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Today was one of those days when it probably would have been best for me to just stay home and stay in bed and not communicate with the outside world at all. I felt like crap, I'm pretty sure I looked like crap and basically everyone around me annoyed the crap out of me.
Should have stayed home.
But something weird happened today. There is movement on the Amazon charts. Yes, yes, it's true. All weekend I offered "Ever After" as a FREE promo and I ended up essentially giving away over 13,000 (yes, thirteen THOUSAND) copies away. It hurt, I'm not going to lie to you. The promo ended last night and when I got up this morning and checked the stats, the book was back at $1.99 and had no ranking whatsoever.
I almost threw up.
I understand that at that point, they had no sales to go by because it had been free. It had made it all the way to #3 in women's fiction in the FREE best selling (?) category. So now it was time to start tracking again.
I came in at 138,971.
And almost threw up again.
I mean, before the free promo I was at LEAST in the twenty thousand range. I was panicking; I was frantic. I was at work and couldn't do a damn thing. As the day went on, something amazing happened. It started to climb the charts. By 3:00 I was in the 6,500 range and now I am at 5,175! I so don't understand how it all works but I am excited.
What a difference a week makes!
So while all this great stuff is happening and "Ever After" is climbing the charts, I happened to go over and check out how "The Christmas Cottage" was doing. It's back on TWO best seller lists! I kid you NOT! Last week it was in the 8,000 range and tonight it is at #727 in the Kindle Store (out of like a million books) and it is #74 in best selling women's fiction and #83 in best selling contemporary womens fiction. Go figure.
So THEN...that had me going over to my first (and almost long-since forgotten) book, "Jordan's Return". That one never made it ANYWHERE on a best seller list and pretty much never made it below 18,000 on the Kindle store list. It's #24,804 in the Kindle Store and it's been out for well over a year! It's madness I tell you!
I've done little to no marketing in the last two to three days, I had to let my assistant go last week because the book wasn't making any money and my son who is supposed to be helping me with some of this is knee-deep in mid-terms so he's not helping so that only leads to one thing...
PEOPLE MUST LIKE MY BOOK!
I wish I had confetti right now to throw. If the damn LIKE button on Amazon would work, things would be perfect but it's not. After all of their promises, people still can't find the like button on their Amazon page. I am beyond frustrated. Next up is getting people to post reviews on Amazon; you can do that without a like button! LOL!
I may have to wreak a little havoc with Amazon tonight. Wish me luck!!
Dear Amazon Customer Service:
I would like to start out by saying thank you for offering so many wonderful products on your site. You have made shopping for me so much easier on many occasions.
However, I am having some severe issues with your site as a seller. In the past I have self-published books and offered them for sale through your site and have had success with them. My recent release, however, has had nothing but issues due to technical difficulties and "testing" that you claim to be doing. As a seller, it would have been nice to have been notified of this testing period so that I didn't release a product during this time. Nor would I have offered a promotion on my book during this time.
By the removal of the "like" button, all of the people who have purchased my book or who are fans of my work, cannot be tracked on your site. This seems to be an internet-wide issue; some browsers can see it, some cannot. I find if offensive that you would remove such a KEY issue to tracking success on your site but only seem to remove it from indie authors and not the big name ones.
In my book, that is discrimination.
I notice that you don't mind taking 65% of my royalties for a book that you had nothing to do with writing and nothing that you are doing to promote or market. And in return for taking the majority of my pay, you took away one of the most important tools to help ME, the writer, have some form of success in moving up the charts on your site.
I even signed up for the Kindle Select program so that you had the exclusive digital rights to my book. I thought that might work in my favor. Clearly, it did not. You wave around this "fund" that we get to be a part of but what difference does that fund make when we aren't getting any action or movement on your site because you've stifled us?
What do you have to gain from this? Why would you take such an important tool away? Why am I being punished for being a faithful customer and seller to your site? I have had to jump through hoops for almost two weeks now for answers on when this issue is going to be fixed and I was told it would happen by today and you know what? The button still isn't showing up! How is that possible?
I cannot even begin to describe all of the ways that your practices have hurt me as a writer, a seller and a customer. I cannot even begin to tell you all of the ways that I will be getting the word out on how poorly you treat those that are loyal to you and your site. I think what you've done here is despicable and that you should be ashamed of your business practices.
I believe I will be looking to do business elsewhere before I do any more business with you.
So after five days of struggling with Amazon and trying to find answers as to why there is no "like" button and why can't they seem to diagnose this problem, I received this response from them today:
Hello,
I do understand your concern.
From time to time, we test both new and existing features on our
website to determine which characteristics or services drive customer
purchases and satisfaction. We're currently testing website.
During these test periods, certain aspects of our website will
function or appear differently to randomly selected customers, or to the
same customer using another computer or browser. We're continually
fine-tuning our presentation to provide our customers with the greatest
value, selection, and information for their online purchasing decisions.
However, if you're facing difficulty after next 2 business days, I'd
suggest you contact us via chat or phone for live troubleshooting,
please understand that issues like this cannot be resolved over email. I
hope you'll understand our limitations in this regard.
I don't know about you, but I'm not sure how much I believe it. I mean, it would be GREAT if this was the only issue and come Sunday I could go back to sending people over to "Ever After"'s book page and ask people to click the "like" key and try to get some movement on the charts. What I don't like about this whole thing is that we, the Amazon sellers, author's, etc. whose business this "Test" period disrupted, there was no warning. Had I known that THIS week they were going to be testing on the site, I would NOT have released a book with Amazon holding the exclusive rights to it! I would have waited the week and released it next Monday.
I think this is just another case of the big guy doing it's best to hold the little guy down; keep him in his place. As an Indie author with an agreement with Amazon through its Kindle Select program, and with Amazon taking the major percentage of my sales, should I not have been given the common courtesy of a heads up?
Are they telling the truth?
Will Sunday bring any big changes?
The remainder of that email gave me the phone numbers to call if there is still a problem and believe me, if all is not right by Sunday afternoon, I will have a whole team of people calling Amazon and demanding that something be done.
Only time will tell.
It's not even possible to put a number on the ways that there are to utilize Social Networks or the internet to market whatever it is that you do. Basically, any time you put your name or product out there, isn't that considered marketing?
The problem is that with an infinite number of places and ways to get your name out there, which ones are the most helpful and will yield you the biggest response? This is something I am currently trying to work through and let me tell you, there aren't enough hours in a day to figure it out any time soon.
I blog. Obviously you know that because you are here and reading it. I never did the paid posts thing. For a while there was a site called "Entrecard" that was sort of like an "I'll stop by your site if you stop by mine" and it drew traffic to your site and somehow made your site more relevant in search engines.
They went away.
I have followers here but to be honest, I follow a lot of sites that I just don't get around to visiting on a daily basis. Or weekly. Or monthly. Heck, I think I follow some sites that I was only on a couple of times and never went back to again. It wasn't that they were bad sites, but I just don't have the time that I used to.
I tweet. I have almost 600 followers on Twitter. Apparently this is a good number. My son was highly impressed. So I tweet. I put out news about my books, promotions, when I need help and people to go to a site and click LIKE for me (curse you Amazon!) but basically, I'm certainly not getting results from each of those nearly 600 people.
I'm on Facebook. I'm on there as both me and my alter-ego. I have over 800 friends on there. My alter ego has almost 300 likes on the page. Does that amount to anything? Not really. I post all the live-long day about where I need a little help from my friends and you know what I notice? People will click like all day long on a cartoon or a picture of Grumpy Cat but I can't get nearly the same amount to click on a link for me.
I did Facebook advertising. I spent a lot of money and got little to no return. Sure, people looked at my page but that did not equal book sales or likes on the page. They liked my AD, just not my page. Awesome.
The funny thing with Facebook is that in order for a page to be a somewhat successful marketing/promotional tool, you have to have a lot of followers from all over the country/world. If your group is just people who are local to you and you are not getting any help from the locals, don't waste your time promoting anything to these people! WASTE O TIME! I don't have time to waste on sites, pages or whatever that aren't going to support of promote me.
I heard of this thing called laddering. I'm not sure I understand it but it's sort of like the whole Entrecard thing - you like my Facebook page, I'll like yours. Great, your Likes go up but again, if you aren't promoting me or my product and vice-versa, where is the benefit? Stats only mean something if it's helping you to promote your business! You can have 5,000 likes on your products page. That doesn't mean that 5,000 people have purchased your product.
I'm on Goodreads, Google +, Shelfari, YouTube and more. And you know what? I'm spending 3 hours a DAY on getting my name and my book out there and for all of that time and energy (and in some cases, money), it is not equaling book sales.
What am I doing wrong? We're told that getting the word out, getting your Google rank up, getting your Facebook likes up is all what we should aspire to. But what good is that high number when nothing is happening for you?
So here's my thought...why am I killing myself on this? Why am I missing out on family time? There are over 1,000,000 books on Amazon that I am fighting against. I'm in the 20,000's. Not a bad stat after less than a week, right? But when will Amazon fix it's issues to help their author's who are using them exclusively and put the Like button back?
In the case of Amazon, that's a stat that I am interested in! That stupid Like button and the ranking are a very coveted thing! Why won't they fix it? Why won't they help the authors whose money they are benefiting from? Help an indie author out. Please go to Amazon and click on the link for Ever After and leave me a comment on whether or not your see a like button. I would love to present them with some stats.
And while you're there, get your copy of "Ever After".
Well, here I am three days into "Ever After"'s release and STILL finding issues with Amazon. I am NOT amused.
Don't get me wrong - I understand that this is a process and that when I wrote and published "The Christmas Cottage", it was a completely different beast. Why? I published a feel-god Christmas story and released it right after Thanksgiving. As an avid reader of romances, I LOVE reading a good holiday romance at Christmas time. So basically, the timing was beyond perfect.
"Ever After" is a new challenge. There was no holiday that I wanted to tie in to (I don't want to write like that) and I released it just like every other author and now it has to compete like every other book with nothing to draw any particular attention to it. It's frustrating to say the least. What people don't realize is that, as an author, you are ALWAYS going to want your book to be a success. You write, you publish, you wait for success.
No one likes the waiting.
Ever.
So things are moving slowly right now and a HUGE hindrance to the process is that Amazon still has not figured out or fixed the problem with the "Like" button. I chose to publish through Amazon's Kindle Select program and so the only place you will find "Ever After" is on Kindle. Well, how does Amazon track traffic to your page or your popularity?
Through the like button.
Basically, you don't have to have a boatload of sales to move up the charts. Weird but true. But you need to get traffic to the page and have people click like. Hard to do that when the "Like" button isn't there!
So now here I sit with a book that is competing with a million other books and a missing marketing tool. Not a good place to be sitting. So what am I getting by being a part of this whole Kindle Select program? No one knows. There is the possibility of some higher profits from some special fund that they have but I'm not seeing them doing anything to move my book to get it to have higher profits.
Correct me if I am wrong but considering that they take a HUGE part of my profits, wouldn't it make sense for them to try and SELL my book??? I don't understand it. I want to scream; I want to have an all-out hissy fit. It won't do any good and unless you are a writer yourself, you probably don't understand what the big deal is.
Basically, I am marketing myself/my books. Local advertising is a waste of time and energy. I have to be all over the internet and not just on sites visited by people that live around me. World-wide. Global sites. It's not a difficult concept but you'd be surprised. Amazon is world wide and they are limiting my marketing. I have a fan club base of almost 300 on Facebook (thank you, Nick!) and I have gotten multiple complaints that they can't go to Amazon and like the book! I've gotten enough comments about it that it's sincerely and issue and all I get from Amazon is that they cannot identify the problem.
Why? Because it's like the "Like" button is basically playing peek-a-boo; now you see it, now you don't. Two computers in my house, one has the like button, one doesn't. At work, there are 15 computers, half have the like button, half don't?
What in the world is up with that? Shouldn't an INTERNATIONAL company like Amazon do a little more to support the author's whose money they are taking?
Help me, readers! Please go to Amazon and get your copy of "Ever After" - it's only $1.99 and if you can see it, click the LIKE button!
Okay, the holiday's are almost over and we've hit the one month mark since the release of "The Christmas Cottage". As an indie author, this has been a very exciting month. I mean, I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd sell a whole lot of copies; I thought if I hit a thousand, it would be amazing. After all, my first book, "Jordan's Return" really only sold a little over 100 copies.
So imagine my complete and utter surprise that at the one month mark, I've sold almost 7,500 books! WOW! Who knew? I am not going to lie to you, it's a lot of work and I've met all kinds of authors who have had various degrees of success and it doesn't matter if they are traditionally published with big name (or any name) publishers or self published. The key is in the marketing.
This particular book has a limited shelf life due to the fact that it is set on Christmas and not many people are wanting to read a Christmas story in the Spring. I've had to hit the promoting hard and fast and really, I kind of shot myself in the foot a little bit on this one because I released it so quickly that there wasn't any time to build up any hype and get some professional reviews done on some of big book review sites out there before Christmas. Most sites have me on a waiting list and that's going to put the book getting reviewed somewhere around the end of February.
Not good.
I've set small goals for myself as we've gone along. Sell a thousand books. Sell twenty-five hundred books, five thousand...etc. Then it was getting in the top 100 list on Amazon, then the top 50, top 30 until I hit the top 10. I did that on Christmas Eve. It was pretty darn exciting. Now my goal is to hit 10,000 sales by New Year's. Baby steps. It's all about baby steps...
Just need to take them really fast before my window closes.
So here's the thing, I really want and need people to spread the word. I need help getting the word out about the book - it's only a .99 cent download on Kindle, Nook and Smashwords. I need "likes" on Amazon. I mean, 7,500 sales and only 81 people clicked like...I have 36 reviews (most are positive, two are just nasty).
HELP! HELP!! HELP!!!
So if you are looking to do a good deed, help a struggling Indie Author achieve her dream of ending 2012 on a high note! Go to Amazon and click on "The Christmas Cottage". If you haven't already, download the Kindle version or send it to a friend! Click "Like", leave a cheery little note (I cry easily). Let's celebrate the success of the little book that could!
Thank you again for all of your help! Let's show some of those big name publishers what they are missing and that you don't need to spend a fortune to have a best seller.
I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and here's to some successful book selling as we prepare to say farewell to 2012!!
