Tag Archives: self publishing

Jun 26 2013

Marketing: Why Should People Buy Your Book?

Marketing Ideas Pic

Before you can expect to sell books, you must answer two important questions:

  1. Why should people buy your book?
  2. How are people going to learn why they should buy your book?

If you can’t sell the book to yourself, it’s not reasonable to expect to sell it to others.

(A) Because your book is good? Lousy answer.

Why? Because that answer won’t help you sell your books. It’s too general. You need something more specific to work with.

If you hope to advertise that your book is the best thing since ____ (fill in the blank with something fantastic), then most people won’t buy your book because it sounds unbelievable and those who do buy your book may be frustrated if it doesn’t live up to those lofty expectations (which can deter word-of-mouth sales, for example).

More importantly, hearing that your book is good doesn’t attract a specific audience. People are more likely to become interested in your book if they learn something specific about it that appeals to them.

If you offer nothing specific, there is a good chance you won’t be attracting any attention at all. When you do offer something specific, some people will think it’s not for them, but that’s okay because if they aren’t the target audience, they aren’t likely to buy it no matter what (and they are less likely to appreciate it). But if they are the target audience, the specific information will help to attract their interest.

(B) Because there is something unique that will appeal to them.

What distinguishes your book from others like it?

You want this distinction to be conveyed through your marketing efforts.

But don’t make the mistake of saying what’s great about your book while at the same time saying what’s bad about other books.

There is a good chance that people in your target audience love those other books. So if you say anything bad about those other books, this is likely to deter sales.

You’re not trying to show that your book is better. You’re trying to show that your book is different and how. This distinction will be appealing to some people in your target audience.

That distinction might be a clean romance, a protagonist who doesn’t fit the genre’s stereotypes, a plot that will help teens deal with difficult situations, a sci-fi novel specifically for computer geeks, or a textbook with a built-in workbook.

(C) Because you were able to interact with your target audience and show them what makes your book special.

Nobody knows your book better than you do. And that’s the problem! You want others to learn what makes your book special.

So what makes your book special? And how will you get the word out to your target audience?

Identify your target audience. Find your target audience. And when you market, you don’t just want people to discover that you wrote a book. You want them to see what makes your book special. This distinction needs to stand out in your marketing.

(D) Because people who enjoyed your book are telling others what makes it special.

Word-of-mouth sales are invaluable, especially when people don’t just mention that a book is good, but take a moment to explain why it’s good.

The first step is to make your book very good, with some aspect that sets it apart. It has to be worthy of a recommendation by a complete stranger.

The second step is to get your book read. You need to market your book effectively to your target audience.

There are a few things you can do to try to encourage word-of-mouth sales. You can search for bloggers who occasionally review books similar to yours and politely request a book review or interview on their blog (and then wait very patiently). You can contact a small local paper with a press release kit. You can let people discover you’re writing a book and what the special feature will be, do cover reveals, etc.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 26 2013

Developing Good (and Avoiding Bad) Writing Habits

Writing Habits Pic

Authors love to write, write, and write some more. They enjoy sitting down at the computer, typing creatively.

Sitting down and reading grammar books usually isn’t one of their passions. Neither is reading their work carefully to edit it.

Grammar and editing are very important tasks. Authors do them as they must, but it usually isn’t something they love to do.

This makes it all the more important to strive to develop good writing habits. The author who succeeds at this has fewer issues to find and correct when editing.

Just reading about grammar may not be effective; especially, when the reader isn’t passionate about learning it.

Every time the author sits down and writes, the author is reinforcing any bad writing habits that the author may have. And authors tend to write quite frequently.

Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect; practice makes permanent.

In order to reduce bad writing habits and develop good ones, writers must practice good writing habits.

It’s the same reason that golfers who naturally slice will continue to slice forever if they don’t learn how to avoid it. Every time the golfer goes to the driving range and practices the slice, the bad swing habits become more ingrained. If the golfer instead receives effective instruction and practices hitting the ball straight, then the golfer is developing good habits to replace the bad habits.

So writers just need a little instruction and a ‘writing range’ on which to practice.

Every day, learn one new thing about writing (or one thing long forgotten) from a reliable resource. It could be a rule of grammar or punctuation (like when quotes should come before or after other punctuation marks), the distinction between similar words (like ‘affect’ and ‘effect’), or writing advice (like cutting down on useless words). There are many helpful writing resources, from bloggers to textbooks, so there is no excuse for not finding one point of advice every day.

But that’s not enough. Otherwise, the idea may quickly be forgotten.

Now sit down at the computer and type several sentences practicing the correct technique. Practicing what is correct will help turn a bad writing habit into a good writing habit.

Don’t just sit down like a mindless drone cranking out sentences.

Get into it. Write creatively, as if writing a short story or a poem. This will help generate the interest needed to better retain the lesson.

Another way to develop better writing habits is to read books that are well-written, especially well-written classics. This helps the mind become better accustomed to good writing.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 23 2013

The Person Behind the Words

Person Words Pic

The author wrote the book, but exactly who is the person behind those words?

There are a few different ways that this information is useful:

  • Potential customers might have a more enjoyable reading experience if they check out the author page and blog to learn more about the writer before buying the book.
  • Fans can learn more about the author.
  • Authors can reveal something about themselves through marketing in order to help match their books to their target audience and to make their marketing efforts more personal.

You can learn more about the person behind the words by checking out the author page, author’s blog, author’s social media pages, and more.

As a reader, the author’s blog provide an additional writing sample, which may not have been edited as well as the Look Inside. This extra writing sample can help demonstrate the book’s potential for being well-written throughout (not just in the beginning of the book, which may receive more attention) for those readers who strongly value this.

Checking out an author’s other writing (e.g. the blog) gives an indication of the author’s personality, character, and possible motivation for writing the book. Occasionally, blogs and social media pages consist mostly of requests to please buy the book now. Sometimes, they are packed with useful information. If there is supplemental material that may interest fans, this may be a reward for reading the book. Does the author mostly blog about himself or herself? Does the author seem genuinely concerned about others? Are the author’s websites up-to-date or outdated? Are the posts too rare, too frequent, or just right for you? Is the material of interest to you?

You also get a sense of the author’s visual style, writing style, and thinking style. Some writing and thinking styles may conflict with yours, so you may have a more enjoyable reading experience by taking a few moments to avoid possible conflicts. You don’t necessarily need to find writing and thinking styles that match yours; we’re often attracted to different ways of thinking. What you want is to sample whether or not you find it agreeable.

From the author’s perspective, author pages, blogs, and social media are opportunities to make your marketing efforts more personal, attract your target audience with information that is useful for them, show your personality, demonstrate good character and values (in the eyes of your target audience), and show that you care.

Are you an author? If so, you’re not just an author. Exactly, who is the person behind those words?

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 23 2013

Visual Branding for Small Businesses and Authors

Visual Branding Pic

  • When you see a large brown delivery truck, does UPS come to mind?
  • Do you recognize the Mercedes symbol when you see it?
  • Which brands of shoes can you identify when you see people wearing them, even when the brand name and logo aren’t visible?
  • Have you ever been on a road trip hoping to see a pair of golden arches in the shape of an M?

These are businesses that have succeeded in visual branding.

And even though these are huge companies, they didn’t achieve their visual branding through advertisements. Sure, you’ve seen their commercials. But the commercials aren’t the reason that your mind has been stamped with these visual brands:

  • There are thousands of UPS delivery trucks. They are all the same color, and it’s a unique color so it stands out from all of the other trucks making deliveries every day.
  • Every time you drive, you see other cars. Even if you just go for a walk outside, you see them. This is why you recognize many car brands by their logos.
  • If you’re really into shoes, you can distinguish between different brands that have similar styles, even if the brand names and logos are removed. You have partly been branded by your own interest in them, and by each manufacturer adopting a sense of style that defines their brand.
  • If you drive through the US, you see those yellow M’s all over the place. It’s simple and you see them frequently.

The point is that smaller businesses and artists, including writers, can also achieve similar visual branding. And they can do it without advertising.

For small businesses who may be able to afford advertising, following are a few examples of visual branding that you may be familiar with:

  • Do you recognize any insurance or real estate agents whom you’ve never met? It may be because you’ve repeatedly seen their faces on billboards or in brochures.
  • Have you ever seen a car fully decorated to match the theme of the business? A dog grooming service might have a car that looks very much like a dog, or a flower delivery truck might have flowers painted all over its surface. Such vehicles grab your attention and clearly reveal the nature of their business.
  • Can you think of any local businesses where the employees wear very distinctive uniforms?
  • Would you recognize the logos from any local businesses?

Here are a few examples of visual branding among books:

  • Can you tell that a book is part of the Dummies series when you catch a glimpse from a distance?
  • Do you recognize Waldo from the Where’s Waldo? books?
  • Would you know if a book is part of the Dr. Seuss collection if the title and author were covered up? The cat is distinctive.

Visual branding occurs even in the world of self-publishing:

  • If you’re not already familiar with them, check out Aaron Shepard’s books. He features a similar drawing of himself on every cover. Not everyone is fond of holding a book with that image, but it works: You see that picture and immediately recognize it as one of his books. He may not have been famous when he did that with his first book, but this consistent branding and unique style have helped create fame.
  • Search for Fifty Shades of Gray at Amazon and look at the covers. The style is distinctive and it’s carried over into other books in the series.

Whether you have a small business or you’re an artist or writer, here are the keys to visual branding:

  • Frequency. You need people to see your visual brand repeatedly. Not several times per day, but here and there over weeks and months; you want the message to be pleasing and the frequency not to be annoying (or your image will be branded the wrong way). Marketing isn’t just about what you say; it’s also very much about what you show. If people forget what you said or wrote, they might remember what they saw.
  • Consistency. Show the same image consistently; don’t show different images in each marketing effort. Choose your visual brand wisely from the beginning and stick with it. Select one image that you want people to remember.
  • Distinctive. If brown delivery trucks were common, would you associate this color with UPS? If every author had their picture on their cover, would you recognize Aaron Shepard?
  • Unity. Sending a unified message may be more important than being distinctive when it comes to visual branding memory. When the image relates to the nature of the business, this makes it easier to remember. A car decorated to look like a dog helps people remember if the business relates to dogs. Those golden arches that make the M are French fries, fitting for a restaurant.
  • Appealing. The image should attract the target audience. It needs to look good, else the audience thinks, “Ugh,” every time it is seen.
  • Deliver. The product or service needs some feature that stands out to associate with the visual branding. It might be luxury, or it could be cheap. It could be fast, or it could be quality. Visual branding is enhanced when the brand has some aspect that makes it worth remembering.

Authors have a choice of what image to brand. How do you want to be remembered? What will be distinctive for you? Pick one image and have it visible in all of your marketing efforts. Potential customers may see your image on your book covers, social media banners, online profiles, author pages, author blogs and websites, business cards, bookmarks, etc. The more your target audience sees the same image, the better. Here is what can be branded visually:

  • A logo for a publishing imprint.
  • A style consistent throughout a series.
  • A protagonist (like James Bond) or a children’s character (like Winnie the Pooh).
  • An author’s photo.
  • A distinctive visual feature common to all of the author’s books. It could be a distinctive font that the author developed that really stands out and grabs attention. It could be a unique way of arranging objects on the cover. It could be a design layout used on every color. It could be a particular image.
  • Even a blog can be branded visually by having a consistent style for the main image used with each post. Do you ever see posts in your reader and immediately recognize the blogger from the image? Those bloggers have succeeded in creating visual brands for their blogs.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 20 2013

Authors: You’re not Selling Books

Selling Books Pic

If you aren’t selling enough books, maybe part of the problem is your mindset: You shouldn’t be trying to sell books.

Huh?

There are tens of millions of books to choose from. If someone just wants to buy a book, how are they ever going to find yours, and why would that be the one they choose?

You’re not a bookstore. You’re not selling a book.

What you have is more than a book. That’s what you need to realize. What you provide that’s more than a mere book is what can help your book get discovered and why customers might choose your book.

If you’re not selling a book, then what are you selling?

You can find some examples below. Your book is unique. Figure out what you should be selling and how to orient your marketing efforts toward this.

Use it to help you brand an image. Sell this image, not the book.

You don’t have to be a salesman to sell an image. You market an image. You make people aware of the image. You make them want the image. Crave the image.

The image is free. Once the image is sold, the books well sell along with it.

(And maybe some add-ons. If they really want the image, they might want to get it in the form of t-shirts, bookmarks, collector’s editions, etc.)

(1) Are you selling a better place?

Did you create a fantasy world that is better than our universe?

Then don’t sell the book. Don’t sell the story.

Sell the experience of living in a better world.

Brand your book as a better reality. Brand yourself as a creator of other worlds. Brand the fantasy world itself by name so that others want to go there.

Like Hogwarts. Imagine how many schoolchildren wish they could go to Hogwarts. They recognize this better place by name.

(2) Are you selling something exotic?

Is the book set in Paris, Tokyo, or someplace people dream of traveling to?

Does your book have exotic creatures?

Then you can offer the same wonders that a travel agent can offer, except that your ticket will cost much, much less.

Focus on the features that make your book exotic, not the book itself. Sell the experience of traveling.

Remember the movie Gremlins? It wasn’t just a movie. It was an experience with a really exotic pet.

(3) Are you selling passion?

Does your book offer a romantic escape from a mundane reality?

Sell the opportunity to experience romance.

Make your audience crave the romance, without giving any of the story away. It’s not just a romance novel. It’s so much passion it’s dripping off the pages.

The Blue Lagoon was a movie with a boy and girl trapped on a deserted island. But it didn’t sell because the description simply stated this. (Okay, maybe the movie stars – e.g. Brooke Shields – helped attract their own attention.) Imagine the previews for this movie. They weren’t selling romance or adventure. They were selling something much deeper than that. That’s what people crave.

Note: Make sure that your book is an excellent fit for what you are selling. Don’t oversell it such that it makes your book sound far better than it is. Disappointment leads to bad reviews.

Do make your book as good as you can, and then find a creative way to sell something that fits your book perfectly, in a way that it won’t disappoint anyone who buys into what you’re selling.

(4) Are you selling excitement?

Did you write a non-stop, action-packed adventure?

Sell the adventure.

Focus on taking a safari through the jungle, not a book about a safari.

Jumanji wasn’t just a safari, either. It was a movie that brought the jungle to you.

(5) Are you selling entertainment?

Is your book very humorous? Sell the laughs.

Is your book super scary? Sell the fright.

Focus on being scared out of your shoes. Create a video on YouTube that will frighten and intrigue, without giving any of your story away.

Check out this book trailer (I discovered this when the author shared it on CreateSpace; I don’t know the author) for a book called Nothing Men: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2zImBzQC50

(6) Are you selling self-help?

Does your book help others lead better, healthier lives.

Sell the prospects for a positive future.

Suppose your book provides a ten-step plan to overcoming depression. Sell the idea of seeking happiness in ten easy steps. Use this phrase when you interact with others. Brand the image of seeking happiness. Provide help for others through a blog, on community forums, through community service, etc. Focus on selling happiness, not on your book; but make it easy for others to discover your book. Brand yourself as someone who cares about others and can help others find happiness.

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus is selling a much better relationship.

(7) Are you selling information?

Did you write textbook, how-to book, or workbook?

Sell the knowledge. Sell the skills.

Focus on learning something new or improving what people know already.

You’re not selling a grammar book. You’re selling the benefits of improved grammar. You’re selling not having a resume thrown in the garbage and writing letters that get results.

Think about what people can gain from your book. That’s far more important than the book itself.

Use this in your marketing. Your blog, seminars, and all of your personal and online interactions should brand you as a helpful, knowledgeable person who is selling the knowledge or skills that people need.

Suze Orman isn’t just selling financial advice. She’s offering the keys to wealth.

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There are a host of other things that you can be selling: creativity, fun, morals, wisdom, beauty, etc.

Differentiate what you’re selling from what others are selling. There are thousands of mystery novels, for example. They can’t all succeed in selling the experience of feeling like a detective. Find a way to make what you’re selling unique.

Remember not to oversell; you don’t want bad reviews from disappointment. The better your book lives up the hype, the more you may receive good reviews and valuable word-of-mouth sales. Make your book as good as you can, then build the hype to match it perfectly.

Live what you’re selling. Your personality and lifestyle – your image – need to send a unified message with what you sell. You must look luxurious if you want to sell luxury. You must seem happy if you’re selling happiness. You must sound adventurous if you’re selling adventure.

Who is your target audience? Where will you find your target audience? You want to market this image specifically to your target audience. Let them discover what it is you’re offering (not a book!). Brand your image. Make them crave the brand – i.e. the concept that you’re offering. Then they can ask you (or check out your online profile) to learn about your book.

Package your book to match the image that you’re selling. The cover has to fit this image well. The title has to fit, too. The blurb needs to sell this image (not the book!). The blurb is the only salesman at the point-of-sale. Don’t oversell, but do show the reader that there is more than just a book in your book. The Look Inside has to seal the deal; it has to provide the content that endorses the hype. The rest of the book must also achieve this, as this makes the difference between a satisfied customer who is ready to share this image with others or a disappointed reader who may show frustration in a bad review.

It’s easy to hype a book. For the hype to work, the book has to also walk the walk. Perfect the product, perfect the packaging, and market the image (not the book!).

There is something more that you can offer.

You can offer the personal touch. You can interact with your target audience in person and show that you care, show that you’re passionate about the image that you’re marketing, show that you’re human, show your personality.

You’re not just selling a book.

You should be selling much more.

One last example (in the line below):

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers tour guide for your self-publishing journey

Jun 19 2013

What Makes People Buy Books?

Buying Books Pic

It’s awfully silly to start marketing your book until you first devote some time to a couple of basic questions:

  1. What causes people to buy books? (Equally important: What tends to deter sales?)
  2. Who is your specific target audience?

Knowing the answers to these questions can significantly affect your marketing strategies. In this article, we’ll focus on Question #1.

(1) Browsing for books on the top 100 bestseller lists.

More than any other method, customers buy books by shopping the top 100 bestseller lists. There are New York Times bestseller lists, there is a special bestseller section in most bookstores, and Amazon lists their top 100 sellers in any browse category. You can even search for the top 100 authors.

Evidently, these books were good enough that many other people read them. Many of these books are traditionally published and were written by popular authors. But more and more indie authors are starting to break through, especially on Amazon.

Bestselling books sell dozens or hundreds of copies per day (of course, it depends whether we’re talking overall or just in a particular category or subcategory, and the precise number can be sensitive to a number of factors). So bestsellers account for a huge percentage of book sales.

You might not like the fact that many customers look to see what’s popular and shop for books based on this. But that’s irrelevant. Unless you have an idea to change the way millions of people shop for books. It’s just something to consider.

If you can succeed in earning a spot on any of the top 100 lists, this amazing exposure can lead to wonderful things. Provided that your book runs with it; some books get onto the list and fall right off.

There are tens of thousands of authors doing all the right things (and others doing wrong things) to try to get their books onto these coveted lists, and you’re competing against popular authors and traditional publishers. But you’ll find some indie authors there, too (studying what they’ve done right may prove to be valuable research).

If you feel strongly that you have a book with the potential to get onto these bestseller lists, go for it!

  • You need a book idea that has a large preexisting audience. Find a genre that you’re a good fit to write in and research what this audience expects. Develop your writing and storytelling toward this end. Become familiar with the rules of the genre, and understand why these rules exist.
  • Develop a fantastic story and memorable characterization for fiction, or valuable content for nonfiction. Write in a way that your audience will enjoy the read in terms of both making the words flow (or not, when the occasion arises) and use of grammar blended with style. Perfect the book cover to cover in terms of front matter, back matter, editing, and formatting. You don’t want anything to detract from the read. Give people reasons to leave positive reviews and recommend the book to others, and avoid giving reasons to say anything negative (it’s unavoidable, but strive to minimize this).
  • You need initial sales to get things going. A history of poor sales rank is a challenge to overcome. So build buzz for your book with cover reveals, letting people discover that you’re writing a book, interacting with people who ask how your book is coming along, getting feedback on various aspects of your book (cover, title, blurb, first chapter, draft) on different occasions from different groups of people in person and online. Focus groups, contests, promotions, etc. can help you get people excited about your coming book.
  • Don’t underestimate the importance of packaging. The book has to absolutely look like it belongs in its genre. If you want a top seller, on top of everything else, the cover has to quickly register as being the kind of book that the customer is looking for. If the cover attracts the wrong audience, there won’t be any sales. Research the covers of bestsellers in the genre. Design a professional-looking cover that will attract customers who are accustomed to seeing those covers. The title, cover, and blurb need to send a unified message and grab the target audience’s attention. Craft a killer blurb that will entice interest without giving too much away. The Look Inside needs to close the deal.
  • Do premarketing. Don’t wait until your book is published. Look for bloggers in your genre who occasionally review books well in advance of publishing, since they may already have numerous requests and reading takes time. Make a professional press release package. Contact local media. Try giveaways on Goodreads. Arrange signings and readings. Have a book launch party. Why wait until your book is already available and not selling well to do all the things you should be doing? If you’re going to market your book anyway (and you’ll discover the hard way that you need to), do it right and help your book take off with a bang in the first place. Even if you don’t think the 100 bestseller list is realistic, doing your best to get your book on this list gives you the best prospects for success.
  • Believe in your book. Visualize success. Not just you sitting on a pile of money receiving praise from everyone you meet. Visualize the path to your success that makes this vision realistic and work diligently to get there. If you don’t show belief in your own book, how can you expect others to believe in your book? Your lack of confidence can deter sales. But don’t get overconfident as bragging tends to deter sales.

(2) Shopping for books by their favorite authors.

When customers like books, they sometimes search for other books written by the same author. Indeed, books are frequently sold this way.

This affects all authors who’ve written more than one book (well, unless you write one children’s book and one book that’s not for children, for example).

Write two or more related books. Or better yet, write a series of books. Then you can benefit from such sales.

Ah, but there’s a catch. The first book they read has to be good enough to make many readers want more. The book has to be seem like a good value (and the subsequent books can’t seem like a rip-off), and should provide a sense of satisfaction by itself.

  • Memorable characters give readers a reason to continue the series.
  • A great storyline in one book creates high expectations for more of the same.
  • Editing, writing, formatting, and storyline mistakes discourage future sales.
  • The subsequent volumes need to live up to expectations in order to merit good reviews and recommendations; if they don’t live up to this, there may be negative referrals (e.g. “Stay away from that series”).

Discounting book one, making book one free, creating an omnibus, promoting temporary discounts, contests, etc. can help generate sales. The more people who read one of your books and love it, the more of your other books you are likely to sell. Plus this improves your sales rank, chances of getting reviews, and prospects for word-of-mouth sales.

(3) Recommendations from trustworthy sources.

An editorial review from a highly reputed source, like the New York Times, can have a very positive impact. This isn’t realistic for most indie authors (or even many traditionally published authors), but there are many ways that every author can benefit from recommendations.

The most accessible is word-of-mouth sales. If the book is good enough – see the points from (2) above – for a percentage of the customers to recommend it to others, this can generate valuable sales. If a thousand people read a book initially, and a hundred recommend it to their friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances who read similar books, and then a fraction of those people recommend it to others, and so on, sales can really grow in the long-term.

You have to be patient. First, you need the initial batch of people to read your book. If sales are slow (a few a day), that can take a long, long time. See the points from (1) above for a few marketing ideas.

Once people buy your book, they must read your book. They might already have other books to read first. Then when they do read your book, it might just be in their spare time, which they might not have much of. As soon as they finish reading your book, they won’t go scream from the mountaintops. They might not mention your book at all. The more they love your book, the more likely they will recommend it. But then it might not be until it naturally comes up in conversations, which might not be for some time. Then those people might not buy your book right away. It can be weeks after they hear about your book before they consider buying. Not everyone who hears great things about your book will buy it.

It can take several months for word-of-mouth sales to build up. And your book has to be good enough to receive those recommendations. You can do your best to perfect your book, but you can’t control customer recommendations. All you can do is wait and hope.

If someone very social falls in love with your book, that can be quite fortunate. If people who are really connected in the social media world enjoy your book, this can potentially be big. Just imagine the buzz in social media when Twilight was coming out. Reproducing that might not be realistic, but it shows the potential. If a blogger in your genre falls in love with your book, or if a book reviewer for an online magazine loves your book, or even a customer who often reviews books on Amazon loves your book… recommendations help, especially when they come from trustworthy sources.

You can try to solicit reviews from bloggers in your genre who sometimes review books. Maintaining a blog and being active in social media might help make some valuable connections. But remember that some bloggers receive an insane number of requests and that it takes time to read books.

Put together a press release kit with advance review copies and contact local media. For indie authors, it may be easier to get an article or review if you write nonfiction, have something unique going for you (like being a triplet, but there are many other ways for the press to take interest in you), or if you have a very small local paper.

You also have your own friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances. If you succeed in building buzz for your book – see point (1) above – then they may help stimulate sales by recommending your book to their friends, coworkers, and acquaintances.

Another trustworthy source that’s very valuable is the retailer itself.

Once a book sells a few times along with another book, it can show up on Customer Also Bought lists. The more frequently your book sells – and the more effective your marketing efforts – the more these lists can help give your sales a significant boost.

Excellent packaging boosts your chances of getting sales from Customer Also Bought lists – see point (5) below.

(4) Discounts, promotions, and contests.

People tend to love sales. But they have to know about the sale, which means that you have to promote your discount. And they have to want the product. The book has to be a good fit for them. Which means you have to find your target audience and market your promotion toward them.

A temporary discount entices customers to buy before the sale ends. If a discount is too frequent and regular, people will learn to wait for it, and sales may be much slower in the interim. Contests and giveaways can help stimulate interest, too. Like the giveaway program at Goodreads (but you need to have a hard copy, like paperback).

Amazon sometimes discounts books. They have been doing this more frequently in 2013 for indie authors, especially with CreateSpace paperbacks. There is no guarantee that a retailer will put your book on sale, and you have no control over this. (But with CreateSpace, you still get the full royalty, provided that the book sells directly through Amazon.)

(5) Searching for books by keywords or browsing for books in categories.

Shoppers do go to Amazon and other online booksellers to search for books by keywords or just browse page by page through categories (or do a search within a specific category). Browsing page by page without a search tends to put the bestsellers up front, like point (1) above. But customers do search for various keywords.

A greater percentage of books sell other ways than searching for keywords. However, there are so many customers buying books that this still represents a very large number of book sales.

The problem is that there are tens of millions of books to search for.

  1. Millions of books sell this way, but there are also millions of books. On average, most titles sell fewer than one a day through this method. Fewer than a hundred thousand titles sell multiple copies per day through online search results. (The top couple hundred thousand books on Amazon sell one or more per day, but many of these sales are not from keyword searches.)
  2. Books that show up on the first page of one or more keyword searches are much more likely to sell through keyword searches. Most books don’t show up on the first page of any search results. Only a few books show up on the first page of very popular keyword searches.

Amazon tends to reward books whose authors and publishers (scrupulously) help themselves. The better your book and the better your marketing, the greater your sales rank and the more reviews you will draw, which can help to improve your book’s visibility. It’s not just sales rank and reviews. More sales might mean you’re selling more books through keyword searches, which may have a greater effect on visibility than from sales rank along.

Once your book becomes visible in one or more keyword searches, you need for it to get noticed.

Excellent packaging can make a marked difference once your book becomes visible. It has to attract the right audience. If it looks like sci-fi, but it’s really action, then the people who click on the book won’t be the people who buy the book. Research books in the genre that sell regularly to see what customers are accustomed to seeing in search results. You want a professional-looking cover that clearly signifies the genre in order for keyword searches to work for your book. You also need a title, cover, and blurb that send a unified message about what to expect. A killer blurb that attracts interest without giving too much away can help immensely, provided that your book is getting noticed. The Look Inside needs to be good enough to seal the deal once shoppers become interested.

(6) Personal interactions with the author.

If you’re not selling books the other 5 ways, this is your best opportunity. Even authors who are selling books the other ways should be taking advantage of this. A very significant number of books sell through personal interactions with the author. Strive to provide the personal touch with your marketing endeavors.

It’s a treat to be able to read a book where you’ve personally interacted with the author. When people interact with you and enjoy the interaction, they are much more likely to read your book, enjoy your book (because they read it in a good frame of mind, whereas we often read critically or with skepticism), and review your book.

Especially if you make each person you interact with feel special. If they interacted with you and felt like you were a salesperson, they probably won’t feel special. If they meet you, ask what you do, discover you’re an author, and enjoy your discussion, what a difference that makes. But don’t interact with people just because you want to sell them something. Interact with them to get to know them. If you really care, this will show and can make a huge difference. Be genuine.

Charm them.

Who is your target audience? These are the people you want to interact with personally because they are many times more likely to buy your book than anyone else. If you write a romance and market it mainly to people who rarely or never read romance, your marketing will be a disaster. Think long and hard where and how to find your target audience. And then you don’t want to be there just to sell your book. You want to provide help (volunteer work), knowledge (a seminar, a blog), or entertainment (a reading), for example, to help attract your target audience, and have them discover that you wrote a book that may interest them (happen to have bookmarks to pass out?).

You can start with friends, family, acquaintances, and coworkers. If you have a large (or any size) social media following, you can tap into this to help with initial sales. (Remember, close friends and family can’t review your book on Amazon.)

You can meet people anytime. They may or may not be in your target audience. If it comes up naturally that you’re an author, even if they don’t read that genre they might have a friend who does.

But you can’t rely on luck. You have to find your target audience. In person is best, but online interactions help, too.

References

1. http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/06/22/part-2-where-people-discover-and-get-their-books/

2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidvinjamuri/2013/02/27/the-trouble-with-finding-books-online-and-a-few-solutions/

3. http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2013/02/20/half-of-amazon-book-sales-are-planned-purchases/

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 17 2013

There Is no ‘I’ in Author

Author Writer Pic

There is a ‘u,’ but no ‘i,’ in the word ‘author.’ As an author, I write primarily for you, not for myself.

There is an ‘i’ in writer. There are many forms of writing where I can write primarily for myself.

If I wish to write only for myself, I would keep a private journal or diary.

If you wish to have others read your writing, then don’t write just for yourself.

Another way to think of the ‘u’ in ‘author’ is unselfish.

Putting little or no effort into editing and formatting is selfish. Making a concerted effort to improve these benefits your potential audience (some of whom may screen your Look Inside for this).

Not bothering to learn the basic rules of writing and punctuation (or finding an editor who does) is selfish. Learning the rules, and then only breaking them when you have good reason for it, is something your audience desires.

Writing without first researching the expectations of a genre is selfish. Learning these expectations and understanding the reasons for them helps you write a book that fits an audience.

Publishing a book primarily for money is selfish. Writing to share your passion is far more likely to please an audience and help generate valuable word-of-mouth sales.

Blogging mainly to generate direct sales is selfish. Blogging to connect with people who have similar interests and to share your ideas and knowledge is what followers seek.

Little or no marketing is selfish. Marketing helps others find your book so that you can share it.

Lack of effort in a cover is selfish. Striving to put a cover on your book that your target audience will be happy to hold in their hands and which looks suitable for its genre helps the target audience find your book and shows them that you care about quality.

Begging for reviews is selfish. Trying to get reviews by marketing to get more sales and professionally seeking reviews on relevant blogs through advance review copies helps the right audience discover your work.

Responding to customer reviews is selfish. Understanding that the review is about the book and not about you, realizing that no book will please everyone, and refraining from commenting on customer reviews appears professional.

Complaining about bad reviews is selfish. Examining criticism to see if there are any valid points that can help you grow as a writer and discarding what remains may help you improve as an author.

Self-promotion is selfish. Finding your target audience and showing that you care, letting people discover your book rather than advertising it openly, and branding your author image are less selfish and more effective forms of marketing.

Sticking with an idea that pops into your head when you discover that it’s not working is selfish. Realizing that a cover concept didn’t come out right or that a writing idea isn’t working and correcting the problem is what your audience wants.

Publishing to have your ego built up from loads of high praise is selfish. Joining a writer’s group to help improve your writing, learning the trade, and working diligently to perfect your craftsmanship are far more likely to merit such praise.

Selfishness shows.

If you’re driven primarily by money, the book you write is less likely to sell well. If your writing is driven by passion, your book is more likely to sell well. So even if you really crave the royalties, it still makes sense for you to instead by driven by passion.

Even if it sells well initially, apparent selfishness or lack thereof can have a major impact on valuable word-of-mouth sales.

Your book is more likely to be purchased if it is well-written in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation, use of correct tense, use of consistent person, showing more and telling less, editing, writing style, formatting, and other related issues. If the title, blurb, or Look Inside reveal any writing, editing, or formatting problems, it deters sales because many readers check this carefully before making a purchase.

Emotional and reactive behavior look unprofessional. Patience and professionalism help your author image.

Books that meet the needs of your audience are apt to sell better than those that don’t.

Show that you care:

  • Let your passion for your writing and subject show without self-promoting it.
  • Put the effort into perfecting your book cover to cover to deliver a high-quality book.
  • When marketing, show that you care about the person and not just the royalty.
  • Don’t just advertise you and your book. What can you do that will benefit your audience?
  • Market your book diligently without self-promotion to help it get discovered.
  • Care enough about being a professional author to behave professionally.
  • Learn the value of the words ‘thank you.’
  • Demonstrate by example that you have good character.
  • Don’t just focus on you and your book. Make each reader feel special.

People are more likely to invest in you when you first invest in them.

Chris McMullen, self-published author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Jun 15 2013

The Importance of Color in Cover Design

Colors

First of all, some colors complement one another well while some colors clash.

For example, blue and yellow usually provide nice contrast next to one another, but orange and red beside one another are hard to distinguish.

Text absolutely needs to contrast well with anything that is behind it. When text clashes with any part of the background, the result is illegible, especially in the thumbnail. For example, imagine navy blue text on a brown background.

Colors that don’t contrast well can appear beside one another in images, but not when one part of the image needs to stand out against an adjacent part. For example, if a girl is eating a red apple, the apple should clearly stand out, so there shouldn’t be colors that clash with red adjacent to the apple.

Two exceptions are color blends, like a gradient from pink to red, or accents. Blends and accents can have colors that don’t contrast near one another. A fiery picture may include blends of red and orange, for example.

Bear in mind that there are differences in hues, tints, shades, and tones. Not all reds look the same. So while red often contrasts well with black, there are many variations of red and black that don’t contrast well. A dark red doesn’t contrast well with black, for example. Will purple and pink contrast well? It all depends on which purple and which pink you’re talking about.

Color Chart

Another issue is how many colors to use. A good rule of thumb is to use three main colors. If the central image is a photo with several colors, the three-color rule might not seem feasible, but often the photo will have two or three main colors. If there is a main image, the other colors need to coordinate well with this.

Three colors won’t all contrast well with one another. The primary and secondary colors should provide excellent contrast, while the third color should be an accent that complements either the primary or secondary color. Different tints and shades of these three colors can be used when the design requires additional colors.

Black, white, and red can work well with one another. But, again, it all depends on which hues, tints, shades, and tones are used. Many other combinations can work well, if done right, like purple, yellow, and pink. There are several free design programs available online that help you choose sets of colors and see how well they work together.

How much of each color should you use? Another good rule of thumb is 60% for the primary, 30% for the secondary, and 10% for the accent.

It’s not just a matter of finding three colors that work well together.

For one, the use of color helps readers who are browsing through thumbnails find the types of books that they are looking for. Red is more likely to attract romance readers, for example. Pink is common among feminine books. A cover is ineffective when it attracts the wrong audience.

Browse the top-selling books similar to yours to see what color schemes are popular in that genre. This is what those readers are accustomed to seeing. While you’re there, see how many of those books followed these ‘rules.’

Color is not just aesthetic, it’s powerful. Colors evoke emotion.

For example, blue symbolizes trust, so many financial books feature a deep blue, while yellow is associated with happiness or intellect. Use colors that fit the content.

Colors can even have specific effects. When red is used against a background that it contrasts well with, it may help stand out and call attention to the book. Green is a relaxing color. Use blue for knowledge, white for simplicity, purple for luxury, gold for prestige, and navy blue for cheap.

Bright thumbnails tend to stand out better in search results. Yellows and oranges work well as highlighters against dark backgrounds.

Check that your color scheme agrees with the audience that you’re trying to attract. Don’t use pink or yellow for masculinity, for example.

Color Emotions

Note that there is also a difference between the cmyk (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color subtraction scheme used to print a cover and the rgb (reg, green, blue) color addition scheme used to produce an image on the monitor. If you’re designing a paperback cover, the printed cover will probably look significantly darker than what you see on the monitor, and colors that work well on the screen may not look well in print. Out-of-gamut colors are likely to look much different. Solid regions of one color may not look smooth. The best thing is to print a few tests before putting too much effort and commitment into the cover (keeping in mind that any single printing may suffer from possible variations, as 100 printed covers won’t all look identical).

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Jun 13 2013

How to Use the Chapter Names as Even-Page Headers in Microsoft Word

Headers

Most traditionally published books have page headers running along the top of every page (don’t confuse headers with headings; at the beginning of every section is a heading, while at the top of each page is a header).

When the author is famous, the author’s name is likely to appear on the page header. For the rest of us, it’s probably more useful to put other information here.

Many books put the chapter name on the even-numbered pages and the book title on the odd-numbered pages.

Before you get started, save your file (in two or more places, like on your jump drive and email, in case one file becomes corrupt), then save it again with a different filename. This way, you’ll have a backup of the original, just in case. A file can be messy without you realizing it and become corrupt when working with the page headers, so having a backup of the original may turn out to be valuable.

There is a trick to using different header text in each chapter of the book. It’s the same trick that’s needed to use Roman numerals and Arabic page numbers in the same file. You can find a thorough, step-by-step tutorial with screenshots by clicking here.

The main idea is to use a Next Page section break for each section or chapter where you would like the header to be different. Don’t insert an ordinary page break; going to Insert and selecting Page Break or going to Page Layout and choosing Page won’t work.

Instead, go to Page Layout and select Next Page to make the page break in a way that will tell Word that a new section is beginning.

(In Word 2003 and earlier, the menu options are somewhat different, but the main ideas are still the same. I’ll describe how to use Word 2010 for Windows, specifically, which is similar to Word 2007 and onward.)

Remove ordinary page breaks and recreate them using Next Page anywhere a new chapter is starting (or anywhere else you wish to have different header text, including no header at all, such as front and back matter).

Start at the beginning of the document and edit the headers from the first page onward. If you don’t have page headers yet, add them from the Insert menu.

Place your cursor in the header area. Check the box for different first page if you wish to have a different header in the first page of the section. It’s common, for example, for the first page of each chapter and some pages of the front matter to have no header at all.

Check the box for different odd and even pages to allow the header text of odd-numbered and even-numbered pages to be different. It’s common to have the book title on odd-numbered pages and the chapter name on even-numbered pages.

The first section should be fairly easy, especially if you didn’t already have headers in place to begin with.

When you get to the second section, where you want the headers to be different, place your cursor in the header area and look for the ‘magic’ Link to Previous button. When you click this, the Same As Previous flag will disappear. This allows you to create a new header in this section (instead of copying the header from the previous section; more precisely, to avoid having the previous section change as you type the new header).

You needed those Next Page section breaks (instead of ordinary page breaks) to tell Word where each new section begins.

Remember to start at the beginning and work your way forward one section at a time. After you adjust a new section to your satisfaction, go back and ensure that the previous sections are still correct. If not, be thankful for that handy Undo button.

If your file is messy (it won’t look messy to you on the screen if it is), sometimes Word seems to be a little fussy about the page headers. If Word seems uncooperative, try undoing everything you did in the new section. Then remove the section break at the beginning of the new section, and reinsert it. See if that helps.

Sometimes you can play with it and persistence will pay off.

If you have a richly formatted book, or if the file is otherwise messy (again, without your knowledge), occasionally persistence makes the file even messier or it can become corrupt. (If you saved all of the section breaks and headers until your file was otherwise complete and went section by section systematically through the book, it may help to avoid these troubles.)

One solution to a corrupt file is reverting back to the original you saved as a backup prior to adjusting the headers.

A messy file can be cleaned up by stripping out the formatting. For example, copy and paste everything into Notepad and then copy and paste it into a new Word document. This is not a good option for a file that has numerous pictures, equations, bullets, instances of italics, or other formatting. And if the file mostly contained plain text, it was less likely to get so messy in the first place.

Opening the backup and trying the headers again may be worth the hassle (and far less hassle than stripping out the formatting for a richly formatted book), and it may work out better the second time.

In the worst-case scenario that you just can’t get the headers to cooperate, the simple way around this when your ultimate goal is to create a PDF file is to break your Word document up into smaller files (e.g. one file for each chapter, provided that the chapter count is reasonable). Then it will be easy to make different headers for each chapter.

In this case, you’ll have to manually start the page numbering from the previous chapter by inspection. If you make any revisions to your book, you’ll have to update the page numbering.

If you split the Word file into separate files, you’ll need a Word to PDF converter that allows you to compile separate PDF files together. With the number of free PDF converters available online, there is a good chance you can find one that fits your needs that has this option (but beware of possible viruses or spyware anytime you download programs from the internet).

Many books have been prepared in Word as a single file that have different headers for each chapter. Chances are that you’ll be able to do this in Word with your book, too, without having to resort to any drastic measures.

Publishing Resources

I started this blog to provide free help with writing, publishing, and marketing. You can find many free articles on publishing and marketing by clicking one of the following links:

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Jun 13 2013

How Would You Improve Amazon?

Imagine you suddenly have the job of Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. Well, even then, you couldn’t do anything you wanted.

So let’s go a step further and grab a magic wand. That’s better. Now you can do anything. Wave your wand a couple of times to test it out.

If you could do it, what would you change at Amazon in order to improve it?

Don’t be selfish here. Don’t just think about bad reviews that you’d like to make vanish or advertisements for your book if you’re an author, or how to make products free for you as a consumer.

I’m not asking how you would make Amazon better for you alone. I’m asking how you would make Amazon better for everyone.

Not just customers. Giving everything away for free would greatly benefit the customers. For a few days, until the company went bankrupt. If you want Amazon to benefit customers in the long run, you must balance what’s best for both the consumers and the business.

Okay. Spend a few moments in fantasy land. Do absolutely anything to Amazon that you want with your magic wand. Then when you return to reality, think about changes that may be beneficial to all.

What would you like to change?

(1) The Amazon Customer Review System

Almost everyone who is familiar with customer reviews on Amazon can write down a few things that they don’t like about them.

Not everyone is in agreement on what should be changed, though. Authors, readers, product owners, editors, publishers. There are some conflicting perspectives here. Even just among customers.

If there is one feature of reviews that we can all agree on, perhaps it’s spitefulness. Some reviews are downright nasty. There are reviews that slander the author, but don’t even mention the book.

You’d think that Amazon would remove such spiteful reviews, right? It even says right there in the terms and conditions that spite is not allowed. But when spiteful reviews are reported – by the author or even a customer – much of the time Amazon simply responds to say that they understand your concern, but this review doesn’t violate the terms and conditions.

Huh?

Evidently, a reviewer must be blatantly spiteful in order to warrant removal of the review.

How is this in Amazon’s best interest? That spitefulness is very negative. Wouldn’t Amazon create a more positive ambiance by removing that spite? By not removing it, they’re actually encouraging such behavior.

Would customers prefer to see the spite remain or be removed? Does such spitefulness help to brand Amazon’s image with a negative shopping environment? How does this help buyers determine which product to buy? How does it help Amazon sell products?

Maybe you can think of some reason to keep it.

I’ll suggest a couple of possibilities. For one, the spiteful reviews are mostly one and two star reviews. If you wave your magic wand and delete all of the spiteful reviews, millions of one and two star reviews will suddenly vanish. Some products, which only have a few reviews, will suddenly seem better liked than they actually are. The customer who loathed a product so much that he was very spiteful when he wrote the review did cast a vote when he gave it one star. Maybe Amazon wants to retain those votes of one or two stars associated with the spiteful reviews (perhaps there is a reason for this).

If Amazon would like to preserve the one star vote, it could be done while still removing the spite. Just edit out (or delete) the spiteful comments instead of the entire review.

Now we run into another possibility. Manpower. Amazon doesn’t have one of those magic wands to wave and quickly zap away all of the spite.

Remember, we’re not thinking of how to improve Amazon just for customers. We want to find changes that will improve Amazon for everyone. That means not going out of business.

How much would it cost Amazon to monitor the customer review system more closely than they already do? That’s what it would take to deal with spitefulness. Let alone other issues with reviews.

With the advent of self-publishing, there are presently hundreds of thousands of authors who feel that they have a bad review that should be removed for one reason or another. Some have multiple books and numerous reviews that they feel strongly about. Add to this number the legitimate reviews that clearly aren’t violations that some authors would also request to be removed.

Amazon already receives a staggering number of requests from authors for reviews to be removed. This occurs with the current policy in place. That is, it’s well-known that Amazon very rarely removes customer reviews, even when they’re fairly spiteful. Yet, they still receive a ton of requests every day.

Imagine how many, many, many, many, let’s add a few more many’s just for effect (but it may be realistic) more requests Amazon would receive if instead it were well-known that Amazon would remove a review if it were just mildly spiteful. Even if the requests didn’t crash the server, the manpower it would take to attend to these requests would be incredible.

Every day, there are numerous posts online on blogs, community forums, and elsewhere describing unfair customer reviews at Amazon. Bear in mind that the majority of authors don’t write posts about bad reviews because doing so would hurt their own author image and would help brand the image of self-publishing as unprofessional.

Have you ever seen an author get in a long debate with a reviewer using the comment system? It’s very unprofessional, but that’s not the point. My point is that, unfortunately, some authors tend to get highly emotional about reviews and find it difficult to stop arguing about them.

So just imagine those authors communicating with Amazon. They request to have a bad review removed. Amazon says no. They respond to Amazon in a long email. This would go back and forth for an eternity, just like they do in the comments, right?

Nope. Amazon learned not to waste resources on possibly endless communications. Amazon tells the author on their second response that they won’t be able to investigate the matter any further. That is, if the author sends a subsequent request, it will be ignored.

Consider that Amazon has this action in place. It suggests that manpower is already an issue. So is it worth the possible investment to deal with spite? Maybe this is one reason that it hasn’t already been done.

Maybe you can think of a way to deal with spite affordably. Perhaps there is a way.

(Amazon already responds to the request to say that they’ve looked at the review, and understand your concerns, but can’t remove the review. How much more work would it be to remove it? A lot. Because word would spread and the requests would pile up immensely.)

What about other changes to the customer review system?

We could eliminate shill reviews and sock puppets. That is, generating fake reviews to make a product seem better than it actually is. Actually, Amazon has already made this change to some extent. Amazon automatically blocks a very large number of reviews and has removed thousands – perhaps millions – of such reviews. This change was affordable, as a computer program could check for correlations between IP addresses and other information in their database between accounts. It may have removed some legitimate reviews, too, but overall the customer experience has been tremendously improved.

But there is still some review abuse, especially negative reviews that arise from jealousy of some sort (rival authors, ex-boyfriends). Can you think of a way to eliminate this?

A common suggestion is to require all reviews to be Amazon Verified Purchases. Why isn’t this done already? There may be reasons for it.

First of all, there are already millions of reviews that are unverified. Would you like to remove all of those? Perhaps those could be left there, and just impose this on new ones. There are still other issues.

Publishers send out a large number of advance review copies. Publishers provide big business for Amazon. It’s probably not good business for Amazon to prevent the recipients of advance review copies from reviewing books on Amazon, as they would all show as unverified purchases.

What about customers who buy the product elsewhere? A bestselling book might sell many more copies in bookstores than on Amazon. Bestselling authors – and Amazon, too – want all of those customers to be eligible to review the books on Amazon.

What about eBooks? Well, customers don’t have to use Kindle to read eBooks, but Amazon still allows them to post reviews. They can be gifted and lent, too.

But maybe there is one aspect of this that most of us would agree on. Amazon has made it clear that customers can review products even if they’ve never seen or used them.

What?

Does this seem crazy to you? Imagine that you invented a machine and one of the first customers left a review saying, “I didn’t buy this, but just looking at it I can tell it wouldn’t work.” Okay, nobody who reads the review is going to take it seriously, but it does affect the average star value.

When a customer clearly states in the review that he or she hasn’t read the book or used the product, maybe those reviews could be removed. Wouldn’t this be a small improvement?

Amazon’s customer review system isn’t perfect, but it is pretty effective at soliciting opinions, and it does provide shoppers with diverse information that they can consider. Most of us may agree that it’s better than no reviews at all.

There may be other ways to improve the system. Remember, cost is a factor. You might want to hire external companies to leave neutral reviews instead of customer reviews, but with tens of millions of products, is that feasible?

I have a few suggestions. I’ve heard a few others express similar ideas. Maybe you have some other ideas that haven’t been addressed.

When you finish reading an eBook on Kindle, why can’t you type your review right then and there? Wouldn’t that be convenient? Why can’t you click on the book on the device and find a quick and easy place to post the review? I have the Kindle in front of me. I’m in the mood to review the book. It’s on my mind. But I must be inconvenienced to login to Amazon, which I would rather do on my pc. How many customers were ready to leave a review, but decided against it out of inconvenience?

I’ve typed reviews and stopped when I saw the preview, thinking I was done. I wonder how many other customers haven’t finished the review process, not realizing that they had to check the preview and approve it? Oops! Or maybe they rated it when they reached the end of a Kindle eBook, thinking that was a review? There may be a little room for improvement here.

How about separating the rating from the reviews? That is, let customers rate the book without reviewing it, like they can do at Goodreads. Some customers can put a number on a book, but feel uncomfortable describing it in words (including reaching the minimum word count).

If you want to drastically increase the frequency of customer reviews, offer a penny for every review. Or make it a nickel, dime, or a percent if you really want to see tons of reviews on Amazon. I bet many authors wouldn’t mind this being subtracted from their royalties to help encourage more reviews. But the discount (off a future purchase, perhaps) might inspire more sales.

(2) Self-Publishing Quality Control

First, let me say that I put this here because it’s a popular issue, not because I personally am in favor of this. I’ll try to show the pros and cons, and you can decide for yourself. Or maybe you will think of better ideas that I’ve left out.

If you could wave a magic wand to remove every book that doesn’t meet a minimum degree of editing, formatting, and writing, would you do it? As long as it’s a magic wand, rather than removing these books, maybe you could just make them magically look more professional.

But we can’t fix them with magic. It would take an insane amount of manpower to format and edit them. It would take an insane amount of manpower just to screen them. So just hiring a very large editing team isn’t feasible.

Amazon could charge a publishing fee to cover the cost. Some people would be in favor of this. But many people would also be against it. Currently, Amazon is free. Amazon has done an amazing thing, opening the doors of publishing to everybody. Amazon has an abundance of support from the self-publishing community for this. These authors – and their family, friends, and acquaintances – don’t just write books, most of them read books, too. Imposing an inhibitive fee may not be good for business in the grand scheme of things.

Even an optional fee has an issue. By being free, Amazon is differentiated from vanity presses.

Free publishing gives Amazon an unbelievable selection.

There are some books with formatting, editing, writing, and even storyline issues. These books are a problem for customers and also adversely affect the image of Kindle, Amazon, and self-publishing.

But how bad is the problem? I don’t mean this as a percentage of books. I mean that most customers check out the description, reviews, and Look Inside and generally are able to avoid such books. Those who don’t are apt to learn to do this through experience. These books tend to have lousy sales ranks. So are they selling enough to be so concerned about? Perhaps a few years ago when Kindle and self-publishing were newer, more customers were coming across such books. Perhaps it was a bigger problem before Amazon’s program started removing and blocking most of the shill reviews and sock puppets. Perhaps it’s not such a problem now. Especially, in terms of cost-benefit analysis. Or maybe you have a better suggestion.

Self-published authors have a strong incentive to improve their books as much as possible, as this will greatly improve their chances of success.

Also, customers can report formatting issues. This helps Amazon catch some of the more serious problems. They actually suspend sales of eBooks until the issues are resolved.

(3) Order of Search Results and Categories

This might be something to consider. Most book categories have thousands of books even in the final subcategory, yet only a dozen books show on the page. If you type a search, you sometimes receive interesting results. Obviously, Amazon wants to order the search results based on what consumers are most likely to buy as well as what is likely to please the customer. But it seems like there could be a better way to sort through tens of millions of products to find what you’re looking for. And there may be ways for people to abuse the system (i.e. to get their products to show higher in the search without merit). Fortunately, Amazon doesn’t publish their algorithm, and may revise it, which makes it harder to abuse.

Amazon is probably considering this on an ongoing basis. Categories have changed over the years, and they have probably revised the program which determines the order of search results. They have also added filters, like “most reviews,” so you can see which books have been reviewed most (whereas searching by the highest customer review would put a book with a single five star review ahead of a book that has hundreds of reviews that are mostly five stars); that’s a small improvement. Can you think of other ways to improve this?

(4) Other Changes

I selected a few popular topics to discuss. Maybe you can think of other areas where Amazon could be improved.

Some of the changes I’ve mentioned I have suggested to Amazon (not all at once). Feel free to send your own suggestions to Amazon. The more times Amazon receives the same suggestion, the more likely they are to realize that there is a demand for it. They claim to welcome feedback, and that customer feedback is invaluable. So apparently this is encouraged.

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers