In just a few years, Amazon has demolished the barriers to book sales. No longer are new authors summarily locked out of the bookstore. Whether your book was trade-published or self-published, Amazon will not only stock it, but rearrange the whole store when a likely reader arrives. And if your book sells modestly well, Amazon will do lots more -— like displaying your book right inside the door, at the end of each virtual aisle, on eight different category shelves, and smack-dab in front of the cash register. Think your local bookstore might do this? Maybe if you’re William Shakespeare, but the rest of us are out of luck.
Book sales over the Internet now account for 15 percent of the average publisher’s business, up dramatically from 1 percent in 1997. But the real impact is far greater -— it’s not just the 65 million readers buying their books on Amazon, it’s the untold millions more using Amazon’s catalog and book reviews to inform their buying choices elsewhere.
Amazon is ground zero for your online campaign. It provides free worldwide exposure -— exposure to those readers most likely to buy your book. Simply having your book properly listed for sale on Amazon can create demand for it everywhere. Whether you’re a famous author or an unknown, Amazon is essential because it has a critical mass of buyers using its search engine, recommendations, and reader reviews.
Amazon helps create demand for niche books that have a widely dispersed audience that can’t be targeted effectively through traditional marketing. These are the books readers often can’t find in their local bookstore, or even the library -— but they’re easy to find on Amazon. Twenty-five percent of Amazon’s sales come from obscure books that aren’t even carried in a Barnes & Noble superstore stocking 100,000 titles. And the percentage of these “long tail” sales grows every year.
Sure, part of Amazon’s appeal is its discount pricing and free shipping offers. But the real value for book buyers is being able to find exactly what they want, says Chris Anderson, author of the 2006 business bestseller The Long Tail:
"It’s not enough that things be available, you need to be able to find them. The big problem with brick-and-mortar stores is, all shoppers experience the same store. But the problem of findability is solved when you go online. You have searching, recommendations, and all sorts of narrow taxonomies -— things can be in multiple categories at the same time."
For 50 years, publishers have been chasing blockbusters -— the bestseller hits. They had to, because with limited shelf space, bookstores had to focus on the stuff that moved fastest. Today, chasing blockbusters is obsolete. Authors and publishers have a wide-open opportunity in serving niches.
These niche books are the ones people care about most, and the ones Amazon is most effective in recommending, says Greg Greeley, Amazon’s vice president for media products: “The Web site is designed to help customers find books they didn’t know existed.”
Getting Recommended
Book sales are a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially on Amazon. The more people who buy your book, the easier it becomes for the next reader to discover it. When Amazon notices your book is selling, it automatically displays your book higher in its search results and higher in its category lists. And most importantly, Amazon starts plugging your book into book recommendations on its Web site and in e-mails to customers.
Book recommendations are Amazon’s biggest sales engine, after keyword searches. Sixty-six percent of sales are to returning customers, many of them acting on automated recommendations for books popular with customers with similar buying histories.
Because they are personalized, Amazon’s book recommendations are network-powered word of mouth -— more effective than a highway billboard seen by everyone in town. And as long as your book keeps selling, Amazon continues recommending it month after month, year after year, to its likely audience. No longer are books sentenced to the bargain bin three months after publication. Online word of mouth can keep your book alive as long as it satisfies readers.
Each of Amazon’s 65 million customers sees a unique store. The layout is personalized, based on which books the customer previously viewed or purchased. Each customer has a recommendations list, based on which books are bought most frequently by other customers with similar buying histories.
If you have an Amazon account, view your recommendations here:
www.Amazon.com/yourstore
As an author, here’s how Amazon recommendations work for you: Let’s imagine you’ve written the book How to Grow Organic Strawberries. It turns out that one of every five Amazon customers who buys your book also purchased an earlier book, Healthy Eating With Organic Fruit. Realizing this, Amazon starts recommending your book to customers who bought the earlier book but haven’t yet bought yours. Why? Amazon knows the odds are good that once these readers discover your book they’ll buy it, too, and Amazon makes another sale.
Buyers see book recommendations in several places:
- On Amazon’s home page, where it says, Hello, [NAME], we have recommendations for you. Click here to view all your book recommendations.
- In e-mails titled “Amazon.com Recommends” and “New for You,” periodically sent to Amazon customers.
- In the “Gold Box” treasure chest icon at the top right of Amazon’s home page. Clicking the box reveals special offers on books and other merchandise on your recommended list.
- In a book’s “Also-Bought” list. Every book’s detail page on Amazon includes a list with the headline Customers who bought this item also bought. The Also-Bought list shows the five other books bought most frequently by customers who also purchased the displayed book.
- An extended Also-Bought list including many more titles is accessible from each book’s detail page at the link Explore similar items. Buyers can view the same list during the checkout process by viewing Customers who bought [Title] also bought…
The Wisdom of Crowds
Amazon’s recommendations aren’t just a computer talking, it’s the collective judgment of millions of people acting independently in their own self-interest. Amazon is the biggest and most effective word-of-mouth generator for books because it measures not what people say, but what they do. People don’t always recommend their favorite current book to each of their friends and acquaintances. But Amazon factors each buying decision into its recommendations for like-minded customers.
Just as a well-programmed computer can defeat a master chess player, automated recommendations can suggest just the right book, including books that would never occur to a brilliant bookstore clerk, says Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos:
"I remember one of the first times this struck me. The main book on the page was about Zen. There were other suggestions for Zen books, but in the middle of those was a [recommended] book on 'How to have a clutter-free desk.' That's not something that a human editor would ever pick. But statistically, the people who were interested in the Zen books also wanted clutter-free desks. The computer is blind to the fact that these things are dissimilar in some way to humans. It looks right through that and says, 'Yes, try this.' And it works."
Bubbling to the Top
The more your book sells on Amazon, the more frequently it’s shown and recommended. Books that sell well on Amazon appear higher in search results and category lists.
Let’s imagine your book How to Grow Organic Strawberries outsells a competing title, Idiot’s Guide to Growing Organic Strawberries. When Amazon customers search for the keyword “strawberries,” your book will appear on top -— customers will see it first, and notice it before the competition.
More benefits result from your Amazon sales: Your book moves up in category lists, providing another way for potential readers to discover it. For example, your title on organic strawberries would appear in this Amazon subcategory:
Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Techniques > Organic
This subcategory list is like a bestseller list for your niche. Amazon has 35 top-level categories (like Arts & Photography; Business & Investing) divided into dozens more subcategories. Unlike general bestseller lists compiled by the New York Times or USA Today, Amazon’s subcategory lists show what people care about at the niche level, where passions run deepest.
Amazon’s subcategories are discrete enough that just a few sales can push your title near the top, exposing your book to more people who care about that topic. In our example subcategory Home & Garden > Organic, your book could claim one of the top three spots with only two or three sales per week on Amazon.
Once you’ve bubbled up to the top of your subcategory, you’re firmly inside the positive feedback loop. Amazon acts as a huge funnel, sending thousands of readers to your book. That’s why some authors encourage their Web site visitors to buy books on Amazon -— each additional sale boosts their exposure, prompting yet more sales.
“Simply put, the more customers you send to Amazon who buy your book, the more visible it will be on Amazon, and the more books Amazon will sell for you,” says Morris Rosenthal, publisher of Foner Books.
If your book continues selling for six months or so, Amazon can assign it to more categories, making it even more likely browsers will find you after browsing in related categories. Books that sell moderately well eventually can be assigned to 12 or more categories, the same exposure as your book being shelved in a dozen different sections of a brick-and-mortar bookstore.The big difference is, Amazon is the world’s largest bookstore.
To see your book’s subcategory assignments on Amazon, find the section on your book’s detail page headed “Look for similar items by category.” Clicking on those links takes you to a list of the subcategory’s bestsellers.
Sometimes persistent publishers can talk the folks at Amazon into assigning their books to additional categories, or removing the book from inappropriate categories. Research other books in your niche, and see which categories they’re displayed in.
Narrow a list down to 10 categories and send your list, ISBN, and contact information to Amazon. You can send your message, along with any other typographical corrections for Amazon, by using this form:
www.Amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/typographical-errors.html
(Chapter one goes on to describe Recommendation Effectiveness, including some nifty charts and statistics, and how your Sales Rank affects the big picture.)
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About Steve Weber:A native of Charleston, West Virginia, Steve is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a Journalism graduate of West Virginia University. He now lives in Falls Church, Va., with his wife and their four-year-old daughter.
http://independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1138&urltitle=PLUG%20IN%20to%20Turn%20On%20Your%20Book%20Sales
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