The Importance of Amazon Reviews

Image Credit: Amazon

Being an indie author isn’t exactly glamorous. No one is toasting you in New York. Your books aren’t gracing the front window display at B&N. They’re not written about in USA Today or the Times either. You’re not getting a whole lot of invitations to conferences or book signings. And interviews on TV or radio? Forget it. Those communication vehicles are reserved for authors signed by the big publishing companies. No, as an indie author, you’re probably toiling in obscurity just hoping that one day your big audience will find you.

But how do they do that? Spamming your Twitter followers certainly isn’t a viable solution (no matter how dedicated some indie authors seem to be to this method.) Facebook ads and webpage banners don’t seem to be the magic ingredient. Paid book reviews might work, but you’re either paying a fortune to a company like Kirkus or you’re cheating and facing a potential ban from the very sites you need to be listed on.

No, the only way to establish a robust audience as an indie author seems to be through the natural growth and buzz that legitimate book reviews on Amazon generate. The more people that post something positive about your work on that site, the more other people notice and decide to buy it for themselves. A reader browses through books in a particular genre. A couple of book covers, titles, or blurbs catch their eye. Which one are they more likely to purchase, the one with a handful of reviews or the one that 100+ people publicly recommend?

You know the answer to that one and so do I. That’s why I bit the bullet and gave away the ebook version of my post-apocalyptic novel Storm Orphans last weekend. Almost 1000 people downloaded it over the course of those three days. It had eight reviews at the time the promotion began. Yes, they’re very positive reviews, but just eight of them after two years on the market. In the three days since, a ninth review has been added to the list. Bless that ninth person! “bsslady_j” you rock! Now I sit and wait to see how many more of those 1000 people read, enjoy, and post something about my zombie-slaying crew on Amazon. The more that do, the more likely others will take their lead and decide to click that “Buy now” button.

Giving away the result of a year of work wasn’t an easy decision, but it is a strategy. Now we’ll see if it pays off.

Going Viral

Image Credit: Matt Handle

I went viral on Twitter for the first time this week. Being a new experience for me, I thought I’d blog about it since some of the behind-the-scenes numbers surprised me. First of all, I’ll admit that I didn’t anticipate this particular post being any more popular than my typical tweets. I’d like to think most of my tweets are interesting and/or witty, but frankly, not a lot of others seem to think so. I only have a few hundred followers and most of my tweets don’t get more than one or two retweets or likes. This isn’t to say that I’m looking for pity on that front, just setting the stage for how unusual this viral experience was for me.

Unlike a lot of my indie author peers, I do not tweet advertisements for my book. I’ve always found that practice both annoying and counterproductive. Why would people buy my book if I felt I had to spam them with pleas to do so? I figure I’ll post stuff that I believe is entertaining and those of like minds will eventually find it and perhaps consider buying my book for its potential entertainment value as well. My low sales volume probably suggests this is a poor strategy, but nevertheless, I’ve now properly set the stage for what happened Sunday night.

Like many people, I’m a fan of Game of Thrones. And like most of the audience, I thought this weekend’s episode “The Door” was the best of the season so far. The fate of fan favorite character, Hodor, was both devastating and amazingly well plotted. After watching the show on DVR, I posted a quip about that fate at about 1 AM. Given my small audience and the late hour, I didn’t expect much attention. As usual, I was just posting my thoughts on something I enjoy.

The tweet blew up immediately. The second I posted it, retweets and likes started racking up. The numbers spun upward so quickly, it reminded me of watching the price meter on a gas pump. By the time I went to bed 90 minutes later, it had been seen over 25,000 times. As of this writing, it’s been viewed a whopping 44,997 times. For a guy with just 336 followers when I posted the viral tweet, that’s pretty impressive.

But that’s not the main gist of this blog post. What I wanted to illuminate is just what those 45K views means in terms of real impact. As you can see in the screen capture above, although 45K people saw the tweet, less than 4,000 clicked on it. So I “engaged” less than 10% of those that viewed it. Out of those 3,865 people, 520 “liked” it and 265 retweeted it. More importantly, only 72 of the engaged viewers clicked my profile. This means just 0.16% of the people that saw my viral tweet were actually interested in who posted it. Finally, there was no increase in my book sales or downloads, meaning none of those 72 people were intrigued enough by my profile and other tweets to decide they wanted to read any of my work. If there’s a silver lining in these numbers, it’s that I did gain six new followers since the tweet. That’s 1.75% follower growth.

All told this news is obviously disheartening, but I still found it insightful and thought some of you might too. Going viral definitely doesn’t mean immediate success. It’s just one more step toward finding your true audience. 

Genesis of Twitter Bots

Image Credit: Gfycat

In 1978 the band Genesis released a ballad entitled “Follow You Follow Me”. It’s not one of my favorites, I’m more of an “Abacab” man myself, but it was their first hit in America. And I’m wondering whether it wasn’t a bit prophetic. I still suck at social networking. I joined Twitter over two years ago and despite publishing over a half dozen works since then along with 38 prior posts to this very blog, I have a whopping 236 followers as of this writing. The majority of people on Twitter do not dig me.

But I’m not sure they dig most writers. Particularly I don’t think they dig most indie writers. When I look at most of my more popular peers on Twitter I see things like Followers 83.9K, Following 83.4K. Hence my reference to the Genesis tune. It seems to me that people follow these writers not because they’re interested in what they post or publish, but simply to collect them in a symbiotic but ultimately empty “Follow You Follow Me”.  I imagine they just follow, mute, then unfollow if they don’t get the follow back. They certainly aren’t reading the tweets of over 83 thousand people.

This doesn’t make sense to me. And this is why I’m pretty sure I suck at social media. I’m reasonably amusing and/or interesting. At least on my better days. But you see, if I follow someone, it’s for one of a few reasons: I enjoy their work. I enjoy their posts. They’ve proven themselves actual readers of my work. I don’t follow them if they: Constantly post advertisements for their work or the work of others. Constantly retweet stuff that is clearly just automated endorsement rather than meaningful sharing. Regularly post content I consider obnoxious. And so my social media circle remains small. Like Phil Collins’ height small.

Perhaps one of these days something I write will go mainstream. I’ll join the ranks of J.K. Rowling (Following 241, Followed by 6.01M), Stephen King (Following 30, Followed by 1.08M), and E.L. James (Following 451, Followed by 947K). Until then I plan to continue to refuse Mike Rutherford’s sentimental late 70s refrain. I think the band hit the nail on the head regarding these false “followers” two years later on that superior song I mentioned.

It’s an illusion. It’s a game.

Or reflection of someone else’s name

Crunchy Loops

Image Credit: HNF

A week ago, I found a reference on Twitter to a whistle that was available in the 70s as a prize inside boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal. It could be used to hack phone lines and I thought this was such an interesting bit of trivia that I retweeted it. I found this tweet based on a search on the phrase “Cap’n Crunch” and I thought to do that search not because of a huge fondness for the cereal itself (I’m actually more of a Fruit Loops man) but because I admin and code for an online text-based adventure game named 3Scapes and years ago, I helped a friend write an area based on the Cap’n and his assorted friends and enemies.

So what? You might ask. Well, a few days before I retweeted that bit of obscurity, I tweeted that I’m reading and thoroughly enjoying Ernest Cline’s debut novel, Ready Player One. It’s a fantastically entertaining futuristic yarn about a boy that's hunting for a treasure left behind in cyberspace by a now-deceased game-coding mastermind. That mastermind just happens to have been a major fan of the 80s and the puzzles the boy must solve all involve obscure trivia from around that decade. Last night I reached page 176 and what do I discover? I find that one of the puzzles the boy must solve is based on a clue involving that very same Cap’n Crunch phone hacking whistle.

Mind = blown

My guess is that some of my readers will simply roll their eyes at this short tale of coincidence, but I find it extremely intriguing. Like troubleshooting code or eating your favorite cereal, you never know when you’re going to stumble upon a crunchy little loop.