If you’ve bought a book on Amazon, you know they will recommend another title to you that would make a good companion purchase ("Better Together" they call it). What you probably didn’t know is that the author, or publisher, can pay for that recommendation. The price of that plug depends on the bestselling status of the book you want to be paired with. Recently, a friend of mine decided to try it. He paid $750 to have his book paired with the new release by a major, bestselling author. Was it worth the money?
Amazon actually sent me the numbers on my sell-through and they are very revealing, confirming my
long-held belief that their sales rankings don’t mean a thing. Before the promotion, I was ranked in the solid mid-low six figures – around 300,000 plus or minus.
When the promotion started, the numbers improved dramatically, getting under
10,000 on a number of occasions and probably averaging under 25,000 for the
month. Total sales during July – 54 books. Total royalties earned, net of
agent’s commission – @ $27. Cost of promotion – $750. Lesson learned –
priceless.
A few years ago I was curious about how Amazon calculated its sales numbers. In those days it was possible to e-mail them questions. I did so: Are the rankings based on gross sales for each title? Or on numbers of books sold? And if so, how did the company rank hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass market books, all of which have different prices? Or was it based on some other system?
I tried several times and always got a canned response to the effect that “Amazon is excited about its rankings,” etc., etc. They always dodged the questions and I finally gave up. Business decisions can be based on those data, and I wanted answers they were not willing to offer me.
I later learned from book industry people that the rankings are based not on Amazon’s sales of titles, but its purchases, and can be skewed by returns.
I wish Amazon would tell us how they calculate the rankings. Like so many others, I want to know if the rankings have any integrity at all.
As far as I know, no one paid for my two “Better Together” pairings. They caught me by surprise. I’ve been paired with Victor Gischler and Ray Banks. Not surprising. We turn up in the same circles a lot, but I have no idea how those pairings came to be.
Are all the “Better Together” pairings paid for. Because I doubt that an author or publisher would pay to have two books from the same series paired together.
Amazon keeps all their number stats to themselves. We’re supposed to be impressed by them but there’s no way to know what’s behind them.
Mark
The majority of “Better Together” pairings, as I understand it, AREN’T paid for. Amazon has some computer program that makes the suggestions. But publishers and authors do pay for the recommendations as well (which is why you may see some self-published title paired with the latest John Grisham novel).
Amazon keeps all their number stats to themselves. We’re supposed to be impressed by them but there’s no way to know what’s behind them.
Who says you’re supposed to be impressed by them? Who even pays attention to them other than the individual authors? Every time I make a point of looking up a book’s number, it takes me 30 seconds of scanning the page just to find it. The ranking get lost in the middle of all the other fine print like the ISBN number.
Unless the book is ranked high enough to get onto their top sellers page, which would at least have the chance of helping sells, it hardly seems to make any difference.
Pay to Sell Your Books?
I just read this over at Lee’s blog, and it looks like you can pay to get your book paired with another bestselling novel at Amazon (in its recommendation section, like “If you like this, you may want to buy…). One of his friends pa…
Yeah, I thought they just paired them based on content. Paying for this promotional stuff is only good for the company selling the promotion. It’s a classic vanity scam. I never get conclusions like what I’m supposed to feel like from looking at a company’s page or numbers. That sounds like a leap of faith to me.
Yeah, But My Obsession Doesn’t Come With A Sales Report
One of the great mysteries of life, aside from the continued success of Carrot Top and the inexplicable way my wife always knows where I’ve left my keys and wallet, is how Amazon pairs books together for their Better Together
Yeah, But My Obsession Doesn’t Come With A Sales Report
One of the great mysteries of life, aside from the continued success of Carrot Top and the inexplicable way my wife always knows where I’ve left my keys and wallet, is how Amazon pairs books together for their Better Together
There seem to be two different categories at work here: “Better Together” is the non-paid pairing determined by what Amazon considers appropriate (for example, sequential volumes in a series). The second category, “Best Value,” is pay-for-play.
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Amazon, of course. 🙂
Mark