Amazon Bestseller
Campaigns
John Kremer
Copyright © 2008 by John Kremer
All rights reserved. As the buyer of this program, you
have the right to use this material in the promotion of
your own book and/or those of your clients. If used with
clients, you are not allowed to reveal all the details of
this program to your clients without applying for an
additional license from Open Horizons and John Kremer.
Open Horizons
P O Box 2887
Taos NM 87571
Phone: 575-751-3398
Fax: 575-751-3100
Email: JohnKremer@bookmarket.com
Web: http://www.bookmarket.com
The Amazon Bestseller
Campaign
Below are the basic steps you need to take to create and
carry out a New York Times bestseller campaign in the
style of an Amazon.com bestseller promotion.
1. Locate your campaign partners.
Your partners should include all the authors, publishers,
ezine editors, bloggers, and website owners you know
who have something to sell to a similar audience to the
one you want to reach. If these people aren’t already in
your network, you need to do more research.
1. Websites: Use Google, Yahoo, or another search
engine to target the websites with the highest rankings
for your key words.
2. Blogs: Use Technorati.com to search for those blogs
that are targeting readers who would be likely readers of
your book. Again, search by the key words to target
your audience.
If you are a business author, check out: Todd And’s
Power 150 List of marketing blogs:
http://www.toddand.com/power150.
For a list of book review and literary blogs, check out
this site:
http://metaxucafe.com/cafe/find_members/index.
When contacting bloggers, be sure you don't violate any
of the rules major bloggers live by. To read about these
rules, see http://customscoop.com/resources/
whitepapers/Seven_Sins.pdf.
3. Ezines: Use one of the following online sites to locate
appropriate ezines, ones that are again targeted at your
key audiences.
Freezine Web — http://www.freezineweb.com
ZineBook — http://www.zinebook.com
Ezine Universe — http://www.ezine-universe.com
Zinos — http://www.zinos.com
Ezine Directory — http://www.ezine-dir.com
2. Send out emails or make phone calls
to all your potential partners.
Ask them to join your bestseller campaign.
Why would they want to participate in such a campaign?
Easy. They will get promotional exposure to everyone
who receives the sales promotion since their bonus
offering will be featured in the sales copy. In addition,
they will get to add each buyer’s name to their list when
those buyers come to their website to download their
bonus.
To get enough partners involved, you will have to followup a number of times. Once they commit to sending out
your campaign, to be sure they mail to their list, you will
need to send reminders probably several times leading
up to your email drop date.
3. Compile great bonuses.
You must get a list of 20 to 30 bonuses to be included in
your promotion. Help your partners identify the bonus
each can offer that will be most attractive to the lists
you will be mailing to. Remember: The bonuses often
determine whether or not someone acts right away to
buy your book. They might buy your book anyway, but
to get them to act right away, you must offer must-have
bonuses.
Here are a few items your partners could offer: reports
created from book excerpts in DOC or PDF format, an
MP3 audio interview, a recorded speech MP3 download,
a discount coupon for consulting, a PDF report created
by consolidating several articles, an ebook in any
format, or a teleseminar delivered in MP3 format.
Don’t include hard copy bonuses. All bonuses should be
delivered via online downloads (cheaper and a lot easier
to fulfill, plus then each participant can capture the
email addresses of the buyers to add to their ezine
lists).
4. Write the sales letter.
Once you’ve compiled the list of bonuses, you need to
write a compelling sale letter, making an offer that
knocks the socks off your readers. If you’re not good at
writing sales copy, research some of the others sales
letters previously used in bestseller campaigns. Copy
their structure and language, but adapt it to your book’s
benefits (and reasons to buy) and the bonuses included
in your offer.
You can find examples of the sales letter (both the email
to be sent and the website sales letter) in the Appendix.
Some people try to carry out a bestseller campaign with
few or no partners. They’ll write something like the
following:
Our new release XYZ Book is starting to get great
reviews. We are going to try to get high on the charts
at Amazon.com. In order to do this, we are
requesting that if you plan to purchase this DVD for a
daughter, son or friend, please do so on April 15th at
Amazon.com.
Now, try to guess how well such a campaign performs.
That’s the campaign. Maybe it sells another 10 or 20 or
even 100 books (all depending on how many people
receive the note), but it will not create an Amazon.com
bestseller. It can’t. Not enough people will be exposed to
the plea. There’s no incentive to act even if you get the
plea, other than to help out a friend (if the sender is a
friend).
The above note is taken from an email I received from
someone I barely knew. No incentive, unless I had
someone I wanted to buy a gift for this week. That’s a
poor paltry luck of the draw chance. Nada.
In addition, the note was sent within an email that
included three other sales messages. Don’t ever send a
bestseller campaign email that includes more than one
action point: Buy this book on this date (or during this
week) and get all these great bonuses for helping us
out.
5. Send the sales letter to your partners.
Let them know which day to drop the mailing. They
should send out the email sales letter during the week of
your promotion. Remember: Anyone offering a bonus
should also mail the promotional sales letter to their
customer list, or include a notice in their ezine, or post a
notice on their website, and/or include a post in their
blog.
6. Put the main sales letter on your
website.
The email sales letter is short and sweet. It spurs people
to go visit your website where you will have put up a
much longer sales letter featuring all the bonuses, bonus
contributors, etc.
7. Drop the letter.
The letter should be sent out the week of the promotion.
You need to have the letter go out to at least one million
people to have any impact on sales. Better yet, it should
go out to two to three million. Your goal is to sell at
least several thousand, hopefully 10,000 books via
Amazon.com during one specific week. In general, .05%
of those on a cold email list will become buyers. 3% is in
the high range of sales for a really strong list.
8. Send buyers to Amazon.com.
Be sure that your letter sends people to the right page
on Amazon.com (provide them with the specific link)—
and that they buy during the specific day or hours for
your campaign. That’s the only way your book stands a
chance of breaking out from the huddled book masses.
9. Tell them how to get their bonuses.
In the sales letter, be sure to tell them to email or fax
you their receipt from Amazon.com. Once you receive
their receipt, send them a return email with a link to the
page where they can get the download links for all the
bonuses included in your campaign. Note: Only 50 to
75% of buyers will actually go to get the bonuses. They
won’t actually download all bonuses. They generally are
selective.
10. Send a thank-you note to your
partners.
And provide them with the details on the success of the
program: How many people bought your book. What
rank did your book achieve. Samples of any thank-you
emails you receive from buyers. This will encourage your
partners to work with you on future promotions, ongoing campaigns, and other partnership activities. The
true goal of any Amazon.com promotional campaign is
the relationships you create.
11. Now do something more.
Any bestseller campaign only works if it is part of an
integrated marketing plan. Doing a bestseller campaign
is really worthless if you are not doing some other things
to help keep your book high on the list. For most of the
past 5 to 10 years, my 1001 Ways to Market Your Books
has hovered between 2,000 and 10,000 in the Amazon
bestseller list.
12. Partner with other campaigns.
If you want to be successful in doing additional
Amazon.com or New York Times bestseller campaigns,
be sure to participate in other author’s campaigns as
well when you are asked. Remember that you are
creating relationships that could last for years and profit
you in many ways beyond the one-time campaign.
Conclusion
The above points cover the basic steps you need to
carry out in doing an Amazon.com bestseller strategy.
Don’t ignore any step in the process. Don’t fudge it.
Don’t think you can run such a campaign without any
partners. Don’t settle for poor partners. Go for the best
partners, with the largest email lists, most visited
websites, most active blogs. Again, use this campaign as
the first step in creating a relationship that you can build
on.
Biggest note: Don’t roll out such a campaign without at
least 1,000,000 people receiving the promotion. Better
yet, mail to 2,000,000 or more. Do the math. Make sure
that you gather together enough partners to do a
credible campaign. Don’t cheat here. 95% of the
unsuccessful Amazon bestseller campaigns failed
because they were not mailed to enough people.
Amazon.com Strategy on Steroids
Besides building relationships with key emailers,
bloggers, and website owners so you are mailing to
more than a million people, you can also boost your
campaign by doing the following:
Write articles that you syndicate online. Post any
articles you write to online article directories. You can
find a long list of such directories by going to
http://www.bookmarket.com/onlinearticles.htm.
Make sure that the articles you write are posted at least
a week or two before your campaign. Also, be sure that
the articles include a link to your bestseller campaign
sales page—and a reason to go to that link.
Write a great press release and release it online.
Write a press release featuring a great story that ties
into your book. Include a link in the press release to
your website (which, in turn, can include a prominent
link to your bestseller campaign sales page.
To distribute your press release online, use one or more
of the free and/or paid online PR distribution services
featured at http://www.bookmarket.com/onlinepr.htm.
Make use of social networking websites to create
relationships to expand your bestseller campaign.
Besides blogging websites, there are also knowledgesharing websites such as Squidoo and Helium as well as
photo-sharing websites such as Flickr and Photobucket,
video-sharing websites such as YouTube and Metacafe,
and social networking websites such as Bebo, Coghead,
Digg, Linked to, Shelfari, Xanga, etc.
How to Sell More of Your Books
on Amazon.com
Besides developing an Amazon Bestseller Campaign to
sell your books, Amazon continues to offer many new
ways for its users to comment on books and other
products for sale on the site. Below are a few of the
sections appearing on book pages that you can use to
sell more of your books — and set up an Amazon.com
book shop on your web site to make even more income!
Write a So You’d Like to Guide
You can write a guide on how to do anything, whether
you’re an expert on that subject or not. Obviously it
makes most sense to write guides on your expertise.
The guides are currently limited to a 100-word minimum
and a 1,500 word maximum. For example, I wrote a
guide, Self-Publish and Create a Bestseller, which is now
featured on the book page of every book I listed in the
guide. So now my name is in front of anyone buying one
of the major books on self-publishing. People read these
guides and are also encourage to rate them. Chris
Epting wrote a guide, Plan a Road Trip, that featured
only his books. Thus far, it’s been read 230 times.
Create a List for Listmania
Amazon allows users to create all sorts of book lists on
whatever hits their fancy. Any list you create will be
featured on the pages of the books you list. It’s a great
way to tie into related books and get your name and
book noticed by people already looking to buy
competitive titles.
Use Tags to Help People Discover Your Books
Amazon now allows readers to tag any book with key
words. Be sure to tag your book for key words that you
think people would use to find your book on Amazon
when they don’t know the title or when they’re simply
searching for books in a specific subject area. Here are
the tags I’ve added so far to my book: marketing online,
book marketing, books, self-publishing, writing books,
book author, authors, book publicity, publicity,
bookselling, promoting books, self-promotion, book
promotion, promoting online, and Internet marketing.
Book Reviews
Write reviews of other related titles and include your
book title as part of your signature on the review. This is
one way to piggyback on the popularity of related titles.
If you have time, write a review for every book related
to your book. But only write reviews for books that you
have actually read and enjoyed. Don’t be critical, glib, or
superficial. Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing
Manual, has written 198 book reviews on Amazon.com
as of April 2006. 1,739 people have said that his reviews
were helpful to them.
Customer Images
You can now add more images to your book’s page
besides the book cover. There’s a link under the book
cover where you can share your own customer images.
If you note the current listing for 1001 Ways, I’ve added
a photo of myself speaking at BookExpo America, a copy
of the new cover for the 6th edition, and a photo of one
reader’s copy packed with sticky notes and tabs. These
images can only help sell the book.
Customer Discussions
This is a new beta program where users can share their
questions, insights, and views about books and other
products. Amazon is encouraging people to give reviews,
ask questions, compare products, and join in the group
discussions. I used this section to alert browsers on the
page featuring the 5th edition of 1001 Ways to Market
Your Books that a new edition is coming out by May
15th. I encouraged readers to wait to buy the new
edition rather than buy one of the used copies currently
offered for sale.
Citations
When you send in the table of contents, biography,
index, and other key sections of your book to Amazon to
enhance your book’s listing, be sure to include a
bibliography, even if there isn’t one in the physical book.
Each citation you make will be noted on the pages of the
books you cite (in the Citations section). This is just one
of a number of ways to get your book featured on the
pages of related titles, including the bestselling titles!
AmazonConnect
This powerful new program allows readers to receive
messages directly from their favorite authors. It opens a
what could be an incredibly intimate channel of
communication between you as an author and your
readers. Participating authors can post messages on
their book detail pages and to the home page of readers
who have bought their books on Amazon.com.
Amazon shoppers can subscribe to receive every new
posting from their favorite authors. These new postings
will appear in the user’s plog. That’s Amazon’s new
name for a personalized web log of their activity on
Amazon, including author postings, changes in their
orders, new products that have just been released, and
much more.
Amazon Shorts
These are new short works from well-known authors
that are available only on Amazon.com (you have to
give them an exclusive for a minimum of six months).
These short stories and essays are delivered
electronically and sell for only 49 cents. Amazon notes
the following benefits to authors for participating in this
new program: it can promote the author’s backlist titles,
maintain author visibility between published books,
introduce readers to unfamiliar authors, provide a new
outlet to sell short fiction, and create an author profile
page.
For publishers, the main benefit is the ability to feature
excerpts from forthcoming books to boost pre-orders or
to sustain on-going sales. Amazon wants pieces that are
between 2,000 and 10,000 in length. They are
encouraging participants to contribute new items on a
regular basis. If you’d like to participate, email them at
amazon-shorts@amazon.com. Tell them why you would
be a good addition to their program.
Amazon Fishbowl
This new weekly podcast is hosted by Bill Maher where
he interviews book authors. Thus far, he is leaning
heavily toward interviewing famous authors from bigger
publishers. We can hope that policy will change soon, or
that Amazon will add other programs favoring lesser
known authors and books. If you’d like to host such a
podcast, you can always propose such a program to
Amazon. They are always looking for ways to feature
and sell more books.
Amazon Wire
This is a free original podcast about books, movies,
music, and those who create them. Any Amazon.com
visitor can listen to the podcast online or download it for
playing on their iPod. The April 2006 podcast featured
interviews with Oceans 11 movie director Steven
Soderbergh, Chris Stein of Blondie, and Steven Drozd of
The Flaming Lips. It also included an exclusive audio
essay from Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner on
teaching monkeys to use money.
Amazon Marketplace
You can also sell your book directly to people on Amazon
by clicking on the Sell Yours Here link on your book’s
page at Amazon. You can set your own price. Be sure to
indicate that your book is new and signed (that makes it
more valuable as a collectible). When someone orders
from you via this link, Amazon collects the money and
sends you the order to fulfill. Then once a month they
send you a check for 85% of your sale price minus 99
cents. They even give you a postage credit for sending
the book via media mail. It’s real easy to set this up.
When I checked Amazon’s listing for 1001 Ways to
Market Your Books on April 15, 2005, there were 37
listings for new and used copies of my book for resale by
others. Most were new copies probably obtained from
Ingram, so I’m making money on most of those sales
just as if Amazon had made the sale direct.
If you are worried about people selling used or review
copies of your book on Amazon, stop worrying. It’s not
worth the worry. Remember: Every book that gets into
the hands of a reader somewhere will result in the sale
of another copy (if your book is any good).
If you are still worried about used copies, there’s a
simple solution: Sell your own new copies at a price
lower than the used copies listed at Amazon. You’ll still
make money on the sale as long as the used copy price
isn’t too low.
Buy X, Get Y Paid Placement
Amazon provides one key advertising options: the Buy
X, Get Y paid placement, which links two books together
with a suggestion to buy both. You can pay to have your
book title linked with a better known or better selling
title. Your title is linked on the page of the better-selling
book, bolded, and given an additional 5% discount to
encourage sales. Nominations for the BXGY program
must be submitted one month before the desired start
date but not more than three months in advance. You
can only link with one other title at a time. BXGY
promotions are displayed on the first or the 16th of the
month following receipt of payment (by check only at
this time). It currently costs $1,000 for a one- month
link to a top 250 title; only $750 for a title ranked over
250.
Some self-published authors who have paid for this
placement program have report significant up-ticks in
sales. It is certainly worth testing.
Help customers find your books using Search
Suggestions
As a valued Connect author, you have early access to
our new Search Suggestions feature. When you sign into
Amazon.com using your AmazonConnect account, go to
your book detail page and find the heading "Help others
find this item" that appears below the book image. Here
you can click on "Make a search suggestion" to create
additional search phrases which will help customers find
your book. Your explanation of why your search phrase
is relevant will appear together with your book in a
customer's search results.
Make changes to your book detail page using our
Online Catalog
If you see an error or missing information on your book
page, go to our Online Catalog to submit your changes.
You can access the Online Catalog directly from your
book page using the "Would you like to update product
info?" link, located beneath your Amazon.com sales
rank. Because you are a trusted author participating in
AmazonConnect, your change requests will receive
priority service from the Online Catalog team.
Amazon.com Bestseller Campaigns:
A Few Samples
If you ever thought of doing your own Amazon.com
bestseller campaign, then you might want to check into
the campaign now being done for Diane Lu's Daughter of
the Yellow River. Why? Because she has so many
participants, including people mailing to their lists as
well as dozens and dozens giving away free reports,
audios, etc. to buyers of her book. Her list of movers
and givers could be contacted to help you as well,
especially if your book is on relationships, health, selfhelp, business, motivation, or related topics.
I don't generally participate in these Amazon.com
bestseller campaigns. I think they've been overdone, but
I do know their power in getting attention for your book
online. So I still encourage authors to do an
Amazon.com bestseller campaign at least once in the life
of their book, no matter how new or old the book is.
Anyway, to check out Diana Lu's offer, see
http://www.bookbonuses.com/lu.
Diana's book went from an Amazon.com ranking of
304,648 on Tuesday, April 4, to a rank of 8,366 on
Wednesday afternoon, a rank of 4,516 on Thursday
morning, a rank of 992 by Thursday afternoon, and 271
by late Thursday evening. Her campaign began on
Tuesday and went through Thursday.
Now that rise is nice, but it doesn’t signify enough sales
to justify what it might have cost her to mount the
campaign — at least not by the numbers alone. But
think of how many people were exposed to her book.
Think of how many will end up buying the book weeks or
months later. Think of how many people will be inspired
to talk more about her book after seeing the promotion.
Have you done your Amazon.com promotion yet? When
do you plan to do it? It is still one of the most effective
online sales tools ever created for books. Its power to
draw attention and create sales is still unparalleled,
especially for having a fast and measurable impact on
the sales of a book.
Here’s another example if you want to see how an
Amazon.com bestseller campaign is done well — with a
wonderfully designed web page to make the sales pitch:
http://www.trainone.com/special/april4. It includes
great graphics, a short video from the author, some
fresh bonuses I’ve not been offered before, and an
overall effective and attractive web page design.
Except for one thing, it would be a perfect page. What is
the one caveat? It apparently takes too long to load if
you have a slow Internet connection. So if you model
this page in your Amazon.com promotions, be sure to
have some sort of alternative for people who still have
slow connections to the Internet.
The page promotes Jeff Gitomer’s The Little Red Book of
Sales Answers. Gitomer is a wonderfully succinct author
who provides practical information that anyone can
follow. His weekly ezine Sales Caffeine has 80,000
subscribers!
How did I find out about this promotion? Not through a
newsletter. Not through an email campaign. Instead, I
found out via an RSS feed to a blog I regularly follow.
What does this mean to you? It means that when you do
your Amazon.com promotion, be sure to include all
avenues: website updates, ezine promotions, and lots of
notices on blogs.
His book ranked #623 at Amazon.com on Wednesday
and #3 by Thursday morning (it did hit #1 sometime on
Wednesday or Thursday).
http://www.amazonservices.com/promerchant
Pro Merchant: Your Products on Amazon.com
Amazon currently has over 66 million active customers.
Pricing: $39.99 plus 15% referral fee to Amazon
There are no individual item listing fees and no credit
card processing fees; only a flat monthly subscription
fee of $39.99 and a referral fee when your items sell.
Sell your stuff (Amazon Marketplace)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/sell-your-stuff.html
You can sell individual items via this page.
The item must already be listed in Amazon.
To sell unlisted items, you have to be a Pro Merchant.
Amazon Honor System
http://zme.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/fx/home.ht
ml/102-7683425-5340904
Your Web site's visitors return time and again for great
information, entertainment, and community. The
Amazon Honor System lets them show their
appreciation--by giving you cash. People can donate to
any cause you specify or give to you to donate or give to
you in simple appreciation for what you do. You pay
Amazon 2.9% of the donation plus 30 cents for each
payment.
WebStore by Amazon
http://www.amazonservices.com/webstore/pricing.html
WebStore by Amazon an Amazon Services Product,
includes your own branded, custom online store
powered by Amazon technology, support, and
transaction processing all for only $59.99 per month and
a referral fee of 7% on items that sell.
http://g-ecx.imagesamazon.com/images/G/01/marketing/makemoney/logo_fulfillmentbyamazon._V8347598_.gif
Fulfillment by Amazon
They handle your fulfillment for Amazon products and
other products. You ship them inventory, they take
orders, handle fulfillment. Pricing info here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller/fba/fba_pricing.html
You can find all of the above services by clicking on the
Sell Items link at the bottom of most Amazon.com
pages. There you will also find the Amazon Advantage
program for listing your books, AmazonConnect for
blogging, Amazon Shorts to sell short ebooks (fiction
and nonfiction), on-demand publishing for books and
DVDs via their CreateSpace program, and their Kindle
ebook program.
=====
Want to advertise on Amazon.com, go to:
http://www.amazon.com/Advertising
They offer display ads, package inserts, and product ads
(where you pay per click)
Also sponsored links via ClickRiver
The sponsored links are provided by Clickriver Ads and
by other 3rd party ad networks. Clickriver Ads lets
businesses create, track and optimize pay per click
campaigns on Amazon.com. Clickriver is offered by
A9.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com.