Going Organic: Keys to Kindle sales, part 2.

As a new author, getting your book out the door, that is to say finished-uploaded-and-for-sale, is an obvious challenge. Getting it noticed on Day One is an exercise in tapping into every connection you have in Friends, Family and people with Favors-owed to you. That gets you some sales, and more importantly some people to start writing Reviews. I've spoken before about how important those are here. But to talk about getting to the next stage of the published life of your book, I'd like to revisit that a bit.

Those first few days of sales will tail off, and might tail off very quickly. That's because a new author has no audience out there anticipating his work that has a sense of his style and interest in seeing more of it (hopefully). They don't talk about Established Authors having an advantage for nothing; it's a big advantage to be a known success. The other thing you are up against is getting the Amazon SEO to kick into higher gear and actually place the link to your Sales page where someone browsing can see it. They have Rankings based on sales made, listed by genre and subgenre, but you have to have had pretty substantial sales already to actually get listed high enough to make the first page of those ranking recommendations. Most people just browsing don't page down very much when searching.

Reviews, a lot of reviews, and at least a few superb ones, can get you more out of the Amazon SEO. Again, however, a caution: Don't "seed" reviews. Readers are very able to recognize there might be something fishy about 10 reviews on the same day using the same language to speak of how wonderful the book is. Hell, I've gotten eight reviews so far on Remember When, all top-grade, over the last couple of weeks... and still had a friend pull me aside and ask "did you tell people to give you good reviews?"... um, well, no. I sure begged reviews from everyone and their brother who I knew had the book, whether customers or Critical Readers from the time of the editing process. But seed them, or tell them what to say? Hell. no. For one thing, just accepting what ever someone chose to write has made my reaction to seeing a Review come up on the Amazon Sales page a lot more fun! I'd note that a couple of the Reviews were from completely blue-sky sources, too... people I had no idea would Review the book until I saw what they put out there.

Which leads to the rest of this topic today: At some point, people will learn of your book by word-of-mouth, referrals, or just finding it. Sales that come this way are called "Organic", as they no longer depend on buyers having any direct connection to the author. Let's be serious about this: a marginal sales success, measured long term for a modest e-book, is in the thousands of sales. If you did put out a marvel of modern writing *and if anyone noticed*, you will sell more by far. For a first-time author... not happening without kismet visiting you. Your only guaranteed sales with be from that Friends, Family and Favors-owed list above. For most people, that's less than a hundred sales. To get past that, you have to somehow get to the Organic part of the sales curve.

How do fans help a book get there?

Branching is a big help; If you liked the book, recommend it to people. Mention that they should recommend it too, if they like it. This word-of-mouth spread can get very powerful if repeated a couple of branches out... if someone you recommended it to then recommends it, and so on.

Social Media references help too: Obviously the author has expended all those sort of contacts, in the F, F & F-o stage of things, to get people to Share and Re-tweet and what all. But there is more to be gained if a fan of the book originates their own supportive posting about the book, which is then shared to their circle of friends who are mostly unlikely to be in the circle that the author has already sent promotional messages to.

Keep those Reviews coming: On Amazon Sales pages more Reviews are better, so long as they aren't a slam on the book. Customer reviews are more valuable than pre-release reader reviews, too.


What can the author do?

Blessed little once it is past the initial push. A bit of continued Social Media presence so people don't forget you exist is good. Having a discounted price sale one day, with wide announcement of it, to boost the units-sold count helps, especially if no one is reviewing the book. Paid promotion is an option, but a very costly one to risk for most authors and most books.

So do say so in the comments if you think of anything else, and otherwise I'll just keep plugging away at things and building for the future! Going Organic is all the fashion, after all.