.99 book profitable, unless maybe you used the dollar value from 1985 or earlier.
It just has to be a very short book on very low quality paper, like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0671041266/ref=sib _dp_pt/102-6841453-0822545#reader-link [amazon.com]
Re:hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, look at the pricing structure over time. If you sell a few thousand books at 7.99, you may have just covered printing and marketing costs for tens of thousands of books. Lots of creative accounting in publishing -- say you expense all of the marketing costs during the first year of publication. All the sudden, you don't have to factor them into the margins on your reduced-price sales, if you reduce the price during the next calendar year.
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You can always find out.
Ancestor on Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, if authors knew this sooner.... (Score:2)
Who Cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Unfortunately, we're likely to see more... (Score:5, Informative)
As the f'ing article says, the fact of the matter is artificial sales are not sales, and simply won't help. The best way for an author to maximize the sales of his/her book is to write a really good book, and then once it's in print, write another one. That's how you build an audience, and that helps a lot towards propelling your sales up. And, for most of us authors, it's not a short process. You have to love this craft to try to make a living at it, and that's probably as it should be.
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So, I doubt if *just* good writing helps -- one just has to look at the "best sellers" anywhere. And I know several excellent authors who've just not sold enough or are not famous, yet their books (and writing) are phenomenal.
Then again, my writing is largely limite
Re:Unfortunately, we're likely to see more... (Score:5, Insightful)
Writing is a business in which supply vastly outweighs demand. It's intensely competitive -- especially in genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, horror), which I write. A query letter to an agent typically has less than a one in a thousand chance of landing representation. For the big agents, the number may be in the tens of thousands. There's a lot of junk out there, it's true -- but there's also an awful lot of talent that you're up against, and only a limited demand. It's not for money -- authors get 15% of sales (less if you buy from places that purchase in bulk, such as big chains). People just want to write. And with all of these people being rejected, there is a staggeringly huge market for scammers.
All writers should know about this site: Preditors and Editors [anotherealm.com]. Writers should live by this rule: You don't pay anything to agents or publishers; they pay you. Not reading fees, not representation fees, not editing fees, nothing. An agent may *deduct* their expenses from your 15% that the publisher pays, but this comes *after the sale*. You never give them money. Ever. Look for AAR representation in agents. If an agent isn't a member, figure out why before you submit. There are good reasons -- new agents starting out, agents who've been in the business for a long time and have a good reputation already, who subscribe to the AAR guidelines without paying for memembership, etc. But be extra cautious. Never submit to an agent without finding what they've sold recently. Double check.
Scam agents aren't the only ones conning people; I've seen all sorts of grabs for writer cash. The "Sobel Prize" writing contest is a good example. There's bulk querying services that e-query your query letter for a fee (and ticks off a thousand agents at once). There's the POD People (Print On Demand**) -- companies that convince people to pay to self publish with them to bypass that evil publishing industry. They sway authors into believing that they'll get the books on the shelves and market authors to readership. Almost nobody stocks them, and almost nobody they publish ever gets heard of by the general public. The facts are that the publishing industry is very picky. There's far less demand than supply, so they have the right to be picky. Sure, they're not perfect. Almost every good author has a laundry list of rejections. But the cream does, overall, tend to rise to the top. If a hundred agents rejected you, you may want to pause for a minute and think about why. It's not them: it's you.
In a way, the industry is biased *toward* new authors. Let's say a big house signs you, and you sell 25k copies. You better sell 50k copies with your next book, 100k with the one after that, and so on. Otherwise, they're not going to keep wanting your books; they want to clear space in their list for the next up and coming author who will sell a million books.
Anyways, one final recommendation for unpublished authors: Miss Snark [blogspot.com]. If you have any nitwitted ideas about the publishing industry, she'll knock some sense into you.
** - Not all print on demand is bad. It
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Do a google blog search for writers, agents, and editors' blogs. You'll find it very highly recommended. It's the best resource for finding literary scammers out there.
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Blah... (Score:1)
Re:Blah... (Score:5, Informative)
First off, how the advance system works. You sell a book, they give you an advance. This is money given to you upfront. Your agent (if you have one) skims their 15% cut off the top, and probably charges you various fees that take another few hundred from it. A big house's advance may well be over 10k. Medium size houses, a few k. Small houses, little to no advance. No matter what your book does from here on out, that money is yours; you never have to pay it back.
Now, your book goes on sale. Both the publisher and agent push you like crazy to do publicity. They'll help you out a bit, but unless you're a big name author, they won't put much resources into it. Every book that sells from a small bookstore nets you 15%, minus the 15% of that amount taken by your agent, if you have one. Big bookstores, which purchase in bulk, get discounts, and they take part of that discount from you. Someone buys a book at Borders, you may well net only 8% or so, minus the agent's cut. Now, neither you nor your agent see a dime of those royalties *until* your royalties start exceeding the amount of the advance. The publisher gets your royalties until that point.
When a publisher pays a big advance to someone, this limits the number of other authors they can afford to take on. That's money diverted from other advances, cover art, editing, and everything else that goes into bringing a book to market. It distorts the industry when they give away so much money, when more times than not they won't make it back.
The long tail of books (Score:1)
Oblig. Quote (Score:1)
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profit !! (For Amazon & Marketing Company. Not the author)
system definitely busted (Score:3, Interesting)