Is Amazon Getting into the Author Marketing Business?

I just received an email and a survey from Amazon's KDP program asking me a number of questions.

Every single question was geared toward determining what I have done to market my books. From writing on this blog to hiring the lovely Consetta Parker, they wanted to know everything.

What was the hardest thing about marketing? What was the most expensive? What was the easiest? What was I doing currently?

Then, they started asking questions about how much money I was spending on such efforts.

The email stated thusly:

As part of Kindle Direct Publishing’s ongoing effort to provide you with better services and support, we would like your feedback. Please help us by taking this short online survey which asks about your opinions and experiences with book marketing and more.

I think it's a prudent move for Amazon to get into book marketing, but they don't need to do a whole lot for it. All they'd need to do is hire a few readers to elevate the good stuff on the site and review it. That would be marketing enough. If I had to pay a small premium to get Amazon to read my book and decide whether or not it should get a review and better algorithm results, I'd be happy to do it. My books are well-reviewed enough and sell well enough that I wouldn't imagine I'd have a problem qualifying for something like that.

I'm not sure what I'd pay, but if Amazon is getting into that business, I'd certainly consider it.

But are they diving in to just take more money from the stereotypical bad self-publisher who can't figure out why their book isn't selling?

I've heard that Amazon's model isn't to sell 1,000,000 copies of a bestseller, but to sell 1 copy of a million poor sellers. To them, it's all the same. If they could do the same thing with marketing services to the same people, that would make lots of financial sense.

A survey from authors who utilize their desktop publishing is clearly an exploratory step. We'll see what comes next.

Anatomy of an Opening: The End of the Affair

Instead of breaking down a scene from a movie, this time we'll break down the opening of a book. (Previously, I've done scenes from City Lights, Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I've also broken down the opening to Starship Troopers.)

Graham Greene's The End of the Affair is absolutely one of my favorite books. The writing is lyrical and story heart-wrenching and beautiful. Greene's style of writing is such that he always has me gripped, whether it's the beginning of the book or the end. And he shows you so much about the character in his opening lines.

So, here are the first two paragraphs from the book:
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which, to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccurate pride of a professional writer who - when he has been seriously noted at all - has been praised for his technical ability, but d…

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Art and Politics

Art is inherently political.

Let's just get that out of the way. We all have things we want to say (or things we want to not say) in our personal lives that shape the art we make. And artists, more often than not, are trying to say something with their art, even if their goal is to not say something.

There is no doubt that this has been a turbulent week in the country I live in. There are many of us that are confused and shocked and afraid of what might be to come in the future. That's understandable. As artists and writers, I feel like we're typically more empathetic than the general population. It's easy to think about what it's like to be in someone else's shoes because we spend so much of our creative time almost literally in someone else's shoes. And we need to pass that understanding on to our readers or viewers or however else they're consuming this art.

I've seen this troubling idea, though, that art needs to be purely for escape and that p…

Writing is Listening

In many social situations, I'm a talker. I like to think of myself as a raconteur, but it's more just like I don't know how to shut up. At least in the right situation. I've done a lot and know just a little bit about so many different things, it's easy for me to find something to talk about with people. When I can come out of my social anxiety shell, I actually like talking to people. But there are times when I can't really talk, I don't have the energy, emotional or physical, to do it. Instead, I just drink in the surroundings.

I like to listen. I like to observe.

It's something we writers have to do. We have to take in all the input we can. And sometimes that means shutting the hell up and just listening. Listen to your friends tell their stories. Listen to how they talk about other people and describe them. Listen to the words they use. Listen to the emotion in people's voices as they're talking. Watch how they talk. What sorts of things th…

The stories of Bryan Young

Search This Blog