Creative Reviews discussion
Tips and Tricks
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More Tagging Thoughts
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I do think this would be a good place to discuss any other promotional tips anyone may have!! Is there something else that anyone has tried that seems to really work? Please, all ideas, even the smallest - share with us!! :)
I can't say i've noticed anything being more helpful than anything else. However, discussions are much more fun to me than tagging! And then I think if ppl see your discussion and click on it, they get a little bit of the author's personality in the way the author answers questions. Or doesnt!
Amy wrote: "From what I understand, it's not the amount of separate tags, but the amount of the same tags that you have. I personally don't know what the best investment of time is, but I do believe every lit..."Sorry, I should have made that clearer. I've got 200+ votes on some of my tags.
John Hartness (Who writes really, really good vampire books, you should all go buy copies and read them now.) has 3 as his highest tag point on his latest book.
Wanna guess which one of us has a top 5k book and which one a top 200k book?
Whatever else is true about John's books, it's not tagging drawing people to them.
So, it's not that I think tagging hurts. It's more a question of is it a good use of your time? Are there better ways to spend your publicity hours?
Hi Keryl,I don't know this lady, I am not affiliated with her or her husband in any way other than being a fan : http://write2publish.blogspot.com/
She gives some great tips and tricks to drumming up interest in your book.
Now...do I follow her very valuable advice? Uhhh, the dog ate my homework. lol
On topic: I do think tagging can be valuable for us "no names". I also think tags probably become less relevant for authors with a following.
Splitter
C.S. wrote: "Hi Keryl,I don't know this lady, I am not affiliated with her or her husband in any way other than being a fan : http://write2publish.blogspot.com/
She gives some great tips and tricks to drummi..."
I'm familiar with Robin, and she does have good tips. I shall read more.
C.S. wrote: "Hi Keryl,I don't know this lady, I am not affiliated with her or her husband in any way other than being a fan : http://write2publish.blogspot.com/
She gives some great tips and tricks to drummi..."
Thanks for the link. Looks like some good advice there!
Keep the tips and links coming guys!! You rock! :)
I must admit that tagging has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I've added tags to my book, of course, but really I'm taking shots in the dark! !
Mod
One thing I have learned is that the longer and more original it is, the more attention it can bring.
I think the most confusing thing about tags is that tags are not keywords, though they are related to keywords.Here's how it works. If you just type in a phrase in the top search blank on amazon, it will call up everything with that in the title.
If you go to the advance search and type in a keyword, it will pick up books that have those keywords. Keywords are not tags. You picked something like five keywords when you set up your book.
If you click on one of those books, at the bottom of the product page, they will show you other books that featured that keyword as a tag and had the highest number of tags.
So, if you search keyword "true love" a bunch of books will pop up. The number one book is called True Love, it doesn't even have the term True Love in it's tags. If you click on that page and scroll down, you'll see my book Sylvianna, along with several others, all of which were tagged True Love.
If you scroll a little further down you'll see the tags, and have the option to search for other books by tags.
So, you'll see why I'm thinking this might not be the most useful way of spending your time. It's not like by tagging your eyeballs out that if someone types a search phrase into the top search that your book is going to show up. It's not like it'll pop up if someone is searching the keywords. It only shows up if someone searches the keywords, clicks on a book, and yours is near the top of the related tag, and then, it might not do you all that much good. That True Love at the top of the keyword heap is about Buddhism. My book is a romantic urban fantasy. Sure you might be interested in the one if you were looking at the other, but probably not.
Mod
Amy wrote: "They keywords may be what I am thinking of when I say you want it to be a longer word/phrase. That way it has more of a chance of being picked up when people type in the keywords."Yeah. I think you've got something with that.
Interesting discussion. I am not really sure why Amazon started this tagging system in the first place. When you sign your book up you can select the keywords. Is the goal that readers can capture some nuance of genre to try to steer others towards the book or readers away if it has been mislabeled?
Kat wrote: "Interesting discussion. I am not really sure why Amazon started this tagging system in the first place. When you sign your book up you can select the keywords. Is the goal that readers can capture ..."I think it's more just a way to get more categories and more searchable stuff for the book.
It's not a bad search tool, it's just hard to find. You have to get on one page that has tags, click on them, and then search.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the idea. When you tag something, and then someone goes and searches the tags, the higher your tag number the higher up your book goes. And from what I can tell that's true. But does anyone have any idea how many readers use the tag feature to search for books on Amazon?
The reason I ask this is because I've got tags out the ears. And there's a huge pile of best sellers with barely two tags to rub together. (And I've seen this between indie books, too.) I guess I find myself wondering if tagging each other is the most effective use of our time? Or would we be better off taking that time responding to discussions, writing new content, tweeting, whatever? What's the best return on investment for our time?