Amazon's weird marketing

I don't get it. Amazon is the biggest, most successful online marketer. You'd think they'd have their act together by now. But a glance at their main page reveals something strange: they have no idea how to market goods.

Like you, I've been shopping at Amazon forever. But when I go to the site it shows me nothing I'm interested in. I'm sure you've noticed this. How can it be that they don't know what I like? Of all the sites in the online universe, Amazon should know my tastes as well as my friends do. But they don't.

For one thing, they have this utterly useless idea that if you buy something, they should continue to show that class of items to you for the rest of your life. Now, I'm not talking about physics or atheist books; they're good about showing me books I might like. But say I buy a coffee pot. For the next few months after the purchase, they show me...coffee pots. Duh. I already bought that item. So of all the items they could show me, a coffee pot should be at the very bottom of the list. Not so. They're gonna show me coffee pots for months or years. What a waste of space.

And the Kindle ad at the top of the page! Oy. Amazon, if you've been showing me a Kindle for several years and I haven't bought it, chances are I'm not interested. Doesn't matter to Amazon. They're going to donate a full third of my home page space to the Kindle for the rest of my life. Amazon, I don't want a Kindle. Get over it.

Seriously, shouldn't Amazon be gold for all of us? Knowing our buying patterns so well, shouldn't Amazon be almost magical in its ability to show me what I want? I don't get it.

Amazon's "Look Inside"

Amazon activated the "Look Inside" feature on my horror novel, Xmas Carol. It's a helpful add-on but I'm disappointed with the result. They let readers see almost two full chapters but the free peek ends just before the hook! A few more paragraphs and the reader would have to buy the book. Instead, it cuts off in the middle of a scene.

On the other hand, the only way I've ever used the Look Inside feature at Amazon is to check whether the author can write. It's pretty obvious from a gander at the first page. I'd never read nearly two chapters online.

Still, I wish they didn't cut the "Look" at that point. For those who've read the book, it ends just before Baylor appears on the Della Rhodia Show to make his big announcement. What a lousy time for the screen to go dark!

Book stuff

I set up an author's page at Amazon and then had to create one at the Amazon stores in other countries. It was fun and a bit weird because I had to make my way through screens of questions written in other languages. But it wasn't that hard because they were replicas of the original English page. I could tell what to click on. As a result, my author's page is up in France, Germany and the UK stores. I think I did another country too, but I'm not sure which. Greece? Japan's site wouldn't let me in at all. It just didn't like me. I get that sometimes. And the links Amazon provided for authors' pages at its stores in Spain and Italy were incorrect. I never got there. (Yes, I can look up the stores' URLs. But just try to find the author's page at one of those sites when you don't speak the language.)

Yup, this is what it's like to be a self-published author: you have to do everything yourself. They don't even provide maids or masseurs. You're totally on your own. Still, it's kind of fun. Xmas Carol is out there. And if I'm not mistaken, Christmas is coming. And this won't be just any old Christmas. It will be the Christmas of Xmas Carol. I like the sound of that.

Annie's chart

To help me think the pricing situation through, Annie made this chart.

Looks like it's hard to make any money at 99 cents. Unless the book is a major blockbuster, the money won't roll in.

Much as I'm not into money, it would be helpful to have some change to pay for things.

I'm leaning toward 2.99 now but I'm going to research this further. Thanks, Annie!

Amazon's payment scale for self-pub authors

The great Moolah.

It's getting close to the time when Xmas Carol will be released to the public. Since I plan to make the book available on Amazon, I went there the other day to check things out. It wasn't what I'd imagined.

If you sell your book for $2.99 or more, you get 70% of the purchase price. But if you sell it for less (I was thinking 99 cents for Xmas Carol) you only get 35% of the purchase price. In other words, Amazon is pushing authors toward the higher price range.

I think books should be as cheap as possible. Authors want people to read them, right? So I like the 99-cent price. It's easy to click "buy" when something is under a buck. The only thing that worries me is that people sometimes view lower-priced items as junk, and treasure expensive things simply because they're expensive. This prejudice is rampant.

I sometimes visit a web site run by an established author who is publishing all his new books digitally (after being published many times in the brick and mortar world). He rails against the terrible deal publishers give authors, and I must say he extinguished any idea I had of going the traditional-publisher route. His take on Amazon's pricing is that it's better to publish at 99 cents because you'll sell many more books and in the end, you'll make more money.

I'm not sure what to do. Should I let Amazon force me into the $2.99 price (and tell myself it fluffs the book up in potential buyers' eyes because they'll see it as having greater quality than the "99-cent junk")? Or should I go with the 99-cent price and the lower remuneration? I'd like reader input on this. Which way do you think I should I go?