Tag Archives: amazon

Dead Tree Books, eBook, Success Stories

Kindle Direct Publishing Announces Kindle MatchBook

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Amazon is officially launching Kindle MatchBook in October.  The announcement on their website can be seen HERE.

According to the announcement, “For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.”

The program is making ebook versions of print books purchased new from Amazon, going all the way back to 1995 when Amazon first opened its online bookstore.  This is great news for customers … and it can be great news for indie publishers as well.

Amazon’s official notice to us authors and publishers:

Kindle MatchBook is an innovative new program which enables you to offer your Kindle book at a discount when readers purchase your print book, so you can sell more books.

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eBook

Stephen Curry – Kindle surprise and disappointment

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

In Occam’s Corner, hosted by The Guardian, Stephen Curry discovers that he really likes the Kindle.  From the article:

I thought I loved the physical feel of books too much to become enamoured of ebooks. I loved the heft, the smell, the touch of the paper, the firm but yielding resistance of the spine of a new paperback, the perfect cut of the pages that transforms a gathering of sheets — leaves that flutter easily between the fingers — into a near solid block. Comparisons are hard to find because there is nothing quite like a book. The intimacy of the tactile sensations, along with the joy of ideas and entertainment that are to be found between the covers of those that are well written, have combined to make the book an object not just of veneration — how many are scandalised to find second hand tomes annotated with a reader’s scratchings? — but of love.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, Success Stories

Wait, WHAT? A self-published author turns down a publisher?

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Author Aubrey Rose recently wrote a blog post explaining why she decided to turn down an offer from Amazon Publishing’s Montlake Romance imprint.

Why would a self-published author turn down an overture from a publisher?  An offer that included royalties, even?

From her post:

“…Naturally, I was thrilled. A real publisher wanted my work! I chatted with her briefly on the phone and asked her a ton of questions: What kind of cover would they create for me? What promotions would they do? What control would I have over everything? Although I was excited to work with Amazon, I wanted to know that they would treat my book right. She told me my novel was a great read and very clean writing, and that she would love to “partner” with me in relaunching my book through Amazon’s imprint.

However, she couldn’t guarantee anything – from cover image to pricing to marketing…”

Ah, ha!  Well, that’s par for the publisher course.  But wait, there’s more:

“…The advance they offered was less than I had made in my first month of sales. As I looked through the Montlake catalogue, I saw a mix of breakout hits and complete flops, with some recent books that just had the worst covers imaginable for romance. And I would have to pull my book from every publisher except Amazon…”

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, Self Publishing, Writing

So you want to get your book reviewed – Part 1: Amazon’s Top Customer Reviewers

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

Amazon is a pioneer in the customer review arena.  Practically since the beginning, the site has had customers who purchased products and reviewed them.  Over the years, they’ve cultivated their reviewers and refined a continually maintained list of “Top Customer Reviewers.”  The list of top reviewers is updated once a day, and – according to Amazon – “showcase our best contributors at the moment.”

This is a good place to look for reviewers who have a proven track record, and presents you with a one-stop-shop to look at how (and what!) the reviewer reviews, and where their interest lays.

From Amazon:

  • Review helpfulness plays an important part in determining rank. Writing thousands of reviews that customers don’t find helpful won’t move a reviewer up in the standings.
  • The more recently a review is written, the greater its impact on rank. This way, as new customers share their experiences with Amazon’s ever-widening selection of products, they’ll have a chance to be recognized as top reviewers.
  • We ensure that every customer’s vote counts. Stuffing the ballot box won’t affect rank. In fact, such votes won’t even be counted.

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Dead Tree Books, eBook, Self Publishing, Writing

Three Top Strategies to Guarantee Book Sales

Posted on by Shawn E. Bell

The Savvy Book Marketer has put up a blog post by Kathleen Gage about book promotion strategies.  This is an area where many writers fail, as … well, they’re writers, not marketers.

I’ve heard writers refer to the excellent promotion tools provided by Amazon – like the Select program that allows authors to give their books away for up to 5 days over a 90 day period where the book is exclusively offered by Amazon – as a “gimmick.” These same authors claim that they gave away “hundreds” of books to people and because of that they lost “hundreds” of sales.

These writers don’t know the first thing about marketing, and they need to learn it – and fast.

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