Wednesday, August 9, 2017

So far, I find Amazon and the business of books kind of confusing

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my book of short stories is now available on Amazon. (See it here.) I thought we were just in the pre-order stage, because that's what it says on the book's information page. Amazon says the book does not really come out until September 8th. I ordered one a few weeks ago, just to see if it made the sales numbers change, and got a note that it would ship on September 8th. But two days ago, I got another message that it was coming this week. It showed up today. I'm wondering if someone fat-fingered 9-8 and 8-9 somewhere along the way?

Other odd things:

-The price of the book dropped 48 cents from a few weeks ago to now. It's now $16.51, which is a really weird price.
-It is now letting people post reviews, which it shouldn't be doing until the book officially launches. (There's a great review now. Check it out.)
-I signed up for Author Central and linked the book to my author page. This is supposed to let me see sales figures. But nothing is there yet. After a bit of research, I think that the figures don't show up until the book actually launches. As I've just said, though, I'm not sure if the book has launched yet or not. So I don't know when I can expect to see sales numbers.

Signs I've probably done things wrong:

-I was supposed to send the book to reviewers with plenty of time to spare before it launched. The preview copies got delayed a lot, and so I was already not sure I gave them enough time when I sent the book out last week. But if the book has now launched, then all the reviews will be late.
-I knew there would be errors, but it was a little disheartening to get a text today from a friend (whose copy also came today) that said, "Nice editing, douche, and this is just page two" along with a photo of a typo.
-Although I can't see my actual sales figures yet, I don't think they're very good. I can see that Amazon currently ranks the book 1,454,547th in the world. It was much higher a few weeks ago, but it was never that great. We'll see, I guess.

Really, my goals for sales are just not to embarrass my not-for-profit publisher. That doesn't seem it should be that hard to do, but clearly, I need to step up my game.

6 comments:

  1. Slightly off topic, but this Millions article was written for you.
    http://www.themillions.com/2017/08/youre-a-writer-now.html

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    1. I feel like maybe I've read this before. If not this, something like it. I definitely had read enough to have really low expectations, to realized I wasn't going to have any red carpets spread before me. In fact, I was so well prepared for disappointment, there actually have been a few nice moments. When my ARCs came, nobody ran over them, and it was really great to see something I'd made come to life.

      Still, I just don't get a lot of the business aspects of it. I just can't get myself to pay attention to them. I posted about it on social media, I've blogged about it, I bugged my friends about it, I'm going to go to some appearances/readings. I just don't know how much more I can do. This isn't my day job.

      I guess posting yesterday must have done something. I suddenly jumped into the top 100,000 for a while. Was that all you? Did you buy 57 copies at once?

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  2. You mean your sales rank dropped once people could actually get the book?!

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    1. When it was first available to buy...July 20th or so...it was ranked about 40,000 for a while. Then, it slowly dropped for the next few weeks. Yesterday, it temporarily jumped back up again into the top 100,000. Amazon updates hourly, I guess. I'm out of people to shame into buying it, though, so I guess it's likely to just keep falling from now on.

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    2. i can get it cheapest on abebooks from the UK!

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    3. That's another thing that seems weird--how do all these multiple book sellers have the book in stock right now? There's even a used version for sale--although I think I know the origin of that one.

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