Do you watch your book’s positioning at Amazon? I have started doing this more often since my latest book came out. I go to Amazon sometimes several times a day—sometimes a few times a week—to see where my book, Promote Your Book, fits into the scheme of Amazon things.
Yesterday it was over a million (not good). Today it is number 140,590. What happened to change the numbers so dramatically? They say the positioning has to do with number of sales. But also it reflects how other books are moving or not moving.
I wondered what might have happened to cause my book to rise some million and a half points higher today than it was yesterday. Perhaps there were some books involved in those fake promotions where the author has all of his friends buy copies of the book on a certain day. It seems to me this creates a false reality for all of the books. When many other books are soaring in popularity, others might drop way down. And when things level off again for those temporarily popular books, the positioning of all the other books returns to a more realistic level.
Or it could be that my book has simply been selling. Since I’m not the publisher of this book and I don’t receive the orders, I have no way of knowing how it’s doing. But I do know that I’ve gained some new followers on Twitter—some of them might have bought it. I’ve had some articles published within the last week to ten days—this might have spurred some new sales. Folks may have started listening to my interviews posted at various Internet sites or reading some of my 5-star reviews. Maybe it’s payday for authors who have been saving to buy a copy of my book. Perhaps subscribers to SPAWNews saw the announcement about my new book and several of them ordered copies this week. Or the influx of orders is a result of this blog. It could be that the publisher is doing some promotion I’m not aware of.
Here’s another possibility: I’ve sold copies of Promote Your Book at several venues since it came out in August in Anchorage and several locations in California, as well as through my website and through Amazon. Maybe some of those customers are starting to tell others about the book and they are ordering copies.
Actually, the reason for the rise toward the top of the book chain at Amazon is probably a combination of all of these things. And this is why I urge you to engage in all manner of promotion with regard to your own books. Get lots of book reviews, write articles/stories for magazines/e-zines your customers read, sell books at book festivals and conferences, use social media, etc. and make sure your book is available for sale where your readers shop,
For many great book promotion ideas, order your print or Kindle copy of >Promote Your Book, Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author at Amazon, IndieBound, B&N.com, the publisher’s website or my own website. But order it!
http://www.matilijapress.com/PromoteYourBook.html
http://www.allworth.com/Promote_Your_Book_p/1-58115-857-1.htm