Tag! You’re it!
The other morning, I was looking through categories. One of the topics of recent discussion on the Interwebs has been how some individuals have manipulated systems like the Kindle Unlimited way of recording how many pages have been read in order to pay the author their share of the KU pot of money.
There are some quite unscrupulous people out there, and inevitably, it is the ones who play by the rules who suffer.
‘Stuffing a book’:
This is a process whereby the content of the book is inflated. One of my personal issues is when you buy a print book, and find that a large font has been used, making a moderate word count seem more. This seems to be a tactic to inflate the price of said print book. In terms of e-books, ‘stuffing’ means that overly large line spacing has been used, or several ‘free’ books have been added, generally work that has been published on a website or similar. This can mean that a supposed 350 page book has 800-1000 pages. Yes, apparently that has been the level of ‘stuffing’.
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This process hurts honest authors because, if someone reviews ‘stuffed’ titles regularly, they are deemed to be in cahoots with the cheating author. So ALL their reviews are cancelled on Amazon, even if they are innocent of wrong-doing. This means in turn that an honest indie author who relies on each hard-earned review suddenly finds that they have lost a couple or more reviews. Even if the reviewer was innocent, they are unable to post new reviews.
So, it is not just a financial cheat, but it has a knock-on effect to others.
Keywords
Another interesting one, and it doesn’t just apply to books. A friend of mine sells handmade polymer clay on Etsy. The descriptions used by Carly’s Creative Clay may seem strange, but it is done that way so that her items can be found in product searches. Similarly, the descriptions used in the Little Thoughts Store are similar.
[image error]It is no different with books. I read a very interesting book recently, where this process was explained. For example, someone looking for a book like mine might type in ‘shifter romance series’, which might give more than a few returns. The trick is to think like your potential reader. What words will they use to find their preferred genre. These strings of words are what one uses when listing a book on Amazon or Smashwords. A keyword is not a single word. That is the important thing. Consider what a potential reader will look for. The flipside is quite simple. In what category do you list your book? Some categories have fewer books that others. Paranormal romance is a huge category. ‘Military paranormal romance’ is slightly smaller. ‘Urban fantasy military shifters computers’ is even smaller. Pick a small category and hey presto! Sell a hundred books or so and you are a best-seller in that category. So now, you can can add ‘Bestselling Author’ to your accomplishments.
Beware padding. keywords are also used when looking for a job. I have been looking at admin/secretarial type jobs recently. After all, that was my original training, and I have the transferable skills. But, and it is significant, my last twenty years have been working in sales. Many companies scan CVs for keywords, so just as you would try to work out what a reader might type in the search bar, consider what a potential employer might look for. If you want to convince them of transferable skills, use the right keywords and tags to demonstrate office skills. It may sound stereotypical, but that is the world in which we live and try to work.
RELEVANT LINKS FOR JO PILSWORTH
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JKPilsworth
Paranormal may not be your thing. Urban fantasy may not either. But who knows? I may be one of your friends new favourite author.
Inspired by #Legends an #UrbanFantasy series.
Alpha: https://t.co/IRZLR92AFu
Beta: https://t.co/DGDDI03VB9
Merysekhmet (US link): https://t.co/fFOUm5MHUs
Toho: https://t.co/oKtbDgrqiHhttps://t.co/mGMuJWd6Xd
Medved: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C19QKPH
AMAZON LINKS
Alpha (US link): https://t.co/IRZLR92AFu
Beta: https://t.co/DGDDI03VB9
Merysekhmet (US link): https://t.co/fFOUm5MHUs
Toho: (US link): https://t.co/oKtbDgrqiHhttps://t.co/mGMuJWd6Xd
Medved: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07C19QKPH
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