And Now, the Moment You’ve Been Waiting For

What happens when more than fifty top social influencers share photos of themselves with your book and blow up the social space so you become virtually unavoidable? As promised in my prelude to the three-part series on the Twitter Power 3.0 book launch, I enjoy doing every book launch a little bit different. It’s not necessarily about the result as much as it is trying a new approach. In part one, I revealed my plan. In part two, I shared what people saw on launch day. Today, I’m prepared to provide initial results and my analysis of what happened. Let’s hop right into it… We’ve already seen how my book showed up again and again in the social space via photos, shares, likes, comments, tweets and retweets. So what did all that sharing amount to? First, let’s look at the Thunderclap stats. I grabbed a screenshot directly from their interface. Well over seven million people were potentially reached by the 218 tweets that went out from my Thunderclap posse. The reach numbers are obviously overblown because it just counts the total number of followers for those who participate. So while I have over 80,000 followers on Twitter, it’s likely that only a couple hundred will actually see a tweet if I just share it one time. Regardless, it’s a lot of potential eyeballs. But as you can see, out of everyone that DID see the share, only 542 clicks to the book site were tracked. It’s a conversion rate so low as to be negligible. Moving on to the next indicator, we come to hourly bookstore rankings. While there are plenty of people who purchase from Barnes & Noble (and we encourage people to go to their local bookstore, whether chain or independent to pick up a copy), Amazon is often the greatest indicator of how well a book is selling. That’s because they display a ranking for every book in the product details section. A number with overall ranking, as well as rankings if your title appears in the top 100 of any category or subcategory, will appear here. I knew things we were likely in for a slow day when I saw the ranking numbers around 10 am MT. Having seen a lot of social sharing already, I lamented to a friend that “it doesn’t look good.” As I share this, please know that I’m not wishing to diminish the results in the eyes of those who would love to accomplish what I accomplished, nor of my fellow authors who have had similar results. Understand that I’m coming from the perspective of someone who has had a New York Times Best-Seller and has hit #3 on all of Amazon.com. I set my bar quite high, so my disappointment is in relation to my personal expectations. Amazon updates their rankings hourly, and Twitter Power 3.0 peaked out at #524 of all books sold on the site. And as you can see, the book hit #1 in a couple subcategories, one of them being Retailing. When you hit #1 in an Amazon.com subcategory, Amazon calls you a best-seller. In fact, they highlight by placing a little badge by your title that says “#1 Best-Seller.” Let’s discuss that for just a moment, because the language on what it means to be a best-seller has been changed by Amazon. In the past, being a best-seller (recognized by the New York Times, Business Week, USA Today, Wall Street Journal or Business Week) meant that you sold a LOT of books. We’re talking thousands in any given week. While the NY Times and others do have categories they award best-seller status to, Amazon has redefined the term by awarding it to books in sub-categories. My book hit #524 in the overall rankings, but I can still say it was a #1 best-seller because Amazon called it a #1 best-seller. As a marketer, I can choose to omit that it was in the subcategory of Books > Business & Money > Industries > Retailing. If we take it to the most extreme, you can technically have a book anywhere in the one-hundred of any sub-sub-sub-category and still call yourself a best-seller because that is what Amazon calls it. For example, I went to Best-Sellers on the top menu bar on Amazon and clicked on the following categories and subcategories. Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Beverages & Wine > Beer The Top 100 Amazon Best-Sellers in this category include Kindle books and Audiobooks. I scrolled down to #100 in the best-sellers and came to this title. I’m sure it’s a great book and the positive reviews are well-deserved. However, at this moment that “best-seller” was actually ranked #112,463 of ALL books in the Amazon Kindle Store. Not exactly what you think of when you think of a best-seller, is it? Again, I’m not seeking to take anything away from those who have an Amazon best-seller. As authors and marketers, it is wise to leverage that which we are given. If Amazon says I am a best-seller, who am I to dispute it? So what was the net result of the book launch? While I have no idea how the book sold in stores, I suspect only a few hundred copies were actually moved by the orchestrated promotion. On one hand, I could view it as an utter disaster. On the other hand, I could see the results of my experiment as a learning experience, and turn those lemons into lemonade. That’s one of the reasons I wrote this series. I wanted you to know that not everything I touch turns to gold. And sometimes what appears to be gold is really just fool’s gold. Even though the Twitter Power series has sold more copies than any other book on the subject of Twitter, it’s possible that things don’t always go as planned. I’m human and fallible. As I watched the results come in (or not come in as the case was), I recognized a […]