The name of the game is visibility, and the biggest game in town is Amazon.
I’ve noticed that some readers who actually don’t own a kindle, still use Amazon to look for books, which they then may buy from Barnes & Noble, Kobo or some other vendor. The importance of Amazon as a platform for discovering books can’t be overestimated.
1. Review my books
I’ve never put any effort in trying to get reviews, let alone in trying to get favorable reviews. Most authors would give an arm and a leg for a decent amount of good reviews. They are right, and I was wrong. It just took me some time to realize that.
Even if you think at one time, “I should write a review for that book,” it’s all too easy to postpone it and then completely forget about it. I know, because that’s been my case all too often.
If you’ve purchased anything at all at any time, you can review a random item, even if you haven’t bought it from Amazon. But, if you did purchase the book from Amazon the review will get the Verified Purchase label.
A review doesn’t have to be overlong. It’s not for the New York Times Literary Supplement, or worse, for school. Just give your honest opinion and don’t forget to leave a rating, because ratings are important.
Links to all books of the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse series
2. Rate my books (with a mini-review)
On Amazon you can’t rate a book, or any product for that matter, without a review. If you’d like to leave just a rating you will have to write some kind of review. Fortunately that review can be very short. Some say about 20 words should be enough. But I regularly see far shorter ones.
One simply reads, “Liked all your books,” and another, “When’s the next book coming out??”
I don’t necessarily want to encourage reviews like that, but at least they give you the opportunity to leave a rating.
Links to all books of the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse series
3. Like the reviews of others
Under every review is a Helpful button. The more users mark a review as helpful, the more Amazon will give it a prominent place and the more likely it is that review will be read.
There aren’t too many negative reviews on books 2 to 7 from the Dark Tales series. Most readers who didn’t like book 1 usually don’t go on reading the rest of the series. Some, however, do. Heaven knows why.
That means the first book of the series, the one that is free to download in some Amazon regions, or from Kobo and other vendors, bears the brunt of the combined ire of all disappointed readers. This isn’t a problem for authors who, as they say, write to market. They know what their readers hunger for and they serve them the exact meal those readers crave. That’s a great talent, but one I don’t have. I write the story that wants to be written, and after it’s finished I throw it out there in hopes it will attract readers. To a certain extent it does, but making the first volume of a series free means you cast your nets wide and attract all kinds of readers. Inevitably some of those will be very disappointed. There’s nothing to be done about that. Of course, all readers have the right to their opinion. The strange thing, however, is that negative reviews sometimes attract far more “Helpful” votes than the positive ones.
It would help an awful lot if you push the Helpful button of those reviews you find… helpful, I guess.
Links to all books of the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse series
These are the links to the books of the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse series on Amazon US:
4. Follow me on Amazon
Like all authors who sell books on Amazon, I have an Author’s Page.
You can follow me by clicking the Follow button. If you do, Amazon will send you a mail when I publish a new book. Sometimes.
For reasons of their own Amazon’s follow service is flaky. I follow several authors myself and I often noticed that I get notification of a new book very late, sometimes weeks after the publication date. Sometimes I don’t get notified at all.
To be honest, I’d rather you subscribe to my New Releases Newsletter.
Please note that a subscription to my blog, which is a WordPress service, my own New Releases Newsletter, which I send myself through a mailing service, and Amazon notifications, which Amazon sends you, are not the same and don’t offer the same advantages, though some functionality may overlap. If you’re interested, I wrote a blog post to explain the difference.
Amazon’s notification system has a great drawback for authors. We don’t know who’s on that list. We don’t even know how many subscribers there are. That same drawback for authors is a great advantage for readers since they stay anonymous.
So, if you value your privacy and don’t want authors to know your email address, and you don’t mind being notified late — sometimes too late for special offers — or at all, Amazon’s service is for you.
If, on the other hand, your (secondary or tertiary) email address is not a state secret, please consider subscribing to my New Releases Newsletter.
Of course, if you don’t mind the occasional redundant email, and just to make sure, you could subscribe to all three.
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