This book about Amazon marketing does not live up to its hype. It will waste your time and money. It is full of tactics that will teach you unethical practices, marginal techniques, and ways of spamming Amazon in violation of its guidelines. The book suggests you to do the following tactics, which are not helpful at all.
1. Don't write a 5 -star review of your own book. This is unethical and a violation of Amazon's guidelines. Customer reviews should be written by customers, not the authors who wrote the book. These reviews will be overlooked by potential buyers, who will not find the review helpful and ignore it.
2. Don't ask anybody for 5-star reviews. In his book, he tells the reader to give his book a 5-star review if they liked it. When I give a copy of my book to a reviewer, I don't say anything that may suggest I want a glowing review. Besides, 5-star reviews are usually generated by hype. Most browsers usually don't read the 5-star reviews or the 1-star reviews. The 2, 3, & 4-star reviews are usually read more.
3. Don't end every review with the title of your book. This could be seen as blatant self-promotion. Others may see is as a way of stealing sales. This is also a violation of Amazon's guidelines. It's also problematic because you may write more books. If you have 50 reviews that mention your older book, you would have to revise all fifty of them and mention your new one. There's an easier way to do this. Use your Amazon Signature. It can be changed at any time, and you can say something like "John Doe, `Author of Whatever Book." If you write a second book, you can change it to "Author of Whatever Book #2." Believe me, revising all of your reviews is very frustrating.
4. There is no "magical" way to remove a 1-star review. If the review is fair and balanced, it will stay. A review can be removed if:
-the reviewer clearly hasn't read the book
-is attacking the author
-and more!!!
5. The book suggests you to also write a bunch of Listmania lists and So You'd Like to Guides. I did all this for several weeks with no results. It was a waste of my time. Some people may even view this as a form of spam. I decided to delete most of my guides and lists.
The author suggests you to publish your book with a self-publishing company. There's nothing wrong with having your book published by a self-publishing company, but you can actually keep more of the profit by publishing it yourself. The book explains that there are two ways of having your book listed on Amazon: 1. Publish your book with a self-publishing company that can offer a 20% trade discount or 2. Publish your book yourself and sign up for Amazon Advantage, in which case you'd have to supply your own book to Amazon who'd also buy it at a 55% trade discount. But this begs the question, "If a self-publishing company can offer a %20 trade discount, why can't I?" This question led me to research the web to find the answer, and I ended up at "Aiming At Amazon." This book tells you how to do what the self-publishing companies charge you to do. You can save hudreds of dollars by taking the advice in "Aiming At Amazon." So it appears that "Sell Your Book On Amazon" is an advertisement (albeit a very subtle one) to self-publishing companies, and I also felt deceived that the author didn't include this piece of information.
One thing that really bothered me about this book is that the tips are *guaranteed* to increase sales. It's not a good idea to guarantee anything, especially on the internet. From my experience, nothing is guaranteed. I did everything this book recommended, and so far the results have left me very disappointed. In fact, I remember one month when my sales were much LOWER than they were the previous month. Not exactly something I expected from tactics that were *guaranteed* to increase sales.
Another important thing that this book doesn't address is that Amazon marketing only works if you write a GREAT book. Word of mouth spreads quickly online. So internet buzz will help a great book, but will damage a mediocre one. I finally accepted the fact that my first two attempts at publishing were failures. But I didn't like how this book filled me up with false hope, making me think that these tactics would increase sales. My third at attempt at publishing has much better results, but I'm using tactics from "Aiming At Amazon" and "Plug Your Book." I only made about $40 in the first month of my first book's publication, and I was using advice from "Sell Your Book On Amazon." By employing the advice in "Aiming At Amazon," I've already made $300 in just two months.
There are those who love this book. I, however, am not one of them. I suggest you to skip this book and seek out other books on internet publicity. This book will only disappoint and frustrate you. And since I did everything this book said, I've got a big mess on Amazon that I need to clean up.
Brandon Simpson
