Sell Your Book on Amazon – Page 2 – President of Outskirts Press

Give incentive for people to buy your product or service

Whether you are promoting a book or promoting a company, you need to give people incentive to buy. Just making it easy isn’t quite enough (although it is an important component). Not only must the purchase process be easy, it must be urgent. You create urgency through the use of promotions, discounts, or other incentives.

One of our competitors does this very well. They inflate their prices to $13,000 so they can offer a $7000 discount. Do authors fall for this? Of course. It looks great on a Flash banner; and it is a savvy person who can look past the flash — pun intended — and identify the true value, or lack thereof.

Books sell better with incentive, too. The most typical incentive is a discount or a “sales price” and in the majority of the cases, this type of promotion is handled by the retailer rather than the author herself. Amazon does discounting very well. They discount books in a variety of ways. Not only will they often discount a single book by eating into their own margin, but they also pair similar books together and then offer discounts if the customer orders BOTH books. My book Sell Your Book on Amazon discusses how authors can use this functionality of Amazon to their advantage.

Amazon, self publishing

Navigating the Amazon Sales Ranking

In a previous post I discussed my book SELL YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON’s climb up the Amazon Sales Chart as a result of specific marketing tactics. I included the following graph, which we charted on the day of the campaign:

There are some interesting things to notice about this cart. For instance, you will notice how rapidly the ranking climbs from 15,000 to 3,000. And then, again, you will notice how quickly it climbs from 1000 to 200 (the difference in scale notwithstanding, of course). But also notice how slowly it climbs from 50 to 29. This is probably obvious, but I’ll say it anyway: The closer you get to a #1 ranking, the more books you need to sell.

One section of my book discusses the Amazon Sales Rank in detail, and the information may be helpful when looking at the above chart, so I’ll include it below:

First, the disclaimers: Since the algorithm Amazon uses to generate its sales ranking is proprietary, the details contained herein are extrapolated from research and field tests. The resulting consensus finds Amazon’s system to provide marginal sales data at best.

To whit, read Amazon’s own definition of its system, slightly paraphrased from their FAQ: “The Sales Ranking system exhibits how books are selling. The lower the number, the higher the sales. The calculation is based on sales and is updated each hour to reflect recent and historical sales of every item sold. We hope you find the Amazon.com Sales Rank interesting!” This last sentence seems to indicate Amazon’s own perspective on the importance with which the sales rankings should be viewed.

You’re not supposed to find the sales rankings informative or helpful. You’re supposed to find them interesting.

In actuality, the process is somewhat more convoluted than they let on. The ranking does not depend solely upon the actual number of books sold, but rather, on a comparison against the sales figures of the other books in their database (all 5 million+ of them) within that same hour. Simultaneously, a trending calculation is applied to arrive at a sales trajectory. So, hypothetically, a book that held a ranking of 2,000 at 2pm and 3,000 at 3pm, might hold a 4,000 ranking at 4pm, even if it actually sold MORE books between 3-4 than it did between 2-3.

Current projections and historic sales information also play a key role in these calculations. In fact, the predictive nature of the Amazon ranking system is what makes it possible for a newly-released book to outrank an older established title, even though the actual sales figures for the latter far exceed the former.

That said, sales history takes a back seat to current sales rankings. Sales projections and trending take an active role here, which is why a book’s ranking can leap from 900,000 to 200,000 in the span of 24 hours or less. Does this mean the book has sold 700,000 copies in 24 hours? Absolutely not! What it does mean is that recent activity (i.e. purchases) for that book is trending higher than those 700,000 books it just surpassed. But, don’t get excited just yet; since the activity of those 700,000 other books range from slow to stagnant, one or two orders are sufficient to catapult a ranking.

If a book’s ranking breaks into the top 100,000, the sales history calculation starts to rear its head, which is why a “phenomenon” book has a hard time maintaining a high, legitimate ranking. A phenomenon is defined by a book that leaps from the high hundred-thousands into the lower thousands (or better) in the span of 24 hours or less, usually due to some concentrated marketing initiatives. Since Amazon’s sales history for that title doesn’t support the leap, the spike occurs and then quickly drops again.

HOW DOES ALL THIS TRANSLATE TO ACTUAL SALES FIGURES?

Since the data is recalculated all the time, it’s impossible to arrive at accurate, cumulative sales figures, although those figures are applied to the algorithm during the calculation. No, to get a very rough idea of the actual number of books being sold, the sales ranking has to be dissected dynamically, with the same immediacy as the ranking being calculated. In other words, chart the ranking of the book at the same time every hour for 24 hours and then divide by 24 to arrive at its average daily ranking. Do that for seven straight days to arrive at its average weekly ranking. You can do it all month long to arrive at its average monthly ranking. The longer your average timeframe, the more accurately your sales ranking will reflect “reality” (as opposed to a spike or dip in sales).

self publishing

Are you a best-selling author? Part 2

A common question is, “How many books do you have to sell to become a best seller?”

Well, it depends upon the list. Another way of saying that is, it depends upon what you’re “comparing” your sales against. While my Sell Your Book on Amazon is “officially” an “Amazon Best Seller” I will say that Outskirts Press has published many books that have sold more copies than Sell Your Book on Amazon in any given month, and many of them don’t refer to themselves as “best sellers.” In fact, today on our Self Publishing News blog, our top 10 best sellers from 2009 are announced.

I will also say that a “best-selling” book doesn’t always translate to high revenue or high sales. In fact, those two criteria do not have to be connected at all. We have other “official” Amazon Best Sellers who sold enough books to reach #1 in their category on Amazon for a period of time, but didn’t sell enough books to become one of our top 10 best-selling authors in that month. We have other books where authors earn $20, $30, $50 or more for each copy of their books that Amazon sells, but the content is very niche. As a result, their quantity of sales are never statistically “high” enough for them to be considered “best sellers” but we still send them impressive royalty checks. If their goal was to receive impressive royalty checks, mission accomplished. And then we have other authors who receive impressive royalty checks AND are best sellers in their category.

Authors have different goals when publishing a book. Some want to be famous; others want to make a lot of money; others want to share a message with the world; and still others want to attract the attention of an agent or New York publisher and get “picked up.” We have helped authors reach all these goals, and that is part of our goal at Outskirts Press. Most authors’ goals fall into one of these four major categories, and being a “best selling” author is simply a by-product of, or a catalyst to, reaching one of those other goals.

branding

Are you a best-selling author? Part 1

Some of my previous posts have already touched upon the caveat that should exist with the term “best-selling author” since different lists from different retailers have different values and different processes for creating the list. An argument could be made that the only true way to define a “best-selling” book is based upon the number of copies it has sold.

As both the president of a self-publishing company and an author, I am in a fairly unique position of being able to see my own book sales, compare it with my Amazon Sales Rank, and then do the same for the 5,000+ other books that have been published through Outskirts Press. I talk about this a little bit in Sell Your Book on Amazon, because I feel it’s a unique perspective. And since I have an opportunity to share a unique perspective, I feel obligated to do so.

And here’s my perspective: If you have an “Amazon Best-Selling” book, you should be proud. All things taken into consideration, that’s an amazingly hard feat to accomplish. With the proliferation of books being published nowadays (500,000+ a year), it’s been said that publishing a book isn’t all that impressive anymore. Excuse me? There are over 6 billion people on the planet. If you’ve written and published a book, no matter how you’ve done it, you’re in the minority.

With the “best-selling Amazon campaign” it’s been said that being an “Amazon best seller” isn’t all that impressive anymore. Excuse me? There are 500,000+ books published every year. If your book was/is an Amazon best seller, no matter how you’ve done it, you’re in the minority. And books that are Amazon best sellers still attract attention and kudos from publishing traditionalists like editors, agents, and conventional publishers. These people are scanning the self-publishing ranks looking for their next authors/clients, but maybe no longer due to the strength of the book and the promise of its sales potential. Now I believe it is because an author that can “become an Amazon best seller” themselves has successfully demonstrated his or her ability to leverage/monetize their platform. And that’s what is valuable to all publishers and agents — an author who not only has a platform, but can turn that platform into book exposure and book sales. Just having a list of 500,000 to million people to conduct the “campaign” is impressive to publishers and agents, not to mention composing a “pitch” compelling enough to get a large number of those people (most of them strangers) to purchase something. Like I said before, it’s all easier said than done, and that’s why being an Amazon best seller is a hard-earned, noteworthy status. We have many authors at Outskirts Press who have accomplished this, and it is a milestone in their continuing book promotion efforts.

Amazon, self publishing

Sell Your Book on Amazon – Second Edition

In March of 2007 I published Sell Your Book on Amazon, which reached #29 on Amazon.com in its debut month. In a strategically-planned effort, I first recorded a series of podcasts on the same subject matter, and distributed them through RSS and Podcast feeds (including iTunes) in the late fall of 2006. I then transcribed those podcasts into a first draft (an exercise which resulted in a rapid writing process–a process I highly recommend).

In the nearly-three years since that book’s publication, Amazon has changed a lot! Some of the tactics I recommended in the book have changed or have been removed entirely. Some of the reviews (175 at last count, with an average of 4.5 stars — nothing to sneeze at!) even started to imply these were short-comings in my book, rather than recognizing that Amazon’s policies, offerings, or guidelines had changed. What was a short-coming is that a second edition was long overdue! I admit it. Sorry — I’m kinda busy.

Nevertheless, over the past few weeks I’ve been working on the Second Edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon, and I’m pleased to report it is done. The “newly revised for 2010” edition is being proof-read one last time and a new subject index is being created (one of the services we offer for authors of non-fiction books). Once these steps are completed, the revised edition will be sent to Ingram, for distribution via EDI to all the locations Sell Your Book on Amazon is available, like Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, etc.

We will also update the Kindle edition with the Second Edition at the same time, and that will drastically improve the Kindle edition, too. You see, Sell Your Book on Amazon was the first Kindle edition Outskirts Press released — I use my books as “guinea pigs” for all our author services, because if our services work for me, they can work for our authors, too — and it’s no small secret that Kindle isn’t the best when it comes to converting specially-formatted books. But our Kindle option now excels at providing Kindle with versions that compensate for that platform’s formatting short-comings.

I will also upload the Second Edition to Amazon’s Search Inside, and I’m looking forward to that change, because I’m making what basically amounts to an aesthetic change to the Table of Contents which actually should improve the overall sales of the book by giving the impression of a greater degree of content. Let me explain:

With the first edition, I was purposefully sparse with the Table of Contents, forcing it entirely on one page, even though each chapter of the book was divided into sections defined by sections on the various Amazon pages I was describing.

When looking at the book via Search Inside, the table of contents makes the book appear to be lacking information because the Table of Contents is so short.

So, when writing the Second Edition, I’ve changed my philosophy with the Table of Contents to include all the various sub-sections included within each chapter. This didn’t take any additional skill, or even much more time, but it makes the book appear to be filled with way more content.

The presentation of information is often just as important as the information itself. These are the kinds of things it is important for self-publishing authors to consider…