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sale swap--pls kill my bad idea
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The Pay It Forward Challenge basically involves that idea. Authors offer their book, agree to read and review three books in exchange, which means purchasing the books for the most part. Benefits so far include objective feedback authors wouldn't get otherwise and cross promotions on online retailers like Amazon. Last time I went shopping and looked up the books that's already on the topic thread, I was pleased to see, customers who bought this book, also book that book, and both books are on the list.The thing is, to boost rank, you'd need A LOT of sales, like in the hundreds, if not thousands. I don't mean to discourage and of course every little bit helps. Best thing an author can do is just keep sending the word out.
Also bear in mind, money. Personally, it took me weeks to finally gets the funds so I could join the Pay It Forward challenge.
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Thanks for the comments Lily!I actually do want to be discouraged, I know that probably sounds weird, but I get a lot of crazy ideas, and it's really helpful to have people add healthy doses of reality to them.
Justin wrote: "As I read this I thought, Isn't that the Pay It Forward Challenge? :/ No offense but perhaps it's better to read into some threads and seeing if they exist before making a thread with an idea."No, I'm aware of the Pay it Forward challenge. I think it's a fantastic thing, and I'm not trying to replicate or replace it.
This would be different because authors wouldn't have to commit to actually reading and reviewing the books they purchase (although hopefully some would eventually). Also, with the Pay it Forward challenge there is no guarantee that after you buy, read and review three other books someone will do the same for you. You commit to the challenge, put your book up, and hope for the best. This would be more like a straight-across swap. I buy your book, you buy my book. End of story.
And, like I said, it might be a terrible idea. But it is a different thing than the Pay it Forward challenge.
Okay, I'm killing this idea lolI feel it's quite unfair to ask a lot of people to waste money on books they don't even want to read. Some of us don't have the money to waste.
Yeah, it's looking pretty dead to me the more I think about it ; )If it worked perfectly and enough people participated to actually bump each other's rankings, it could be worth the investment--a marketing expense, rather than a waste of money. But more likely, only a few people would participate, and then there would be people who got shortchanged, and then there would be people who want to participate but couldn't afford to.
So yeah, bad idea, but I'm glad I asked before trying to do it, lol!
Heck, I'm still kinda iffy about the pay it forward thing. (It sounds pyramid schemy).
There's no pyramid with the pay it forward. If there was any kind of scheme, I would be the first to shut it down.
I'm just hyper sensitive because I've been sucked in before.
i understand, and believe me, I've fallen for all kinds of crap, it does suck. If there's ever a problem, please rest assured that you can contact Courtney or myself at any time.
M.S. wrote: "Selah, if a writer had the money to buy enough books to get each other's sales numbers up adequately, then you could just spend that money buying copies of your own books to sell at book fairs, etc..."Some rightwing public speakers have it in their contract that someone hiring them must buy, like, 50,000 of their books to make themselves look more mainstream.
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Courtney wrote: "Yeah - unfortunately no guarantees with the Pay It Forward but it's an opportunity amd people have been good about giving people a chance and giving more exposure. That's the best we can do as a g..."Review and recommend to friends is a lot! I hope I didn't sound disparaging of PIF because it's a wonderful idea. I was just trying to highlight the differences between it and the idea I started the thread with.
I'm convinced that my idea was a bad one--even if it were to work without a hitch, the ethics are rubbing me the wrong way.
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Selah, I love the title of this post--'please kill my bad idea.' Maybe us authors should use that sometimes--'please kill my bad novel'? Eh, maybe not.
Hahaha, pls kill my bad implausible subplot! I could use that one.
C. wrote: "Selah, I love the title of this post--'please kill my bad idea.' Maybe us authors should use that sometimes--'please kill my bad novel'? Eh, maybe not."Ha, thanks C.! I can't take credit, my boyfriend is all about killing ideas. He's run three businesses and gets lots of ideas for new ones, most of them terrible. It's sort of a past-time for us.
I kind of like that idea--we could post synopses and weed out the bad ones before they're written--writers would need a heck of a tough skin tho.
We already have that, sorry. The Blurb Critiques.
Lily just killed another of Selah's ideas. ;)
Haha I'm 0-2. Wait, wasn't that your idea, C.?
Um...know what, Selah? I think you are correct. My bad...idea.
Technically, it wasn't a bad idea. It just... already exists.
Also, please stop me if this has already been discussed, or is already happening somewhere.
What if we had a section on this group, or set up a new group, where we traded book sales? (I'm thinking new group only because it would need to be heavily modded and I can imagine mods here already have their hands full).
For brand new authors, getting enough sales to prime the pump can be tricky (for example, when I launched my book I didn't understand the algorithm, and most of my initial sales were to friends and family without ereaders, so I shot myself in the foot ranking-wise). For authors with steady sales, they might need just a few more sales to push them up into bestseller categories. The solution: trade sales.
Here's how I imagine it:
An author starts a thread, posting a request for sales swaps and providing the link to their ebook on amazon. People wanting to swap with that author would reply to the thread saying, "Are you still swapping? I want to swap with you." Once they have confirmation that its an active swap, the replier purchases the author's book and posts evidence of some kind--screenshot of purchase confirmation, or picture of the book on their kindle, along with the link to their book for the OP. And so on--as many people as want to can reply to the thread to swap with that author. And as many authors as want can start threads for their own book.
The advantages:
Improved ranking
While we'd have to pay, and some of the money in the "trade" would go to Amazon, in effect we'd all be getting a huge amount of way-discounted reading material.
Increased chance for reviews--I often avoid review swaps because I don't have time to commit *right now*, but if I have something on my kindle, I'll read it eventually and post a review.
Verified purchase reviews--any reviews as a result of the swap would be verified purchase, and also wouldn't need an "I got this book for free in exchange for a review" stamp.
challenges/questions:
Policing it would be tricky. There would have to be a lot of trust. Some people would inevitably end up short-changed.
Is it ethical? we'd essentially be lying to fool the algorithms.
Is it needed? Would this even be useful to anyone else?
Price disparity could cause unfair swaps, as could different individual's terms with Amazon.
Thoughts? Ideas? Would you participate if something like this was available? What am I missing?