Does Amazon tagging REALLY work?

[Nurture Your BOOKS™, Admin]

There are promotion companies who are making a really big deal out of tagging on Amazon. I am just wondering how many authors have tried tagging and have seen positive, quantifiable results from tagging on Amazon?

[J.]

I haven't noticed. Then again, I haven't noticed anything that really "works". Other than leg work; and a lot of luck.
A friend sent me these two links. Interesting view on publishing. check 'em out. good insight into the bizz and what you're up against.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-...
and
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/...
j
www.jguevaranovels.com

[Sharon]

I think it helps to some degree, because that's how their search engine is triggered. In the case of In The Eye of The Beholder: A Novel of The Phantom of the Opera, for instance, someone who puts "phantom of the opera" in as their search string is going to find my book in their results due to the tagging.

[Antoine]

I have to say I'm waiting on results, but I believe it serves as an effective marketing tool when you can say your book at or near the top of the list in a category. My novel is currently listed 2/3 (Hardcover/Kindle) in Medical Thrillers and 3/4 for Breast Cancer, and in the top 50 in other categories. I plan on resoliciting Amazon reviewers now that I have a "ranking" to point to.

[Vanessa]

Hello ALL!

Feel free to tag me on Amazon, as I would love to see if it works for myself! :)

[Lena]

Ha, yeah, they took that function off Amazon for indie books. sorry guys! they are waging a war against self-promotion over there. guess i should have got my book out sooner, lol.

[Antoine]

Vanessa wrote: "Hello ALL!

Feel free to tag me on Amazon, as I would love to see if it works for myself! :)"

I already tagged you!

[Sofia]

I'd love to have a few more tags for my book A Woman's Way: A Novel to see if it helps drive sales. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps :)

[Lena]

You can still tag on the amazon UK site & paperback. otherwise, like my books. Here's my link, tag & i'll tag back!

http://www.amazon.com/Superiors-1-Len...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004ZGB2I4

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004ZGB2I4

[Conchie]

Team, for the past 4 months I was on a tagging list on Createspace, Amazon's self-publishing platform. There were 300+ titles on this list, and a few weeks ago we found that the Kindle tags were gone. After a lot of back and forth trying to understand 1) how effective tags were to highlight tagged books in searches on Amazon, 2) what the real purpose of tagging is and 3) how 'legal', 'appropriate' or 'permissible' was any effort to promote or increase tag numbers on any title.

This was Amazon/Createspace's response:

Jun 9, 2011 9:52 AM in response to: RM-Putnam
Re: Tag My Book On Amazon -- List
All -

We'd like to provide a little more information about the Tag feature on Amazon.com. Tags are not intended to be used as a method to promote your titles. The tagging activity occurring in this thread does not follow the terms of use for the Tag feature on Amazon.com and could be considered abusive. You can learn more about the Tags feature by visiting Amazon.com.


For this reason, we are locking this and all threads that organize this type of tagging, and future threads of this nature will be deleted from our Community. We encourage you to share your work with each other and discuss marketing and promotion ideas, but organized manipulation of any feature is not something we will permit on our boards. Website features and tools should be used as intended.


We understand that you have put a lot of time and effort into this thread and that it can be quite a challenge to increase the visibility of your work. We hope you will check out the tips we provided which may help improve your titles' searchability on Amazon.com and continue to support each other's success.

___________________________________________________

Just my 2 cents - so I would recommend caution with these efforts.

Conchie

[Antoine]

Sofia wrote: "I'd love to have a few more tags for my book A Woman's Way: A Novel to see if it helps drive sales. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps :)"
You've been tagged. Providing your Amazon link would help too.

[P.I.]

I never noticed any difference and it to be such a pain because I'd get 75-100 requests emailed to me everyday and there was no possible way to keep up! I wanted to participate but it was just too much and I never saw one result.

[Antoine]

I still respond to the occasional tag request, but after spending countless hours in tagging circles (not Createspace), my novel was ranked in the top 5 in several categories. The Cure only got bumped from #1 in Medical Thrillers when Robin Cook's "Cure" (yeah,that's right) was released. During all those months, I never saw an increase in sales, despite taking the next step and publicizing my "rankings" every place I could find. In my opinion, reviews are more important. I politely solicited numerous Amazon reviewers, touting my "rankings" as a reason they should read the attached .pdf. I never received one reply, not even a "not interested." I'm sure they are aware of tagging circles as well, and can see that tags and sales were not matching. I went into this endeavor believing that tagging was a way to democratize a process that is tilted toward major publishers who can manipulate the system by releasing a million books into the retail stream and make the NYT Best Seller List on day one, and thus immediately move to the top of the Amazon heap, a la Ms. Cook. I was wrong. PS-my sales have started going up since I quit asking for tags.

[P.I.]

I always felt it was kind of cheating. If we all scratch each other's back the rankings aren't real anyway--we're ranking them ourselves instead of real reader-buyers ranking them with real sales. That's probably why the sales remain static or non-existent for most of us. JMHO.

[Bobbie , Admin]

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback. I had a feeling that it might be frowned upon by Amazon.

[Aggie Villanueva]

Lena wrote: "Ha, yeah, they took that function off Amazon for indie books. sorry guys! they are waging a war against self-promotion over there. guess i should have got my book out sooner, lol."


When did they remove tagging from indie books? Mine was published last October and it has the tagging function.

Tagging does more than just add you to their search engines. I'd hate to lose that function for my Indie books.

[P.I.]

Again my question is, if we're only tagging each other, how is that affecting book sales? It might bring a little more exposure for new authors, but I've never seen or heard anyone say it realistically increases sales. If it has I'd love to hear from that author...

[[deleted user]]

I say yes, a little. My titles have gone through Kindleboards tags. I published the results on my authorblog: http://www.authoreileengranfors.blogs...