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All your algorithm are belong to Ed
Here’s an email that Dave sent to me the day after we published SPP Episode #4, Using KDP Select and Free Promos to Promote Your Book:
While we were scratching our asses like monkeys trying to figure why God so mad he make thunder so scary, a few authors were actually solving this riddle.
He then included a link to Understanding Amazon’s New Algorithms Is As Easy As ABC, a post on David Gaughran’s Let Get Digital blog that made Amazon’s algorithms look anything but easy. The post was mostly written by Ed Robertson, a guy who, with the help of an author think-tank, seems to have figured out just what the hell Amazon is doing with its rankings.
So we of course hustled to get Ed on the show, persuading him with the same line we use to pick up chicks: “Hey… we’ve got the top podcast in iTunes for ‘self publishing.’ ” Baby.
A few of the seemingly impossible-to-know questions that Ed answers for us in this jam-packed episode are:
- Why did free promos used to result in big post-promo boosts in sales, and why doesn’t that seem to be the case anymore?
- How does Amazon calculate what gets shown in its vital “popularity lists”… which, by the way, are different from the bestseller lists everyone knows about?
- Is Amazon discouraging the use of KDP Select for certain authors… and might traditional publishers now again have a leg up even in the Kindle store?
- Is the reign of the 99 cent book over? Does it now make sense NOT to price at a buck?
We also may or may not discuss the meaning of life and why children keep throwing holy water on Dave whenever he makes a run to the supermarket.
This episode is killer. You’ll listen again and again.
Great show guys.
Jim… I’ll ask you about this Tuesday, but saw your comments on another post re: categories. How the hell do you get into the category you want? Any insights?
Well, you can suggest them when you sign up with KDP, but those are just suggestions. I’ve been told that your categories are decided based upon where people found and bought your book. In other words, if people found your book in the “self-help” section, and then bought it, Amazon then puts you there. Who knows?
One thing is clear, and that’s that Amazon is going to do what’s best for Amazon and its sales. They don’t have to worry really too much about relevancy like Google does. They just have to worry about cashola.
Right… and the suggestions are so limited. I can pick “humor” and maybe “satire” but that’s about it. And general humor is super-hard to rank in… but sub-categories I COULD rank in and that are appropriate aren’t even things I can suggest.
There are also apparently ‘dummy’ categories that are based on keywords, so I rank in some random mystery categories because I was tagged that way, even though not an official category. So maybe look at specific categories you want to rank in Johnny.
Oh, I know where I’d like to rank… I just don’t know how to get there!
(I mean “into the category itself.” Obviously ranking is another challenge entirely.)
Another great show guys. I recently read a post on J.A. Konrath’s Newbie’s site, where he briefly talked about his KDP experience. He’s not thrilled with the result so he’s opting out.
It’s toward the bottom of this post from May 22nd. Under the Joe Sez section point #1:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2012/05/guest-post-by-robert-gregory-browne.html
LOVE his points, especially these two:
2. Get as much content up there as possible. Virtual shelf space is like physical shelf space–the more titles you have, the more chance you have of being seen. The best advertising for your writing is your writing, so write a lot. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment. If you write three books in a series that isn’t selling well, try something else. Ebooks are forever. You can always go back to your series, or it could always get “hot” a few years from now and start selling like crazy. Until then, try new things.
5. Don’t worry about advertising or marketing–I haven’t heard of any instances where it has worked. My rule of thumb is: if it makes me buy a book, I’ll try it for myself. I’ve never bought a book because of a book trailer, pop-up, Facebook page, postcard, email spam, or print or online ad. I’m also not a big fan of marketing. I’ve never seen my sales jump because I did a print interview, radio show, or any other type of publicity. Fewer public appearances and money spent to self-promote, and more time at the desk writing. That’s the best bang for your buck.
I was talking to James Clear the other night and we were talking about this podcast, and he asked for my takeaways as to what seems to work. And I realized how unsexy the answer really seems to be:
1. Write good books, and keep writing more good books.
2. Please your readers.
Damn that algorithm and its ability to remove loopholes.
“1. Write good books, and keep writing more good books.”
Honestly, yeah, that’s pretty much the only real hard evidence of success I’ve heard from authors who have done it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the person who writes a book once. This is why I plan on having 25-40 books for sale in the next 3-5 years. I hope that plan works.
It is funny how, after you take all this information in and give it some thought, the takeaway really is “So in order to win.. I should.. write another book. Ideally, that book should be good.”
The other major benefits of this knowledge, as I see them, is a) in understanding why Select giveaways aren’t providing the same returns (and thus why you might want to try a modified or completely new strategy, or pull out and distribute through the other stores) and b) in identifying situations where the right push can make a significant difference.
I think those situations are pretty rare, though. So in a way, the double-major benefit of all this is the understanding that maybe you should stop worrying about it and get back to work.
This reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s recent awesome commencement address at the University of The Arts. He said that no matter what’s going on in life, “Make Good Art”
http://vimeo.com/42372767
This is bullshit. I demand an easy button that leads to instant success.
I would say that I got some great rankings using Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily for a 1 day promotional email to Kindle die-hard fans. Prophecy debuted above Lee Child on Action Adventure list and that screenshot gets me a lot of interest. I also made a few hundred bucks even after the promo cost. But the main focus was for one day and using a targeted email list. I agree with all the other paid promo stuff e.g. Facebook doesn’t work. Goodreads giveaways are still a good idea if you then network with the people who are interested and didn’t win as they may still buy.
But yes, write more good books and lots of them definitely works best.
I think the glitch is that you did your successful promos before the popular lists algorithm change, though. I wonder if you’d get the same results today, based on what Ed’s finding about free downloads being worth about 10% of what they used to in determining ranking?
It wasn’t a free promotion. Pentecost was on at 99c and Prophecy at $2.99. I agree that free is less effective but books that still are paid for hit the rankings. so I hit the paid list.
AAAH, big difference. We haven’t yet broached the topic of paid promo for paid books!
Do you believe we over think it? Having people recommend your book to others is the best form of advertising. We just need to get them in their hands, somehow.
If I want a good book I first ask my friends, second I look to authors I like, third I peruse my favorite genre. That’s true if I’m on amazon or make a trip to Barnes and Noble.
Of course building a relationship with an author is a strong motivation, but relationships take serious time to cultivate and to have a huge fan-base is somewhat of a pipe dream.
We definitely over think it
“a huge fan-base is somewhat of a pipe dream.”
I don’t believe this though… if we write good books and people like them, and if we have a link to sign up to our newsletters at the back of the book, we can build a list of fans over time. My author site is pretty new but I have people signing up for the next book everyday. List building is critical to long term success otherwise Amazon holds all the customer information.
I agree with Joanna. List building is vital. We put a blurb in the back of every book offering free stuff to anyone who wants to join our list. We send out weekly emails, very conversational, which has not only kept our list going strong, but has resulted in a number of great interactions with our readers we never could have had through Amazon, Apple, or Barnes and Noble.
We’re not doing Dean Koontz type numbers (yet), but I’d also say that there’s an advantage to having a smaller core group of readers.
I’ve seen the newsletters that some of the big authors churn out — cold, impersonal, “buy this now!” type stuff that doesn’t inspire me to care or open their next email. I’d say as indie authors, we have an advantage here of dealing directly with our readers, making the connections we forge that much stronger.
I hear Dean Koontz has a newsletter too. Apparently it’s pretty awesome.
That depends on your definition on awesome. It IS slickly formatted, though.
haha luv your podcasts.
The humor, banter and occasional infos are enjoyable like an ice-sandwich on a hot-ass sommer Sunday morning.
I also luv how different Johnny B from Sean & David is – makes up for a grrreat contrast (did you team up for that purpose ?).
From what I’m hearing – worrying about Amazon’s ranking is pretty useless. They are going to change the algorithm so often one will NEVER fully figure out HOW it works.
That’s why I go with SEAN, write epic shit…and lots of it.
Yes, we were originally brought together by a team of Hollywood producers who wanted to do a male version of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” movie.
Johnny is the charismatic rebel. Sean is optimistic nice guy who farts sunshine. And I’m the surly fat cartoonist/writer dude that hates Mondays but loves Lasagna.
The movie fell through when both Johnny and Sean refused to do nude scenes.
They’re trying to get Ray Romano to play me, but he says it conflicts with Ice Age 7,8 and 9: Scratt’s Hairball.
Epic shit by the ton. For sure. If you can write a book people want to read, then I think you could turn it into a living, given a relentless work ethic, finely tuned strategy, and at least one year.
My favorite part of this comment is the way that getting actual information from us comes as almost an afterthought, after humor and banter.
Fabulous episode guys! I have listened to it multiple times, just to make sure I’ve taken note of all the points. Like Johnny, I’m cursing that my first promo through Select came about a week after they changed things. Even still, the experience has been invaluable. Like Sean and Dave, my writing partner and I are doing a series of short books that will later be brought together as collections. We’ve got 9 books out right now, and 5 of them we enrolled in Select.
Between December and April we tried stuff like blog tours, which was great for getting good reviews on Goodreads and some on Amazon, but did almost nothing for our sales, which where pretty close to nonexistent. We tried the social media thing, which was a good way to meet bloggers, but again, not much help in the sales department.
Going free on the first title for 2 days brought less than 1000 downloads, but what it gave us was data we didn’t have before. We had few sales on the other titles, but not much, which sent us back to work on the ‘back matter’ in our books to see what we had that would (or would not) encourage people to seek out the other books. So we redesigned the back matter and then went free for the 3 remaining days, and saw a lot more sales on the other titles during and after that free run than what we had with the first. Without those free runs to give us a good bit of data to work with, we had no real way of testing the effectiveness of the back matter stuff.
We also discovered the lack of effectiveness of the second Kindle category we were in, which was Short Stories. Although we ‘kicked that category’s ass’ as Johnny put it, ranking #1 in free in that category, we were next to a lot of other books that were nothing like us. We do fast-paced urban fantasy, and we were next to a lot of literary stuff and classics.
Our first category is Contemporary Fantasy, and that’s a good one for us. Short Stories turned out to be a dud, so we moved everything out of Short Stories and put half into Action Adventure and half into Horror. So on subsequent books that went through their period on free, we’ve been able to see a lot more downloads, and a lot more relevant books in the ‘also bought’ section. We’ve also been able to compare things like how difficult it is to rank in different categories. With one title, while we were #4 in the free list for Contemporary Fantasy, we were #8 in Horror. On another title, while we were #6 in Contemporary Fantasy we were #21 in Action Adventure. Good stuff for us to know for the future.
Although we never had Pixel of Ink post us, we were posted on Ereader News Daily for each promo, except for the first one. Each time we skyrocketed in downloads right afterward. It appeared that the top 5 or so on the free list must have a huge amount of downloads. We would go from #7 on the free list for Contemporary Fantasy to #3 with most books. I noticed that just being in the first page of the bestsellers list in that sub category would maybe get 100-300 downloads a day. After that promo we’d get like 1000 a day, and keep up that pace for about 3 days before it would fade. During that time we would rank in parent categories, like Fantasy and even in Fiction, which I think is one reason the downloads stayed high on subsequent days.
With 2 titles we came close, but did not break into the top 100 of the Kindle store, going as high as 101 and just not able to break through. Finally one title did cross into the top 100 and stayed there for 3 days. On that title we had twice as many total downloads as any other title, even though other titles made #1 in their sub categories and the one we had in the top 100 of the store never got higher than #3 in its sub categories.
Besides all that we learned about the best categories for us, and the best back matter, and forging invaluable links to some excellent books in our categories, we also managed to pull up our sales ranking for all of our books, both the ones that were free for a time, and those that were never free, out of the pits of 500,000-600,000 in the Kindle store up into the 20,000-40,000 range. We’ve run our free promos once or twice a week (breaking them into 2-3 day chunks) over the last 6 weeks or so, so have been able to keep all titles up to this level for more than the month-long period that was mentioned in the podcast, so we are hoping this will result in them ‘sticking’. With each free promo we’ve also added to our mailing list, which had tripled in size. Sales on the other titles are way up (for us), and continue to get a boost with each promo.
All of the benefits that we’ve glean from Select, even under the new algorithms, was only possible because we had a good number of titles to work with and use as a funnel, as your guys have mentioned. If we’d had only one title, with the lack luster results that we had with the first free promo, we might have bailed out of Select and been disheartened, as I’ve seen happen with other indies.
The game plan for us right now is to keep putting out books, which has been about once a month, and role each one through Select once, as a way to keep giving our sales and rankings booster shots.
(Sorry, that ended up being so long-winded!)
Hey Johnny,
You mentioned getting auto-enrolled in KDP Select. Unfortunately, the default setting is ‘automatically renew your enrollment’. On your KDP dashboard check the box next to your book and click the ‘actions’ button. Then check your KDP details, see if you have ‘automatically renew’ checked.
Great posts. Factoids from super nerds. And generally bad news for slow workers like me who write a book about every 5 years. They’re really good though!
Re: #1 whore/horror. Sorry, i still haven’t quite worked out who’s who. But one of you guys keep stumbling over this word. You’ve got to let go of that second r. In Australia we give it two syllables – “horra” – try it – you might like it.
Yeah, that’s Dave who screws it up, and the other two of us just keep making fun of him. In American English it should also be HOR-ROR, but Dave is just learning English, so we try to let him make his own mistakes.