Discoverability…
So Many Things…
Now, I admit, I suck at Amazon book searches unless I know the author’s name. I didn’t realize just how bad until tonight when, on a lark, I searched for “science fiction” and nothing else.
Found a few and a ton of “sponsored” books.
I searched for a while, following rat holes of so much trash I could hardly believe it.
I clicked on one “sponsored” book that said clearly it was science fiction, had a fantasy cover, and an author name so tiny that even on my large mac screen I could not read it. This poor guy had spent money to get me to see his book about four pages deep. Oh, sad…
His sales copy was dull and passive and told almost all of the plot, his cover as I said looked fantasy, and I searched his name and it was his second book. He had no web site. And he had paid for a review from Kirkus. This guy clearly believed that old myth that ancient 1990’s promotion was going to sell his book. It was clearly not working since he had one review, three stars. Oh, sad… Even his family didn’t like it.
So I gave up just searching for a genre and put in some authors I knew who wrote science fiction. All big name writers, some even had decent sales copy. Below their books, and mixed in with their books, were “sponsored” Kindle Unlimited books. So I looked up Kris’s books. First one was a Retrieval Artist novel with over 500 reviews and under just one page of her books there were some “sponsored” really horrid covers, tiny author’s names, from Kindle Unlimited, all free crap. All “sponsored.”
So almost without exception, the books I found without knowing the author name, had names so small they could not be read, a lot had horrid covers, all, without exception, had plot-heavy and dull sales copy. And a large number were paying me to see their horrid covers, tiny names, and bad sales copy. I have no idea what they thought I would be buying.
And when I searched under my name, the first two were “sponsored” by small-name writers, and the first three pages were some of my media books that are still in print. My fault on that, have not put up on Amazon new books in a while. But what a way to organize a store.
So I would just be a regular Amazon customer, knowing no tricks to get around. In over an hour, I did not find one book that interested me except a couple I had missed by my big name friends when I searched their names.
There are so many ways to sell books now other than that mess Amazon calls a bookstore.
And if you can’t get past your own issues and stop killing your own books with small author name, bad covers, and horrid sales copy, you sure can’t expect to see income from Amazon. Even when you give Amazon money to “sponsor” your book.
And after tonight, I understand why Amazon is so low these days in WMG income sources. It hasn’t gone down, but considering the numbers of books we have, it sure isn’t worth much of our time, and how many ways we earn a lot more from our copyright and brands and trademarks.
8 Comments
James Palmer
Amazon is almost entirely pay to play now, with ads being the only way to get your books to show. Even typing in an author’s name gets a bunch of sponsored books in the mix, I’m assuming because they used said author’s name as one of their keywords, but who knows?
Brad D. Sibbersen
It’s almost as if their primary business is selling ads to hopeful writers, rather than selling the actual product. Hmm.
Quentin Bauer
I did a search for your name. Looks curated based my recent search history (from all of my smart devices). First page of ‘dean wesley smith’ results in 90% books by you, with your non-fiction at the top, then a mix of your fiction (including new and old) and non-fiction at the middle and bottom. The few sponsored books show mostly 3rd-party writing craft, business/marketing, web development. Of the 3rd-party fiction, I got a sponsored H.R. Haggard book of all things! So AI seems to be curating our search results.
dwsmith
Well, that frighteningly enough, makes sense. Thanks.
Kristi N.
I’m not even close to anyone for discoverability (only 6 books published wide) but I’m changing out covers to address the small author name problem. And I haven’t sold an ebook on Amazon all year–just print on D2D. (Which is fine–I try to make my covers genre specific and with a certain flair that makes them nice to leave on a table or desk.)
Tully
I have only three so you ARE ahead of me. I also have redone all three covers and plan to update them beginning of the year. Only two were already released on Amazon, the third had been released by a publiaher years back but has never went up on Amazon before, so that one will be technically a new release I guess.
Anthony
Are WMG’s revenue shares outside of Amazon detailed in another article, Dean? I’d be curious to know them to improve my understanding of this topic.
dwsmith
Nope. I talk about it a little in lectures at times, And honestly until about four years ago, talking with a group of the winning writers at Writers of the Future did I even realize what we did was unusual. I said Amazon was our 7th or 8th largest income stream and they were all shocked. Seems the myth is that Amazon is the be-all and end-all. I did not know that myth existed. But I don’t talk about it much.
But have an entire year of Monday classes talking about branding and trademark. Every Monday all this year, but not many, meaning five maybe, were even interested.