-Know How Many Kindle Books You Sold By Looking at Your Sales Rank
Blogging, Facebook & Twitter Are A Complete Waste Of Time
I have to say the title of this book enticed me. While How To Make a Killing on Kindle provided excellent information in several areas, I’m taking some advice with a grain of salt. Here are my impressions:
1. Great nitty gritty information I have not seen elsewhere.
Alvear describes a number of different techniques to improve the placement of ebooks.
Some of these, such as optimizing seo terms in the book description and title, may be useful for sellers across all platform.
While others are specifically geared for Amazon: interpreting sale numbers from rank position, choosing the right categories, and adding formatting to descriptions. And that last one, is a whole lot more complicated than I could’ve imagined.
2. Some techniques are morally ambiguous.
In one chapter Alvear recommends writing book reviews of your competitors with comments like “As the writer of blah blah blah” in the first three lines.
Personally when I see this I find it to be obnoxious.
He also highly recommends everyone acquire five to six reviews. Alvear leaves it up to the readers to as to whether to recruit a friend or to write the reviews themselves.
As a book reviewer I find this to be rather tacky.
While I understand it’s a business and there are surely overlooked books out there, if a book doesn’t naturally provoke good reviews then it needs to go back to the drawing board. There are so many reviewers like myself happy to provide a service.
Writing a review yourself says that the book/cover/description/hook needs work, and that the author needs to build relationships with potential readers. Writing your own reviews is an act of desperation, not a task to complete in hour number ten.
3. I’m unconvinced about ditching the blog.
Alvear says since only 10% of people have an e-reader, any advertisement aimed at the general public will flop.
The thing is e-readers are just starting, but the number of users will continue to grow. Hello, Christmas presents.
Also this advice is specifically aimed at people who will only sell their books online. Personally I plan to offer both digital and print copies. I like the way books weigh in my hands and smell, and ohhh it’s a romance, me and books. In that case the paperbacks will be more expensive to buy, but yes, all blog readers could still enjoy it.
Even if you are e-publishing only, there is a lot to be said for coming off as a real person. Blogs allow people to check you out, decide if they want to listen to your advice, and connect. I love my blog for the friendship element in this cold internet sea.
But yeah I’d probably have another book written if I didn’t blog. Oh well.
4. Moral and philosophy issues aside, most of the content is useful.
