I am an active user of Amazon.com’s author-promotion mechanisms. I have an author-blog on my book’s Amazon page, I submitted my book so it’s searchable on Amazon, I have submitted a review written by an independent reviewer for display on my book’s Amazon page. So far so good. However: the book I’m pitching is among other things an attack on Amazon.com.
Amazon.com is the last resort for authors who cannot manage to get their books into bookstores. To pretend that it’s a GOOD place to sell books is to ignore the words of its founder, Jeff Bezos, who recently PERSONALLY told the biggest Amazon booster that Amazon actually sells a far smaller percentage of “little” books than was being touted.
Specifically, Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson wrote a book called The Long Tail in which he said that books below the 100,000 rank on Amazon.com’s bestseller list account for 57% of all Amazon sales. He extended this statement to suggest that since presumably the top 100,000 sellers were the same as the 100,000 titles carried nationally by the big box book superstores, that therefore Amazon could essentially take credit for being the key distribution channel for millions of “little” books that couldn’t get into bookstores around the country.
Such a statement would naturally make many frustrated authors feel that they should use all possible means to ensure they benefitted from Amazon’s fabulous sales mechanisms.
But Jeff Bezos personally told Chris Anderson that this statement in the book was wrong. Bezos says that it’s PROBABLY 20%-25% of all Amazon sales that are going to books ranked below 100,000 in their bestseller list.
There are over 4 million books listed on Amazon.com. Therefore, more than 3.9 million books are accounting for 25% of the book sales on Amazon.
Amazon is a LOUSY place to sell books. For most authors.
You can use all their promo systems. I do. But this won’t help you very much. You have to be above (better than) the 100,000 bestseller-rank level to be seeing perhaps sales of 100 books per year on Amazon. It won’t generally be worth much work-time to achieve this mediocre status!
If you’re above (better than) 100,000 in their bestseller list, then, according to Chris Anderson, this means you should be among the favored books that are already represented in big box superstores anyway!! So, why would you be working so hard on your Amazon sales?
Look—three thousand brick-and-mortar bookstores in this country (chain and indie). If you’re falling back on struggling to sell a hundred copies annually on Amazon, then are you sure you shouldn’t be struggling to get your titles onto the shelves of bookstores instead/also/more-so? Are you finding that impossible? How about linking on your book’s website to your local independent bookstore, via their IndieBound.com affiliate mechanism (which does pay you a royalty). Or, even better, TELL your local bookseller who is not stocking your book on her shelves that YOU ARE SENDING HER CUSTOMERS. Have your friends place special orders for your books through that local indie bookstore! Make the bookstore understand that you’re pitching all your hand-built traffic and sales to them. Make your local bookseller love you. Get their support by providing them with your support. Your local bookstore is starving; You are starving. You can help one another!
Amazon is a huckster. Like The Music Man.
Authors gain traction in this society through personal buzz. Word of mouth. But online is a mythological environment. You’re up one day and forgotten the next.
If you get out into the real world, shake hands, make phone calls, offer assistance to booksellers and trade favors with them, you’re creating more authentic relationships. This is the best use of your time, to further your career as an author.
Amazon does not love any author. Your local bookseller can LEARN to love you as an individual, and to promote you, and to tout your books to other booksellers.
It is a slow process, building a professional identity as a great author, among the crowd of authors. But it’s worth it. It pays off in the long run. Make friends with as many individual, real-world, front-line booksellers as possible. This is how to build your sales.
Sure, set up your Amazon webpage properly, set up a nice website—run a Google ad-words campaign—SURE do those things. But much more important is to establish life-long relationships with professional booksellers. They’ll stick by you over the years.
