Episode 622 - The Post-Launch Push with Kevin J. Anderson

How do you balance the time you spend writing with all the time you spend doing socials, newsletters, ads, and more?

Today's top story is Launch or Lurch?. Question of the week is How do you balance the time you spend writing with all the time you spend doing socials, newsletters, ads, and more?

Join the Sell More Books Show Afterparty group on Facebook and answer the Question of the Week in the comment section. Be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Kevin J. Anderson is here! https://western.edu/graduate/publishing

Top Story: Launch or Lurch? https://kindlepreneur.com/amazon-popularity-effect-how-amazon-treats-book-discoverability/

A common thread in publishing is that your launch will make or break your book, but is that myth or reality? Kindlepreneur's Dave Chesson wondered the same thing. "We've been analyzing data from Amazon for a while," says Chesson, finding patterns in discoverability that he thinks changes how we authors should operate. "Through analytical proof, we found that when a book has a rise in sales on Amazon through just about any means, Amazon responds by increasing the number of keywords that that book shows up for […], and its rankings for those keywords as well." Thus, when there's an increase in a book's popularity, the book shows up more often in the Amazon's store, tending to further increase sales. One way that Amazon shows a book more is by helping it be found in searches, which is does by 'giving it more (and more popular and appropriate) keywords. This happens automatically, based on how the book was found by previous buyers in searches. But the added keywords weren't just added because they were used in searches. "The more sales a book made, no matter where the sales came from, a book would start to index for more phrases on Amazon over time," says Kindlepreneur. "It took about ~6-8 days of consistent new sales before Amazon would start to show any notice." In addition to overall popularity, the study looked at how spikes, both from the initial launch and from promotions, affected Amazon's tendency to put your book in front of buyers. What they found is that while the singular spike from the initial launch does have a significant effect, those from single promotions have little. A good promotion could give you lots of sales, but the effect doesn't tend to last like it did four or five years ago. "It is much better to directly sell 1000 copies evenly over a 30 day period, than to sell 1000 copies on the first day, and none for the next 29 days," says Dave. "Authors should look to build a series of promotion efforts so as to feed off of each other, rather than isolated tactics."