Amazon Graphs

Every morning, while I am drinking my coffee, I check my Amazon stats. This is what my author rank graph looks like on Amazon, comparing my sales with all the other authors for all the books on Amazon. I can look at graphs for categories, too, comparing my books with all Kindle Romance books, or all print romance books. There are also graphs for each of my individual books.

For instance, below is part of the graph for Daddy Wanted.

Most of my books are sold at Amazon. Barnes & Noble does not sell as many. The other distributors sell far fewer. While other distributors report how many books were sold or list a rank number, only Amazon offers these graphs for authors--for free.

When the line shoots upward, I smile. When the line goes down, I shrug. It's not easy to sell books. Readers have a wide variety of choices. But for all the readers who have chosen to buy my books I'd like to offer a big THANKS. There are many mornings you made me smile. :-)

Begging for Reader Love

Being an author has discouraging moments. Writing books is fun. Selling books--not so much fun. Part of the strategy in selling books is collecting reviews. From what I've been told, the best way to sell books is to get a lot of reviews--specifically on Amazon. Supposedly, an author needs at least fifty reviews to make a difference in sales! The reviews can be good or bad evidently. It's the number that counts. Quantity not quality. :^(

My publishers solicit reviews as the books are released, but many times their notices are ignored. I have asked for reviews from reviewers and I get ignored, too. Experienced book reviewers are evidently busy people.

Book bloggers tend to be more willing to write reviews, but--of course--the author is responsible for contacting each and every one of them. However, not all of them will post the review on Amazon.

Of course, Amazon reviews are supposed to be written by customers, but one need not buy the book at Amazon to post a review. Anybody can do it as long as they have an Amazon account.

I have been lax in soliciting reviews and as a result, I do not have many. I have gotten some very nice reviews over the years, but most of those are not at Amazon.

Obviously, I have to do some catching up. Hence, I am basically begging. I need some reader love.

If you have read my books, please go to Amazon and let everyone know what you thought of them. (You could make yourself famous!)

If you would like to know more about how the system at Amazon works I found a fantastic explanation at Amazon Reader Reviews: 12 Things Everybody and His Grandmother Needs to Know .

You can make a big difference. :^)