Hi, everyone,
Shizzle, Inc got up to #34 on Amazon’s Satire Bestseller list! If you are not following the live tweeting of my biggest marketing campaign to date, here is a quick recap:
- Robin Reads started strong, but was a disappointment at 19 sales, at a cost of $25.
- Indie Book Promo was a complete dud, at maybe 1 sale (I had 3 total, but 2 were from my constant tweeting about it).
- Book Gorilla is currently on fire!
I will post a complete report on Monday. Wish me luck!
Now, I’d like to venture an explanation for the mystery surrounding the 1,200+ verified purchase reviews on a book yet to be released – as previously mentioned in Riddle me this!
First of all, I’d like to thank the following detectives:
- Nancy Glynn of Nancy Glynn – thank you for sharing the loophole allowing reviews on a yet-to-be-published book by “tricking” CreateSpace.
- Isabella Belucci of Isabella Belucci – thank you for sharing your experience reviewing and ARC (Advanced Review Copy) for another author.
- Mykl Walsh of Secret Agent Man – thank you for scouring the Internet for clues!
- Tim Vicary of Tim Vicary – thank you for checking the suspect’s Goodreads profile 🙂
- Prospero of Prospero’s Island – thank you for digging up an interview with the mention of Kindle First!
I did some research myself – and it all seemed to point to Kindle First. For example, all 1,200+ reviews have been posted during November, in line with Kindle First offering the book a month before its release on 1 December. For those not familiar with Kindle First – it is an offer of free or discounted bestsellers (I think just four of them a month), chosen by Amazon’s editors. I have searched madly for any clues on how to get on the list, but it seems to be either a secret or an impossible feat, even though most traditional publishers are currently not supporting it.
Any detectives want to take on this new mystery??
Ana Spoke, author 
Great news on your current sales! And an interesting update on the riddle. It still seems very strange. Your ‘detectives’ did well to find out as much as they did. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I guarantee a lot of advertising went into that success story…
LikeLike
Look forward to your report on Monday, and congrats on the sales so far.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Suzanne! Hope to be in single-digit ranking!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fingers crossed for you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think there must be a link between Kindle Scout and Kindle First. Maybe if you get your book accepted by Kindle Scout they then put it on Kindle first.. is that possible? Here’s a link. I’m not sure if it’s encouraging or just plain scary! http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/67924-kindle-scout-success-an-aspiring-author-s-journey.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Super secret”, huh? Well, one thing for sure – I’m doing a bookmark campaign!!
LikeLike
Funny you should mention Kindle First. I was browsing a book and below it was an advertisement for Kindle First. It was below the book description. I was intrigued and decided to take a look after I purchased my book. After I bought my book, I went back and the note was gone. There was a different note for Amazon Prime to sign up. I tried looking for it through a search and nothing. 😞 The advert changed again to something else.
Lesson: if it shows up again click on it right away!
LikeLike
Interesting! Have you tried googling how to sign up? Surely, they want your money 😉
LikeLike
I’ve only tried searching Amazon and nothing came up. I was going to try later on the desktop and see if I can search the site better that way.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I would say it has something to do with Amazon being the publisher……..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Technically Amazon is my publisher too! Says so on the book info 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Glad to be of service, Ana.
I’m surprised about Book Gorilla. Good for you though. Isn’t this exciting!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you again! How come you’re surprised – I thought BG is well known? Seeing sales climb up is the best 🙂
LikeLike
I had a look on Thursday and it seemed to me that it was geared towards promoting established authors. I’ll look again and try to find you now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Really? Well, I’m on my way to “established author” 🙂
LikeLike
Yes, you’re on your way.
No wonder I didn’t know about Book Gorilla–I haven’t bought a book in about fifteen years (this is what you get for living on an island with nothing but the bare necessities–hell, we just got the internet a few weeks ago).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sounds like a charmed life 🙂 I can now recommend BG and eReader News as proven performers!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve learnt a lot through your post! Thanks for sharing. ❤️ Best of luck! ❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi everyone,
My name is Matthew. I’m the author of The Short Drop. Saw this thread, and the confusion regarding the quantity of reviews for my book. Thought I’d shed some light on the issue if that’s okay.
So… Thomas & Mercer is Amazon Publishing’s thriller imprint. Amazon is a publisher in its own right, in addition to being a bookseller. It has multiple imprints for various genres. For example, it’s Romance Imprint is called Montlake Romance.
In February, Thomas & Mercer bought the rights to my book and selected it for the Kindle First program. Kindle First is one of the benefits to having an Amazon Prime membership. The way it works is that each month, Amazon offers six books to it’s Prime members before their official publication date. As a Prime member, you can choose to download one of the six books for free. My month ends on Monday night and a fresh slate of titles will be offered.
On December 1, my books will actually be “published” and will be for sale to the general public.
I hope that helps to clarify things. I’ve included links below to the various pieces that I cited.
Best,
Matthew
Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200444160
Kindle First: http://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/kindle/first/ref=prime_pdp_prime_assist_kindle_first
Amazon Publishing: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=apub_ws_rd?docId=1000664761
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you, Matthew! Congratulations on your success – may I ask what has been your journey to get to the point of getting Thomas and Mercer interested? Was it a long hard road or an “overnight success”?
LikeLike
Appreciate it, Ana. To answer your question, it was the proverbial long hard road to an eventual overnight success. So.. both? I wrote a novel in my twenties that I poured myself into but which never sold. It was the 90s so pre-self-publishing. Burned out, I essentially gave up on writing and moved on to other career paths. If you’d told me five years ago that I would be a published author, I would have looked for the hidden camera. The desire to write began to reassert itself over the last few years, slowly at first, but out of that rekindled enthusiasm, I wrote The Short Drop.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you again, Matthew! That gives hope to a lot of us – I myself burned out after a year and 70+ pitches. I have since self-published Shizzle, Inc and hope to catch attention of the big leagues with the sequels. Or continue myself – I’ve actually enjoyed publishing and marketing game 🙂
LikeLike
Best of luck with the sales! Glad the riddle was solved! Might be able to do some detective work and report back 🙂 Can’t wait for your update on Monday 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you 🙂 pretty amazing to have the author himself explain it!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You’re welcome 🙂 Must have been a cool moment to actually talk to the author 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for joining the discussion, Matthew, very helpful of you. Almost everything’s clear now, but could I ask – how exactly did you go about submitting your book to Thomas & Mercer in the first place? It’s clearly a different route to straightforward self-publishing.
Good luck with the book – after all this interest I think I’m going to have to read it now!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tim – The missing pieces here, I think, is that in addition to its self-publishing tools, Amazon is also a traditional publisher (Amazon Publishing) in the mold of the big 5. Last year, I had the good fortune to land an agent who submitted my book to a number of publishers. We took Thomas & Mercer’s offer. So there was no direct submission procedure.
Matthew
LikeLiked by 1 person
Now I understand. Thanks – and good luck!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ana, right now I am still baffled about the promotional strategies for ebooks. Could you or anyone here kindly share it with me?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Have a read through this – I believe the best way is to have sales and advertise them: https://anaspoke.com/2015/10/08/the-most-super-duper-exhaustive-comprehensive-and-current-listing-of-free-and-paid-book-advertising-websites-and-ideas/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Ana. I have actually used some of them, but I am not sure why there are not many sales from those sites either. Maybe, you can try Book Buzz, but it usually works better for nonfiction as what I heard from the affiliates there.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Titania – am I reading right, you personally did not get many sales? So far the only case where I’d made my money back has been eReader News.
LikeLike
yup really, I did not get many sales. Ereader News also rejected my book for promo and Booksends too. Maybe there are not enough reviews.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry to hear that! Do you have a pro-looking book cover? I’ve only been rejected by Bookbub, and believe the cover (and reviews, of course) has helped a lot.
LikeLike
http://www.amazon.com/Titania-Hudson/e/B015LX6H1G
maybe the covers are not pro enough or it all boils down to reviews which is not easy to find readers because most bloggers like to read fiction mostly.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, yeah – sorry, all the limited experience I have is with fiction. The websites you’ve tried specialize in fiction, I think.
LikeLike
Yeah, there are very few focused on nonfiction. So, how;s your writing coming along? Is there a group of authors you usually mingle with?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just started on the sequel – I have a local author group, and of course the blog has become a great little support group 🙂
LikeLike
How do I join author groups too? I am having problems getting more reviews because when I send to some reviewers of similar dating books, many don’t respond. I usually tend to get some bloggers to provide feedback.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, Titania – have you tried joining your local/state writing association? I found my group on meetup.com, actually. Btw, I got most of the reviews through social media and advertising, so it’s a numbers game – try to get the book into hands of as many readers as possible, for example by giving it away for free for a limited time?
LikeLike
Hmm nope never tried the meetup group yet. Will give it a shot. Well, advertising does not seem to evoke feedback. Did try free days before it did not work out. Think people are more attracted to freebies these days.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I did get feedback from sales, but it took 1-2 months for them to read and post. Social media has been the best source of feedback – and more stars on average, too!
LikeLike
Pingback: Matthew FitzSimmons himself stops by to explain the mystery of Short Drop reviews! | AnaSpoke.com
Great news about your sales, Ana. It’s possible to sign (as a reader if you’re a Prime costumer) to get a newsletter sent every month with their books on offer the month before they’re officially published. I’ve signed, although I have a very long list of books to read. Matthew’s reply was very useful. I know some Spanish authors whose books have done quite well in Spanish and Amazon has chosen them for translation and published them under one of their own publishing imprints, so I guess it’s possible to catch their eye. (Another one of the authors won the Amazon independent novel competition for books in Spanish this year and they’ll publish her novel in English too).
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s what I need to do – make constant “noise” until I get noticed by a big publisher or a film studio. That’s why I will continue to advertise, even if it’s losing money in the short term.
LikeLike
Pingback: AnaSpoke.com
Hi Ana, congrats on your sales success…I just got an email from amazon.com, all departments Deals of the Day, and the first/lead deal was Shizzle Inc. Great exposure! Is this a random thing from Amazon or part of a marketing campaign?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Whaaaat? From Amazon?? I had no idea! How? Another mystery!!!
LikeLike
Shoot! Did it say $0.99? Cause I just put it back to $2.99…might need to switch it back!
LikeLike
It’s showing Shizzle Inc at $1.52 on Deal of the Day 29th Nov….hope you get a sales boost! Is this amazon playing around with you price and not telling you???
LikeLiked by 1 person
Is that in USD?
LikeLike
Awesome site you have here but I was curious if you knew of any message boards that
cover the same topics discussed in this article?
I’d really love to be a part of group where I can get advice from
other experienced people that share the same interest.
If you have any recommendations, please let me know. Many thanks!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think there are lots of them on KDP, but I personally can’t recommend any. Maybe others will.
LikeLike
It’s showing $1.52 in the promo blurb, but when you click through to your sales page it shows $2.99 kindle edition…. odd
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi, Tim – that’s because I had no idea they were gonna do that and just changed the price to $2.99. Can’t even change it back – will have to wait till the morning. Thanks again for letting me know – amazing 🙂
LikeLike