Naima's Published Titles

Thursday, August 18, 2011

What I Did Instead of Working

Yesterday the work was so scarce that I logged in half my time as vacation and spent it surfing my social networks. On Twitter, CC Ekeke (@ccekeke) tweeted a link to the writer's newsletter he publishes called The Daily Novel. I read an article called Maximizing Digital Book Sales, by Carolyn McCray. It talked about improving your ranking in Amazon through tags and classifying. There are some categories in Amazon that are less populated and, therefore, less competitive -- shortening the distance to the hundredth place in the top 100 best-seller list. Some of the categories are classifications Amazon has total control over, but you can influence Amazon to classify your books by the use of tagging. This article explains how to use tagging to increase your visibility to Amazon and ultimately to more readers. Another tweet (and I apologize for forgetting which tweeter contributed) had a link to JK Rowling's address to a 2008 graduating class at Harvard. Her subject was the gifts of failure and imagination. It was so stirring. I had no idea she had had extraordinary experiences before she became a bestselling author. Blog surfing informed me that 2 Twitter followers have new books out: AL Fetherlin's Brynn, The Exorcist (she's gifting free review copies) and Elisa Hategan's Race Traitor, a thriller. I'm looking forward to reading both.


2 comments:

  1. Thank you for the plug!
    Amazon does not have a Christian Horror section. I had to put Brynn into the Christian Suspense section. I thought about writing to Amazon and begging them to add the horror section, but I think I'll wait until I have the second book out.
    I bring this up, because the strategy you discovered does make sense.

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  2. Hi AL,

    That's an interesting oversight on Amazon's part. Christian suspense seems like an ambivalent or ambiguous category -- I would assume just by looking at it that they meant these were Christian murder mysteries or psycho-thrillers. Is this the category for books like The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Anneliese Michele? If so, Brynn would be in good company :)

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