The Web-Savvy Writer

Last year Amazon introduced its new AmazonConnect program, which enabled authors to communicate directly with their readers and provide profile information and blog-like posts on their books’ detail page. If you’re like many other authors, you signed up and entered a few blog posts.

But if you haven’t participated much recently, you could be missing out on some good sales opportunities. I recently checked my web stats and discovered a new surge in traffic from Amazon to my site, all based on my AmazonConnect participation. So take a look at what’s on your Amazon detail pages and add some new content to maintain the spark of interest in your own books as well.

A reader recently wrote me asking about the importance of Amazon sales rank. Here’s my two cents on the Amazon sales rank issue:

• Your Amazon rank is important, but it doesn’t represent the entire picture of a book’s success. For example, some of my most popular books sold the majority of copies through channels other than Amazon. Many books do very well in bookstores, in direct sales to libraries, in nontraditional markets, and in other formats such as ebooks.
• Some authors recommend not selling ebook versions or autographed copies on your website in order to funnel all sales through Amazon. Although this will spike your sales rank at times, I feel it’s a disservice to readers who might prefer an electronic version or the personalized touch of an autographed book.  In addition, it eliminates a viable income stream for the author (ebooks are far more profitable than print books on a per-book basis).
• Remember to compare your sales rank to true competitors, not to all books. Some niche books will never have a low sales rank. New books usually have brisker sales than books published more than a year ago. If you want to do some analysis try TitleZ or Charteous (enter your ASIN or your book title in the Search field).
• Focus your efforts on quality writing backed by solid book promotion that generates a steady stream of sales. Avoid the temptation to participate in “overnight Amazon bestseller” schemes.

Tags: Amazon sales rank, online book promotion, book publicity, book marketing, book publishing, self-publishing

If you self-published your book or sell ebooks, special reports, or digital downloads from your site, you should take advantage of the free sales force that affiliate marketing provides. By offering your affiliates a commission on every sale they make, it’s a win-win situation. They make some extra money with minimal effort and you make a sale to a customer who may never have found you without the affiliate.

Most online shopping cart service, such as PayLoadz, ClickBank, and 1ShoppingCart.com, enable you to easily set up an affiliate program. PayLoadz is the service I’m currently using and it’s very easy to implement. After you set up your affiliate program, be sure to promote it and offer ready-made sales tools for your affiliates to use.

If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate for The Web-Savvy Writer ebook, visit The Web-Savvy Writer affiliate page for more details.  Of course, you can also generate affiliate income from the print version of the book by participating in the ultimate web affiliate program, Amazon Associates.

Getting good reviews on Amazon.com can definitely help you sell more books. Here are some tips for increasing the number of reviews:

• Whenever readers email you with positive comments on your book, ask them to submit a review on Amazon.
• Ask anyone who has provided a testimonial or foreward for your book to post it on Amazon. Alternatively, include these comments in your Reviews section.
• If you teach or provide seminars, ask your students to post a review if they liked your book.
• Include a request for reviews on your website or blog.  
• Make it easy. Include a direct link to your book’s Write Your Own Review page. You can find this by clicking on the Write an Online Review link on your book’s detail page.

 And now for two “don’ts”:

•  Don’t bribe your readers to write good reviews. It’s acceptable to offer a small thank you for taking the time to write a review (such as a free report, bookmark, etc.), but don’t offer anything of any significant monetary value in exchange for a good review.
• Don’t create fake reviews. It’s often easy to spot these and they damage your professional reputation.

 So now I’m going to take my own advice. If you’ve enjoyed reading The Web-Savvy Writer, I’d love for you to let other Amazon customers know about it. Just go to The Web-Savvy Writer Write Your Own Review page and enter your review.

Tags: Amazon.com, online book promotion

Be sure to check out Amazon’s new AmazonConnect program, which is a free feature that fosters direct communication between authors and their readers. With AmazonConnect, you can add a list of your books to your profile page as well as post messages to readers that appear on your book detail pages. Note that you’ll need to validate your credentials with your publisher before you’re allowed to post messages as the official author of a book.

Tags: Amazon Connect

Amazon Shorts enables published authors with at least one book currently for sale on Amazon to sell short works between 2,000 and 10,000 words as digital downloads. Both fiction and non-fiction are accepted and can be sold at a fixed price of $0.49.

Tags: Amazon Shorts

Today online retailer Amazon.com announced its new Amazon Pages program that enables customers to purchase online access to entire books as well as portions of books (a page, section, or chapter). The service is anticipated to launch next year.

Here are some interesting links on the topic:

• Amazon Press Release: Amazon.com Announces Plans for Innovative Digital Book Programs
• Marketing Vox: Amazon, Random House, Microsoft Announce Digital Book Initiatives
• Washington Post: Amazon.com to Sell Individual Book Pages

Tags: Amazon Pages

If you’re a book author, you’ll want to check out TitleZ, a website that enables you to view and analyze sales rankings from the Amazon.com database. You can view both current and historical sales rankings, which makes this a useful tool for authors with a current title as well as authors like me who have a lot of older titles still for sale on Amazon.

If you want to see how your competitors are doing, you can easily analyze competitive titles. If you’re in the planning stages of writing a book or creating a book proposal, searching by keyword can give you helpful clues on the current popularity of specific topics. And best of all, TitleZ is currently free in its beta period.

Tags: online book promotion, Amazon book promotion, Amazon TitleZ