Marie Silk’s Comments (group member since Jan 03, 2017)

Marie Silk’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

The updates from this group seem pretty minimal though. Some goodreads groups send out several blasts per week .

Wow scary! Glad it was fake!

That's so funny! Thanks for the morning chuckle, Amy :)

Definitely therapeutic for me. Good find, Theodore!

Carole wrote: "It's great that it's on there Marie. Free advertising. Sometimes it takes a lot to get one book sold. I know from my own experience, I usually buy a book when it keeps popping up all over the place. It makes me feel like I'm missing something."

Thank you, Carole :) I'm not too worried about it now, but it did send me into a panic/paranoia about my ability to write when I had no response from Reader's Favorite for months. I did not have any ratings or reviews at that point so I was pretty concerned. Luckily my book was picked up by the Historical Novel Society during a short window when they accepted indie books for review. That (free) editorial review has done wonders for my book!

My book has been on Readers Favorite for well over a year and no one there has picked it up to read/review it...

Great looking cover, Amy! Did you figure out the spine issue? I just had a cover made for a novella that was 70ish pages and asked the designer if the title could fit on the spine like my other books. She said that it's industry standard to not have stuff written on the spine for books under 120 pages.

If you are using a free promotion day with KDP Select, then the book is free in all markets :)

Hi Raul, I'm very sorry I didn't see your post in time. I spent the month travelling and am trying to get back into the swing of things now with Goodreads. I hope your countdown was a success!

Brittney, I'll get Pokergeist up today :).

I was wondering about returns. If a customer returns a paperback, does it come out of the author royalties like when ebooks are returned?

Sounds great, Aislinn! I love Christmas-themed stories <3.

Congratulations Carole and Judy!! I kind of forgot that I submitted my book for this award so it was lovely to see it in my inbox last night :).

Wow Carole, that is quite the chore! I hope you enjoy Ingram. The royalties don't come as soon as CS but other than that I find them easy enough to work with. Good luck as you complete this gigantic task! :)

I forgot to mention another element of it that was not my favorite. The free training came in parts. So you would watch one live vid and then have to wait a few days for the next vid and so on.

Here are some highlights regarding the algorithm as best as I can recall from the videos:

1. A Kindle Unlimited borrow counts as a sale when a reader opens the ebook (as far as ranks are concerned)
2. Optimize your book category to be one with less competition for the chance at being a "best seller"
3. Amazon gives better rank to books that sell steady over time as opposed to books with sales that spike and fall in short time
4. Bookbub is the king marketing site
5. Optimize keywords
6. Higher star reviews = higher on the algorithm and lower star reviews = lower on the algorithm
7. Books exclusive to Kindle won't be USA Today Best Sellers because Amazon sales aren't figured in to USA Today.

It looked to me like most if not all of his books were priced at 99 cents and promoted regularly from what I can see.

If you watch the videos, please let us know what you think. The man seems to know pretty well how Amazon operates. You might find a lot useful in the free training, and free is good :).

Theodore wrote: "Here's an interesting article that sheds some light on the topic. I did not purchase the offering, but did find what was said (written) helpful.

https://kindlepreneur.com/how-to-choo......"

Thanks for the link. The author of this blog usually has great info.

I confess, I'm clueless when it comes to keywords!

I can share my experience with it from last year. I'm not sure if this year will be any different, but hopefully it helps.

It started out with having to subscribe to his mailing list, and this is what he emphasizes is the main way to see sales. So I had to subscribe to watch the videos. Then I got a bunch of emails that told when the video will happen and "make sure you are there to watch". But then the video would be posted after the live session and could be watched later (more emails explaining that you only had so long to watch it). The first part of the vid was introducing himself and talking about his best seller status and book sales. Next he talked about marketing info. Lastly it was a sales pitch for a course he was offering (running in the thousands of dollars if I recall correctly).

I joined his facebook group which was useful for talking to a few different authors but that was about it. The group was mostly inactive...it appeared that some joined an exclusive FB group that apparently is invite-only and happens when you spend money on the course.

What followed after that was my email inbox getting [what I would consider] spammed with messages of high pressure sales. Sometimes I got two emails a day. Try this module or buy this product that streamlines this and will ensure you get lots of 5 star reviews. The emphasis was on building a subscriber list and getting reviews. Also keywords. Much if it was common sense stuff that most people have heard of like get a nice book cover and editor.

I eventually got weary of the constant high-pressure emails "Today is the last day you can watch this", "this is the last hour you can enroll in this course", "the sale for this module is only good today", etc. I unsubscribed because I didn't want to see the emails anymore.

There was some useful info in the free training that might be worth listening to. I did not agree with all of it but that doesn't mean I'm right. Just beware the many, many high-pressure sales pitches and emails that will probably follow. He must have made a deal with ENT to buy their mailing list or something. Last year it was Book Gorilla that was sending me emails about his course (that's how I found out about it).

Hm, I've never been convinced on that "updating hourly" business. For my promotions, it takes hours or even half the day to see the new and improved rank. Congrats on your 50 sales! Maybe it will update soon. It's only 8am here on GMT -8, which is the time zone I think Amazon is based on.

Well done, Ember! Thank you for the update :)

Much appreciated, Carole. Thank you!

Aislinn, I'm sorry about your rough sales week :( I'm not sure which site you submitted your book to for reviews, but maybe it helps to know my book has been stagnating in the Readers Favorite pool for about a year now. No one has requested it in all this time! I hope things pick up for you and you see how awesomely talented you are.