Q&A: Should I recommend books by competing authors?

QUESTION: I've written two nonfiction books, and I maintain a Web site and blog to promote them. Would it be smart for me to use this platform to recommend competing books by other authors?

ANSWER: Yes.

There are two attitudes you can take toward this:

1. If competing books are successful, it will come at your expense, robbing you of sales.

2. Success of comparative books will encourage visibility and sales of your book.

If your book is strong -- if it delivers the goods, you should take the latter view. With few exceptions, book buyers will not rule out the purchase of a book simply because a comparative title is available.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume a few things: The books we're discussing are all moderately priced books in the same nonfiction niche or fiction genre. And each book is of good quality -- they deliver the goods. They're professionally presented, and have garnered good reviews.

So we're left with the question: Can the book market support more than one book in a given niche? The evidence I've seen suggests that a narrow niche can support at least six books simultaneously.

What's the evidence? I monitor the Amazon Sales Rank of my book and its five closest competitors on an hourly basis, using a simple software program that fetches this data. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, I see the same pattern over and over: The Amazon Sales Ranks of these six comparative books rise and fall together, they never move independently for more than an hour. When sales of my book go up, all the related books go up with it. And the same thing happens on the way down: When my sales slack off, the sales of each of the five comparative books dips too.

Regular Amazon shoppers can easily guess why this happens. When a buyer places a book into their Amazon shopping cart, the first thing appearing on their screen is three comparative books. Along with the titles and cover art, the buyer sees the message, "Customers who bought [the book in your cart] also bought [Title A, Title B, and Title C]."

What happens next? Four possibilities:

-- The buyer ignores the three comparative titles, and buys your book only.

-- The buyer decides to buy your book and one or more of the comparative titles. Offers of free shipping or additional discounts can influence this decision.

-- The buyer doesn't purchase your book, and buys comparative title(s) instead.

-- The buyer decides to delay or cancel any purchase.

Only Amazon's proprietary sales information would show which scenario happens most. But results are surely different for every combination of titles, based on factors such as price, date of publication, shipping availability, and the perceived quality of the book.

Often, buyers of nonfiction books will readily buy a comparative title once they become aware of it. Book buyers eager to learn about a niche topic will often buy as many related books as they can find. I've seen evidence of this in the Amazon Associates sales data from my Web site: When buyers click on an Associates link to purchase my book on Amazon, they often purchase a comparative title also -- about 30 percent of the time.

Brick-and-mortar bookstore shoppers behave in the same way, so long as comparative titles are in stock and within view of one another. But the process is more efficient on Amazon, and can also be prompted by e-mail contact initiated by Amazon. The company sends "Amazon Recommends" e-mails periodically, pitching comparative titles based on the customer's previous purchases.

How many books can the market support? There's no way of predicting it. But if the market for your niche is large enough, the rising tide will lift all boats. If the market is too small, some or all of the titles can sink. Usually, one or two titles in a niche will be stronger, for a variety of reasons: a better-known author, superior marketing, or simply a better cover design.

Getting back to your question: Is it smart to recommend other authors' books? I think it will only help. Your audience will appreciate your willingness to point out the value in others' work, helping them to find the answers they need. I'd recommend doing it in these ways:

-- Write reviews of comparative books, and post your reviews on Amazon.com and on your own Web site, embedded with affiliate links. This will bring in additional revenue from your Web site for your title and from sales of the comparative titles you mention.

-- Crediting strong points from another author's book on your own Web site or blog. Use these points as a jumping-off point for your own discussion.

Resist any temptation to bad-mouth your competition, it will only make you look small. Naturally, you believe your book is the cream of the crop. But you won't win any fans by trashing someone else's work. If you must make comparisons, limit your discussion to the obvious differences, not your opinions.