# For Amazon Indie Writers



## David Gordon Burke (Jan 10, 2014)

There are days when I wonder why I share considering that I'm just helping the competition and making it that much harder for myself.  I guess I just a giving kind of guy.  HAHA.

Here's a bit of useful info for anyone planning to publish their work on Amazon.
Give some deep thought to the name of your book.
My book which I published this week 'Lobo' - I would have had a better chance of selling more if I had named it 'Lobo - A Dog's Life.'  

Why?  Because it would have gotten a better ranking in the Amazon search engine.
This is done by finding 'Key Words' that are relative to your book.

Say you are writing a Fantasy novel.
Go to Amazon.
Put in Fantasy in the search section.
Automatically, various other options appear.
Now, search Fantasy a - Fantasy b - Fantasy C etc.   For each letter of the alphabet, new variations appear.  Write down the key words that apply to your book.  You can have 7 Key words / phrases - separated by a comma.
If your key words (there is a section in the upload page that asks you for a category and for key words)  match the title of your book, then your ranking is going to be better than if it's just a medley of mush.

So let's say (an example) you get a list of some key words.  Fantasy Adventure, Fantasy book, Fantasy Journey, Fantasy Story, Fantasy Elves, Fantasy Swords etc.  

Now, put a couple of those words into the title of your book and you are improving your chances of getting hits, being found etc.  

The Elves of Triannon: The Adventure of King Windblade - Book One.
(A horrible example but you get my point)   This is going to get better hits.  

David Gordon Burke


----------



## Gavrushka (Jan 10, 2014)

Bloody awful when quality is hidden beneath the volume of titles and you have to resort to such matters to be visible.

I just hope that you get a head of steam, and the momentum leads to good sales figures.

Perhaps I'll badger agents until one relents rather than ever consider self-publication*. - I know you've done a mass of research, but I have the impression that it is a market that is so saturated with sub-par titles that readers may be struggling.




*By Easter, I'll need to do one or the other.


----------



## jayelle_cochran (Jan 15, 2014)

Your keywords don't have to only be in your title, but in the description or ones that you add yourself for when there's a search.  The title grabs the reader, yes, but it's not necessary for ranking.  Reviews will help with that more than anything.  Positive reviews (4 or 5 stars) by people who bought your book through Amazon or Kindle while searching under those keywords will give you a better ranking and put you on the pages you want to be found.  The best way, IMO, to get such reviews is to have other authors review your book for you, and you return the favor.  You can ask that if they can't give an honest 4 or 5 star review, then they give you private constructive crit instead.  That will help keep you from getting a bad review and keeps the reviews honest.

On a personal note...I never look at other authors as the competition.  As an indie author, my competition are the publishers, not the authors.  People are constantly looking for new authors, new books, etc.  If I get great sales, it's not going to hurt your bottom line and vice versa.  However, if I don't publish a book that is at the same level as those that the publishers put out, then that will be what hurts me.  If your cover is professional, your title is good, the editing is also professional, and you've written your story well, then you have no worry about the competition of other authors.  A person can usually tell after reading the first chapter if they want to continue reading the book.  If they read it to the end and they like it, then they'll buy more books from you and even tell their loved ones to do the same.  THAT is going to get you the sales you want more than anything.  A higher Amazon ranking only makes you more visible so that can happen.  After that, your writing is going to ultimately be what sells your book and future ones as well.  But, it's the readers and word of mouth that make up the bulk of book sales (no amount of marketing can give you that level of exposure and drive people to your books like word of mouth).

Also, placing your book for free temporarily can help tons as well.  I've seen this with my own eyes.  My husband is in the military and bought a kindle so he can bring more than 2 books with him on deployment.  Because, we're poor, he downloaded a ton of free e-books.  Some of them he deleted because they were very poorly written (my husband will read a book with horrible grammar if the plot is sound, so it means a lot when he rejects a book).  There were some books that he loved so much that he looked up the author and bought some of the other books they've written.  He even said to me, "It's cruel what these authors are doing.  They give me a free book and I fall in love with it.  But, now I have to pay to read the rest of the series!  It's not fair!"  Then he went onto amazon and did just that.  This convinced me about how sound putting a book out for free can be.  It also convinced me that my competition isn't going to be other authors.  My husband loves reading stuff from new authors that he hasn't heard about.  So do a lot of my friends.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.  

*hugs*
Jayelle


----------



## Gavrushka (Jan 15, 2014)

jayelle_cochran said:


> The best way, IMO, to get such reviews is to have other authors review your book for you, and you return the favor.  You can ask that if they can't give an honest 4 or 5 star review, then they give you private constructive crit instead.  That will help keep you from getting a bad review and keeps the reviews honest.




This I do struggle with! I think it is unfair on your average reader if you seek to skew the rating of a book by dissuading unfavourable reviews, and reciprocation. - I know it is a pragmatic part of the industry, but the dross you end up buying because of seemingly good reviews can only harm the self-publication market. 

DGB writes well, and I am sure he'll get where he deserves on merit.

Gah, sorry, I don't like making negative remarks about posts, but if you ask for a review, you should accept it, whatever the reviewer might say.


----------



## jayelle_cochran (Jan 15, 2014)

Honestly, I agree.  The reason why I add in that last part is because for some, it would be better to be given the crit privately so they can make changes and not affect a future edition with low reviews.  I like the idea of offering a review for a review, though, because it's authors helping each other.  If a book is poorly written, then they won't have positive reviews with this method either.  I know I personally could not write a good review for a book that was poorly written.  I have no problem, however, offering suggestions to the author to help improve their work...if I have suggestions to give.  

The reason why so many self-published books are known for being not very good is because no one showed the author what they were doing wrong.  I know I personally had to learn the hard way, as do most.  I wish that someone had pointed out what my work was lacking years ago instead of finding it mostly on my own.  It would've saved me a lot of heartache and anxiety.  I still would've had to do all of that research, but I would probably have learned more in the long run as well.  

As I said, we are not in competition with each other in the self-publishing field.  If we can do something that'll help improve the quality of another writer's work, then that will eventually lead to helping raise the community's reputation as a whole.  So, I would rather give 4 and 5 star reviews for quality novels and private constructive criticism for those that need more editing.  What strengthens one, strengthens all.

*hugs*
Jayelle


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Jan 16, 2014)

jayelle_cochran said:


> Your keywords don't have to only be in your title,



You lost me from the first line.  Have to?  No.  But it turns out that it is beneficial.  That's the way the Amazon search engine works.
At least according to the book I am reading about how Amazon's 'query programming' functions.  

David Gordon Burke


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Feb 10, 2014)

For anyone who didn't get the jist of this thread the first time, I wrote a bit longer explanation on the theme on my blog - graphics etc.  

Look in signature for blog address.

David Gordon Burke


----------



## Olly Buckle (Feb 10, 2014)

I really don't think other readers are competition,reading a book I like does not put me off reading others in the same genre, it sends me looking for them. But yes, you are a nice guy


----------



## qwertyportne (Feb 10, 2014)

Good advice. If readers can't find your e-book as easily as they can find another author's e-book... well, that's your point and I agree wholeheartedly.

I'm dealing with this "discoverability" thing myself and actively seeking solutions. But getting my e-books discovered is more about quantity, not quality. At least durng this phase of my efforts to learn how to promote my e-books.

Once a reader finds one of my e-books and compares it with an e-book written by another author, then quality becomes an issue. And then perhaps quality relates to more readers discovering my books by word of mouth. Also good advice, and I embrace that wholeheartedly too.

I've read dozens of blogs that suggest we should keep writing and publishing our best stuff, rather than waste our time promoting it. Sorry, but that promotes getting discovered as something akin to luck or magic. No, we've got to do things other than just writing and publishing to make it more likely our books will be discovered, read and enjoyed.

Like many of you, I don't write to make money. I did that for fifty years. No, I write to inform, entertain and inspire other people, because that's why I read what other people write. It's all about having an audience for our thoughts and feelings. If we can't find them, or they can't find us, well, bummer... 

BTW, how do you set the price of an e-book at Amazon to $Free? The lowest I can set mine is $0.99.


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Feb 11, 2014)

qwertyportne said:


> BTW, how do you set the price of an e-book at Amazon to $Free? The lowest I can set mine is $0.99.



The free option comes into play when you sign up for the Amazon KDP program that allows you to give the book away for free for a five day period.  In order to do this the book must be exclusive to Amazon - I think the period is 90 days.  
There are about 3 advantages here.
1.  Suppossedly you get a cut of a monthly million dollar fund depending on how many free downloads you attract.
2.  Your ranking goes up, more people find you and then, after the free period you get more sales.
3.  The book continues to be free to a segment of elite Amazon customers...again, raising your profile and ranking.

I did this with only one book and had good results.  600 or so dowloaded for free and then big sales after.  Will do it again.

David Gordon Burke


----------



## movieman (Feb 11, 2014)

qwertyportne said:


> I've read dozens of blogs that suggest we should keep writing and publishing our best stuff, rather than waste our time promoting it. Sorry, but that promotes getting discovered as something akin to luck or magic.



That's what it's always been, for most people. You keep writing until you get lucky with one book (e.g. it happens to be the right story at the right time, or you get a review in the right place), and make enough fans that they buy your backlist and read everything else you release. Sure, you could go the Konrath route and hand-sell your books in a thousand book stores (or whatever it was he did in his trade published days), but that was insanely time-consuming.

Most writers are better off writing more and better books than spending time on promotion that only produces a brief sales increase, particularly if they only have one or two books available. A thousand extra sales of one book might seem good, but, if that book is all you have, most readers will have forgotten you by the time you release the next one.


----------



## qwertyportne (Feb 11, 2014)

Lobo, thanks. Of course, I forgot about KDP Select. Glad your results were positive. Lots of authors, however, told me they "sold" lots of books during the "free" period and then very few or none sold after the "free" phase. That actually doesn't dissuade me from selecting that option now and then, because I'm lots more interested in an audience for my writing than money. I have ten or so e-books for sale now, but removed all of them from the KDP Select program so I could try Smashwords. I heard they now accept uploads in the epub, and I much prefer that format over doc format. (I use the Atlantis word processor). But I haven't used Smashwords yet, because I then discovered they don't convert your epub upload to any of the other formats. 

Movieman, thanks for pointing that out. I've read dozens of blogs explaining the various ways to promote e-books but many of the comments attached to these blogs reflect what you said. I dislike the idea that luck should have anything to do with readers discovering my writing, so I'm always open to considering things I can do other than writing to make it more likely I'll get that first sale, and then word of mouth, and so forth. Like I said earlier in this thread, In that regard, the number of e-books on the market works against discovery, whereas the quality of the writing works for sales. At least that's how I'm approaching it now.


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Feb 11, 2014)

movieman said:


> That's what it's always been, for most people. You keep writing until you get lucky with one book



I rarely call anyone out but that statement strikes me as really wrong.  First off, define lucky.  Second of all, lucky to who?  I'd be willing to bet that behind most of the extremely 'Lucky' writers that hit big there is a ton of hard work.  Amanda Hocking has a full on promotional machine that has probably gone through a number of permutations as she climbed out of obscurity.  As do most of the INDIEs on the previous list.  

I am equally likelly to call someone out on saying that it is 'Luck' if you write the right book at the right time.  While 100 or 1000 or 10,000 just jump onto the coat tails of the latest trend, even among those there has to be a twist, hook or something that is going to make it unique and readable within the Twilight clones or the Harry Potter copies etc.  

I'm not a big fan of Hunger Games but there is nothing 'Lucky' about the fact that this author looked at the market, saw a niche, figured that Vamps and Wizards wasn't her thing so she thought 'what if I write for the YA crowd but in an end of world society riff?' And she did and it hit.  That's called talent...not luck.  J.K. Rowling?  Talent...Even Stephanie Meyers who I despise like itchy 'roids had something going on.  I think in the case of all these best sellers, Indie or otherwise, it's a cop out to call it luck.  

If you really want to know what is one of the biggest, most important things that help break you into the INDIE world...it's not luck.  What you need is about 500 totally sycophantic friends that will buy, tweet, face, review and generally butt smouch you into a higher echelon of Amazon.  Those are the most common cases of really bad writing.  The Cult of personality.

David Gordon Burke


----------



## Pluralized (Feb 11, 2014)

David Gordon Burke said:


> I rarely call anyone out but that statement strikes me as really wrong.  First off, define lucky.  Second of all, lucky to *who*?



_whom.
_

















Sorry, but it had to be done.


----------



## Gavrushka (Feb 11, 2014)

David Gordon Burke said:


> If you really want to know what is one of the biggest, most important things that help break you into the INDIE world...it's not luck.  What you need is about 500 totally sycophantic friends that will buy, tweet, face, review and generally butt smouch you into a higher echelon of Amazon.  Those are the most common cases of really bad writing.  The Cult of personality.
> 
> David Gordon Burke



IF that is the case, I'll avoid the self-publication market, or vanity publication market as your description could infer.

One of the E-zines that I follow on Twitter expressed a willingness to review self-published works. - I am sure others will too. This will only be a positive step for those authors who have talent. - If the need arises, I'll put my head on the block.


----------



## movieman (Feb 11, 2014)

David Gordon Burke said:


> I rarely call anyone out but that statement strikes me as really wrong.  First off, define lucky.



Uh, lucky. What's hard to understand about htat?



> Second of all, lucky to who?  I'd be willing to bet that behind most of the extremely 'Lucky' writers that hit big there is a ton of hard work.  Amanda Hocking has a full on promotional machine that has probably gone through a number of permutations as she climbed out of obscurity.  As do most of the INDIEs on the previous list.



Amanda Hocking had something like seventeen novels she could upload for sale back in the days when just about anything would sell if it was priced for $0.99. Hard work, yes. But luck that she had those books available at the right time. It would be much harder to achieve today.

Whatever happened to her, anyway? I haven't heard a thing since she got her trade publishing contract.



> I'm not a big fan of Hunger Games but there is nothing 'Lucky' about the fact that this author looked at the market, saw a niche, figured that Vamps and Wizards wasn't her thing so she thought 'what if I write for the YA crowd but in an end of world society riff?' And she did and it hit.  That's called talent...not luck.



And how many other people rewriting 'Battle Royale' didn't become a huge best-seller?

You point at one example of someone who became a best-seller, and claim that's somehow proof that it was nothing to do with luck... yet you have no idea how many other people were trying to sell similar books and got nowhere, because their book didn't land in front of the right editor at the right time. Or did sell, but vanished from the shelves after a few months because the right reviewer didn't read and review it.

Similarly, Rowling. There were a number of other 'school for wizards' books that predated Harry Potter. Was hers the best, and that's why it took off, or was she just in the right place at the right time with the right book?


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Feb 12, 2014)

movieman said:


> Amanda Hocking had something like seventeen novels she could upload for sale back in the days when just about anything would sell if it was priced for $0.99. Hard work, yes. But luck that she had those books available at the right time. It would be much harder to achieve today.
> 
> Similarly, Rowling. There were a number of other 'school for wizards' books that predated Harry Potter. Was hers the best, and that's why it took off, or was she just in the right place at the right time with the right book?



Again,  I ask for a definition of luck.  You seem to see having 17 books written as 'Luck.'  Equally, you see being in the right place at the right time with the right book (both Harry Potter and Hunger Games) as luck.  

There is an undefinable element in any art and even some trades.  It's the ability to create something that 'resonates' with the people.  That again is not luck.  If you see it that way then I assume the INDIE world isn't for you.   With your perspective I'd probably give writing in general a wide berth - after all, if the difference between failure and sucess is Luck....?  Well mine has always stank.  I tend to rely on hard work.

Calling it luck is a cop out in my vocabulary.  Luck, like try doesn't exist.  You either do or you don't do.  

David Gordon Burke


----------



## Gavrushka (Feb 12, 2014)

As I see it, luck could be replaced with fortuitous (fortunate) in the above, and mean the same thing - So perhaps that works as a definition? Right place at the right time with the right underwear.


----------



## Pluralized (Feb 12, 2014)

Gavrushka said:


> As I see it, luck could be replaced with fortuitous (fortunate) in the above, and mean the same thing - So perhaps that works as a definition? Right place at the right time with the right underwear.



With all due respect - I think that's part of the problem. The self-publishing movement has diluted and deluded. Anyone with a word-processor can now put their work up on the interwebs, and we find most of it to be garbage.

Write what people want to read. And you know what that is, whether you want to believe it or not: Stories told, but details withheld until such time as revealing them makes sense. The formula is sound.


----------



## Gavrushka (Feb 12, 2014)

You misunderstood me, Rob - (read my earlier post for my thoughts) - I was interpreting Movieman's post for D G B!  

My belief is the exact opposite, and more or less what you've written as a _correction_ to the position you assumed was my own!


----------



## qwertyportne (Feb 12, 2014)

Pluralized said:


> With all due respect - I think that's part of the problem. The self-publishing movement has diluted and deluded. Anyone with a word-processor can now put their work up on the interwebs, and we find most of it to be garbage... Write what people want to read. And you know what that is, whether you want to believe it or not: Stories told, but details withheld until such time as revealing them makes sense. The formula is sound.



Yes, too many authors spamming distributors with poorly written e-books. The e-book market has become a playing field for anyone with a word processor and the belief he or she writes well and has something valuable to share with the world. A kind of free-speech platform for the good, the bad and the ugly. It's just too easy and economical to publish an e-book, whether you care about your audience or not. 

And like many threads, debates tend to become polarized into mutually exclusive positions: "It's luck!" "No it isn't!" As I see it, two factors affect sales: quantity and quality. Like you said, Pluralized, diluted and deluded. The quantity of e-books on the market are a stumbling block to being discovered. Once discovered, however, the quality of the writing can also be a stumbling block. If you are anything like me, you are doing things other than writing to get over the first stumbling block. But what are you doing to get over the second stumbling block? We've probably gotten too close to hi-jacking the original thrust of this thread, so I'm going to ask that question in a new thread. Probably something like "E-Books: the Good, Bad and Ugly." But I very much appreciate you saying "The formula is sound." Yes it is, and that's the kind of advice I'd like to solicit in my new thread. Perhaps later in the morning. Got to go now...


----------



## gill woods (Feb 15, 2014)

i would like to ask a question regarding the kdp free promotion do you have a reccomendation for the length of time that they are available for free? is it a case of the longer the better?


----------



## David Gordon Burke (Feb 16, 2014)

gill woods said:


> i would like to ask a question regarding the kdp free promotion do you have a reccomendation for the length of time that they are available for free? is it a case of the longer the better?



I think 5 days is the standard, not sure.  You have a exclusivity issue but after 90 days you can opt out or re up for another free give away.  It seems that this works.  People who use the option sell more copies.  Your ranking as far as bestseller isn't related to sales....it's related to downloads so you can really get into the public eye by giving away a few copies.

I'm holding out until I have a few more books and then plan to round robin all my titles.  

David Gordon Burke


----------

