Amazon 'bestseller campaigns' -- Do they work? Is it cheating?

Every day, it seems, more authors are turning to "Amazon bestseller campaigns."

Who can blame them? What author doesn't want to say, "My book is a bestseller."

Consultants are popping out of the woodwork, offering to orchestrate a campaign -- for fees up to several thousand dollars. And here's an ad for an Amazon Bestseller campaign that offers a money-back guarantee if they fail to get your book to the top of the chart, virtually promising "celebrity status." Classes on how to run your own campaign cost $2,587.

But are Amazon bestseller campaigns worth it? Are they ethical? Can an unknown author really push their book to Number 1 on Amazon's bestseller list?

First, let's define what an Amazon bestseller campaign is. You arrange for people with big e-mail lists (usually publishers of e-mail newsletters) to send a promotional message about your book, asking people to buy your book at Amazon on a certain date. And each list owner contributes a free product -- such as an e-book or interview transcript -- which the buyer receives after buying your book. It's recommended that you line up several list owners, who can send your promotional message to more than 100,000 prospects.

So here's the way the pitch goes:

Dear John Doe, would you like to receive this great assortment of free e-books and interviews? Buy my friend John Doe's great new book on Amazon.com on Sept. 25. Send me your receipt or order number from Amazon, and I'll send you the freebies. (To see the actual text of one of these pitches, see this post on John Kremer's book marketing blog.)

Typically, the freebies are digital files sent via e-mail, such as interview transcripts or audio files. The idea is, the lure of the giveaways gets people to act immediately, driving your book up the charts on the appointed date.

If enough readers -- say 600 to 750 -- respond to the e-mail and buy your book on Amazon, it can very well go to the top of the charts. (Amazon sales ranks are recalculated hourly, so any book that sells several hundred books on a single day will go toward the top.) Just for insurance, you're supposed to tell all your family and friends to buy your book on the promotion date, too.

What's in it for the other list owners? In return for sending the e-mail promotion, they receive a list of everyone who responded to the book promotion. They can add those names and e-mail addresses of qualified online book buyers to their own lists. Also, the freebies they contributed such as reports and interviews are often used to upsell customers to other products, such as books or courses.

Many of these Amazon bestseller campaigns have flopped, but several have worked, getting the book all the way to number 1, even if just for a while. But thereafter, the author can describe the book as an "Amazon Bestseller."

Some folks object to bestseller campaigns, arguing they're manipulative, that it's not "real sales." They say bestseller lists should reflect how book buyers really voted with their dollars, not what happened when their arms were twisted to buy on a certain date.

The consultants argue that every book needs marketing. Nobody will buy any book unless they find out about it. Word of mouth is the best advertising, but it needs to start somehow.

Let's run through a few more objections to Amazon bestseller campaigns:

-- It's unethical or illegal to "spam" unsuspecting consumers with an advertisement for a book.

Spam is illegal, but we'll give everybody the benefit of the doubt for the purposes of this discussion. We'll assume that everyone receiving the e-mail promotion has already agreed to receive periodic messages from the folks sending the e-mail.

-- Isn't this gaming the system, manipulating the list?

Reputable publishers do Amazon promotions all the time to get their books to the top of the list. Publishers do anything and everything to get their books onto the New York Times bestseller lists and every other list that matters. Getting your book to the top of Amazon's list, however, can be done in less time and with less money than getting onto the better-known lists.

And it's not just unknowns who are using Amazon bestseller campaigns -- bestselling author Wayne Dwyer's publisher ran an online promotion for his latest book, "Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling." The grand prize was airfare and weekend accommodations to one Dwyer's speaking events

After all, most bestsellers made their way to the top of the list by being promoted, not because they were great books.

Even if an Amazon bestseller campaign is successful in achieving bestseller status, that won't mean the book is ultimately successful. It's likely to fall right back down the charts after the one-day promotion ends.

Here's the bottom line: any successful book has an integrated marketing plan. And if a book doesn't deliver, no amount of marketing will sell it. A poor book that manages to get sold will often be returned.

But in case you're still curious about Amazon bestseller campaigns and are on a budget, here's an e-book on the topic priced at $47. I haven't read the book and can't say whether it's worthwhile.

More information about Amazon bestseller campaigns is on this thread.

How to get malicious book reviews removed from Amazon

One of the keys to the success of your book is reviews, especially those written by "real people" on Amazon.com. Positive reviews on Amazon encourages browsers to buy your book at both Amazon and in brick-and-mortar bookstores. But what happens when your book receives a bad review, one that you believe is inappropriate?

Authors should keep a close eye on the reviews appearing on Amazon. In most cases the company promptly removes reviews that don't conform with its guidelines:

Review content must not be "illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of 'spam.'"

Reviewers are prohibited from using false e-mail addresses, impersonating other persons or entities. Also prohibited are profanity, obscenities, spiteful remarks, phone numbers, mail addresses, URLs, product pricing information or availability, alternative ordering or shipping information, or solicitations for helpful votes.

Amazon has also deleted negative reviews posted by competing authors, reviews that contain inaccurate information about the author or publisher, and off-topic reviews that don't discuss the book.

How can you protest an inappopriate review on Amazon? Send an e-mail to community-help@amazon.com and succinctly state the facts. You should receive a reply within a few days. If you receive a boilerplate response that the review conforms to Amazon's guidelines and will not be deleted, feel free to write back until you reach someone willing to carefully assess the situation.

Product reviews are one of the most useful and popular of Amazon's features. But since Amazon doesn't verify the identity of reviewers, the system can be abused. In one well-publicized case, a prankster posed as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and posted review trashing Windows. Around the same time, Amazon promised it would prevent such abuses in the future by allowing only persons who had actually purchased a book with their Amazon account to post a review. But the crackdown never came, apparently Amazon sees too many benefits from its open reviewing system.

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.

Your key to book sales: Shameless self-promotion

As an author, your credibility depends on burnishing your image as an expert in your field.

Show me a writer who doesn't practice blatant self-promotion, and I'll show you a writer headed for oblivion and failure. If you don't toot your own horn, you're not going to be heard. Self-promotion isn't unethical or egotistical, it's part of the writer's job.

Shameless self promotion works. It shows your audience and you believe, and they should too. But self-promotion is a challenge for many writers, who tend to be a shy lot. If you want to be a successful author, you'll need to work around any shyness. In the beginning at least, your job of letting people know about your book is just as important as having written it.

Get started now. There's no law saying you have to toil in obscurity for years working your way up the food chain. The sooner you start acting like you're in "the club", the sooner you'll be a member.

For sure, you'll run into folks who believe it's unseemly, or somehow unethical for a writer to plug their own work. Pay no attention to them. If you're proud of your book, it's your duty to let others know about it.

On your book's back cover, explain why you're qualified to write the book. Say exactly why people should listen to you. Your "About the Author" copy is your job resume -- it's your job application you're submitting to your prospective readers. Present yourself in the best possible light. For example, are you publisher of the Internet's most popular blog on fly-fishing, furniture refinishing, or laser eye surgery? Then say so! Are you president of your local writer's group? Put it on your resume! List every pertinent award you've ever received, and write it as if you're a journalist who's discovered the next great author.

After all, the point of writing is for others to read your work. If your potential readers understand you're passionate about your book, they'll be infected with your enthusiasm.

Above all, get your book into the hands of the opinion-makers in your field, let them become your evangelists. That's the advice of author Justine Larbalestier on author self-promotion.

Continue reading this blog, and you'll read more about the tools -- the nuts and bolts -- of publicizing your writing. But first, make sure you have the inner confidence, strength, and commitment.