Jim’s Comments (group member since Feb 12, 2014)

Jim’s comments from the Taming Amazon group.

I understand what you mean about being stressed, Lynn. I feel the same way about my first book. I plan to make it permanently free and add a link and the 1st chapter of my new book to the end of it as a preview.

It sounds interesting. Can you send me more information?
jim@jimsgotweb.com

Hi Anne, I see you have set up your author account, congratulations! Can I suggest that you add a profile picture? It's a great way to help people get to know you.

Also, I've looked at your book on Amazon, For His Love: Sparks: Part One, and noticed you don't have an Author page set up. You might think about doing that also. I know, not enough time in the day, right?

Let me know if I can help you with anything, okay?
My email is jim@jimsgotweb.com
Jim

I'm glad you've found the information useful.

Has anyone spent much time using the new Google Keyword Planner? I don't like it as much as the old keyword tool, probably because it has so many different features and I haven't spent much time with it.

I hope to spend more time learning to use it soon, and plan to write a post about it here.

I think Jennifer's right about the free downloads counting as 1/10 of a sale.

I used Smashwords for my first book to have them send it to Barnes & Noble, Apple, and other places. I wanted to see what kind of sales I'd get. I also placed it on Amazon, and the sales on Amazon were more than all the other sites combined.

The one thing great about Smashwords is that once the customer buys your book, they can download it in multiple formats. Their market share is small now, but I think it will continue to increase.

I know what you mean, Lynn. I'm a voracious reader and spend as much of my time as I can reading and reviewing books. I write book reviews for http://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ and http://readersfavorite.com/ besides posting to my Amazon account.

There are a lot of great books out there but I've also ran across some that make me cringe to read. My biggest complaint with Indie authors is the fact that some of them skip the step of having their work proofread by a professional editor. I know it can be expensive, but there are some reasonably priced editors out there that do good work. It's impossible to edit your own work. You end up reading what you meant to write instead of what's written.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. Maybe we should start a discussion with links to our favorite editors, what do you think?

Thanks for joining the group, I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Jim

Amazon replied, here is a copy of the email:

Hello Jim,

Yes your understanding is correct. Currently customers only from the US and the UK will be able to see the Kindle Countdown price.

This is because majority of the customers who usually purchases book from the Amazon Kindle Store resides in the US and the UK and therefore we started our Kindle Countdown Deal promotion for these two countries alone. Our business team is continuously working making these KCD promotion available for more countries in the future. Also I've shared your interest to have this in more countries to them for consideration which will help us in expediting the process while we try to make future improvements to our KDP platform.

Please keep checking our forums periodically for an update:
https://kdp.amazon.com/community

Regards,

Clifford
Kindle Direct Publishing
http://kdp.amazon.com

Jim wrote: "Jay is right. The US and the UK are the only Amazon sites that show the Countdown. I didn't realize this and it's surprising that Amazon doesn't make it more clear. I've emailed them to get more in..."

Jay is right. The US and the UK are the only Amazon sites that show the Countdown. I didn't realize this and it's surprising that Amazon doesn't make it more clear. I've emailed them to get more information,I'll let you know what they say.

Hi everyone, I'm glad you've found the links helpful. I'll add more soon.

D.M and Barry, thanks for the information about BHW Publishing, The Fussy Librarian, and BarginBooksy. I'll check them out and add their links to the list.

Jim

Yes, I think that's right.

Hi Anne, welcome to the group.
It can be overwhelming! As far as getting reviews, the average reader doesn't leave reviews for everything they read. I've had the most luck by joining in facebook review exchange groups, emailing Top Amazon reviewers, and asking for reviews here on Goodreads, in exchange for a complimentary review copy.

If you have an eBook on Amazon, I'd suggest that you change your Goodreads profile to an "Author" profile so you can have a link to your book. Your fellow members here will look at your profile to find out about you and look at your work. Here is a link to get you started:
https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/1...

Good luck! Let me know if you need any help.
Jim

Hi Jenny, I've added some links to facebook groups in the Resources folder in this group, here's a link:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/....

I have a bunch more listed in my book, I'll add more of them here soon.

Thanks for the information about the Goodreads Giveaway. I don't think they've set that up for eBooks yet, hopefully they'll do that soon.

Hi Jennifer, I've taken a screen shot of your promotion so you can see it. Here is a link to it:
http://jimsgotweb.com/wp-content/uplo...

Jennifer wrote: "Hi All, Whew, thanks for letting me know that you can't see the Countdown in Canada, Jay. Mine was supposed to begin this morning, and I can't see it at all on .com and I have spent the last hour p..."

Great, thanks for letting us know! I'll be sure to download your book, Destiny Revealed. I look forward to reading it.

That's great, Michelle. I thought it was fairly accurate, but it's always good to get another opinion.

It sounds like you're doing well on Amazon, congratulations. Do you have any marketing/promotion tips you'd like to share?

I was wondering if you signed up for the 30 day free trial of the service on Tomoson.

Keywords are the search terms your potential buyers use when looking for a book. Amazon keeps its actual algorithm secret but it says that your book’s title and description is already used as search terms so you shouldn’t repeat them. If you’re still writing your book and haven’t determined a title yet, you might consider doing some keyword research first and adding the result in your title.

You’re allowed to use seven keywords or keyword strings for your book. To determine what buyers are searching for you can use Amazon’s database.

You might not realize that much like Google, Amazon has a fantastic keyword tool. You may have typed in a keyword in the Google search bar and seen suggestions come up. Amazon has the same function. Go to the search bar on the Amazon site, navigate to the “Kindle Store,” from the drop-down arrow, and then start typing something. Let’s say your book is about a man whose wife is murdered. If you type in “murder,” Amazon’s look-ahead feature gives you its first suggestion, “Murder Mystery.”

Choose that term to search. Currently there are over 20,000 results. You can filter the results a few ways. We’ll be looking at “Relevance, New and Popular, and Average Customer Reviews.”

Pick the first result filtered by “New and Popular,” and go to the book’s product page. Scrolling down to the “Product Details” I see the “Amazon Best Seller Rank,” for this book is currently #82. Ideally, you want to be listed on the first page of results, so I’ll also look at the last book on the first page. This book’s ranking is #1,280. You can use these numbers to determine where your book will be listed by looking at your current ranking.

Let’s try another term. Typing in “Crime,” Amazon suggests “Crime Thrillers.” This time let’s filter by “Relevance.” Currently the first book in these results is “Blood and Justice (A Private Investigator series of Crime Thrillers).” Let’s look at why this is the #1 book listed for the keywords “Crime Thrillers.”

First, it has the keyword string “Crime Thriller” right in the title, which helps a lot. I also see “Crime Thriller” written in the “Product Description,” and the “Editorial Reviews” section. If you look at some of the other results, you begin to see a pattern. The author rank doesn’t matter much when the “Relevance” filter is used, but having the keyword in the title, description, and elsewhere on the page does.

Let’s try the keyword “Crime Thriller” filtered by “Avg. Customer Review.” The first result has 159 reviews with an average of 5 stars. That’s going to be tough to beat! You might want to look for a different keyword phrase.

Do you see what I’m getting at? You know your book better than anyone, so think about what search terms people who’d enjoy it would use. It may take quite a bit of time, but realize you can change your keywords, so don’t feel like it’s set in stone. I’d suggest letting a couple of weeks go by to see if there are any changes in your sales. If not, then try some different keywords.

Don’t give up on this! When you find the correct set of keywords and keyword phrases for your book you’ll increase its visibility and that means an increase in sales. I’m constantly working on my eBook’s keywords and I’ll be adding more information soon.

Thanks, Jonathan, I would be very interested to hear how it works for you. I'm always looking for new ways to get reviews. Are you trying the 30 free trial?

Jonathan wrote: "Thanks, Jim. I'm trying one of my books on Tomoson. I'll let you know how it goes."

Yes, it's very helpful. I'm looking for one that shows ranking for "free" downloads. I'll post it here when I find one.