All About Amazon

Dear Authors,

This issue of BOOK BUZZ! will tell you everything you always wanted to know about selling your book at Amazon.com (well, at least everthing I know about Amazon).

THREE WAYS TO SELL AT AMAZON

Amazon offers authors and publishers three different ways to sell their books:

1. AMAZON ADVANTAGE: With this program, you pay a $29.95 annual fee to be a member; you ship a few books to Amazon to stock on consignment; you give Amazon a 55% discount off the retail. They sell the books, collect the money, and ship your book to customers. Amazon pays you when your account funds reach a certain level. This is the program we use for our Evergreen and Gazelle books. The advantage is you only ship books to Amazon, not individual customers, and they handle the money. For more info, click or paste this url into the address line of your web browser:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/partners/direct/direct-application.html/ref=smm_sn_adv/002-3901802-5468030

2. AMAZON MARKETPLACE: With this program, Amazon only sells the book and collects the money. You stock the book and ship individual orders (fulfillment). Then Amazon pays you for the book plus a shipping allowance. They charge you $.99 plus 15% per sale. You make more this way, but you have more work to do too. Many new and used books are sold through this program. For more info, click or paste:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/misc/sell-your-stuff.html/ref=smm_sn_mkt/002-3901802-5468030

3. AMAZON ASSOCIATES: With this program, you place a link on your website or in your e-mails to the webpage at Amazon that features your book (you must use a specially formatted link generated by Amazon in order to get commissions). Then, when the customer buys a copy from Amazon, you receive a 5% to 8% commission from Amazon. You can participate in this program if your book is already available at Amazon. You can also recruit others to post the same link, thereby multiplying your sales results. (If people buy other books besides yours while using your associate link, you get a commission on those sales too.) For more info, click or paste this url into the address line of your web browser:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=smm_sn_ass/002-3901802-5468030?node=3435371

In case you're wondering, you can participate in all three of the above programs. (If you are an Evergreen or Gazelle author, don't sign up for the ADVANTAGE program because we already have your book there.)

If you have trouble with the above links, just go to the Amazon home page and click on the "Sell Your Stuff" tab in the blue bar near the top of the page: http://www.amazon.com
On the next page, in the green bar, click the tab of the program you want to find out more about.

THE THREE R's OF SELLING MORE AT AMAZON

Now that you know the ways to sell at Amazon, let's examine how to sell MORE books there. I offer my three R's of selling more books at Amazon:

1. REVIEWS: Book reviews are one of the most effective methods of selling more books at Amazon. Folks who read your book can visit Amazon and leave a review (good or bad) about your book. This usually won't happen unless you recruit your readers to go to Amazon and post reviews. It's easy to post a book review: Go to the page where the book is featured; scroll down to "Customer Reviews" and click the "book" button. The next page will ask the user to register or sign in (registering is easy and free). After they sign in, the next page contains the instructions for entering the review. The more good reviews, the better sales you'll have. So round up your readers and get those reviews!

2. RANK: Ever wonder how Amazon assigns a sales rank to your book? It's a complicated formula, but if you just want an approximation of what the rank means, look no further! Amazon re-ranks books with sales ranks between 1 and 10,000 every hour. Books in the 10,000 to 100,000 range are re-ranked once a day. Books with ranks above 100,000 are ranked by total sales since being listed at Amazon. Having said that, if your book sells around 100 or more copies in a day, you could be in Amazon's Top 10. If it sells about 30 or more copies a day, it could be listed in the Top 100. With sales of 10 or more per day, you could be in the Top 1000. Two copies per day might land you in the Top 10,000. One copy per week will have a rank in the 100,000's. With 15 total sales, you'd be around the 1,000,000 mark. And finally, with two total sales you'd be near the 2,000,000 mark.

3. REFERRALS: Above we talked about Amazon's Associate program. It is basically an affiliate program that rewards you for referring buyers to Amazon. Not only do you get the commissions, you also contribute to your sales rank which can affect your overall sales at Amazon. The better your sales rank, the more likely visitors will be to buy your book. Every time you mention or advertise your Amazon Associates link you are helping to potentially boost your sales and rank. It's a snowball effect.

HOW TO PUSH YOUR BOOK TO #1 AT AMAZON

Achieving a #1 sales rank at Amazon is not as unlikely as it may sound. If you read the numbers above, you would see that sales of 100 and up could push you into the Top 10. No one really knows for sure what kind of sales are necessary to hit number one, but some experts have estimated in the low hundreds on any given day. How is it possible to generate these kinds of sales if you're not a famous author? I've heard the following strategy has taken unknown or new authors to #1 on Amazon:

The key to getting a high rank, if only for a brief period of time, is to get alot of people to buy your book from Amazon on the same day. The people who have successfully used this strategy make the offer irresistable by giving away lots of free bonuses (mostly e-books) if the person buys the book by midnight on the specified day. They then email their Amazon receipt (as proof of purchase) to the author who in turn sends the purchaser their free bonuses.

The nice thing about sales at Amazon is that they are cumulative. Your high one-day rank won't go away the next day but is re-calculated over longer and longer periods of time. Getting a high one-day Amazon sales rank is not just an ego trip. It can help to create buzz that could take on a life of its own apart from any additional promotional efforts on your part!

Warmest regards,
Brian Banashak, Publisher
© 2004, Brian Banashak