There is no getting around it. Very soon I will have to get on my knees like everyone else in the world and beg for scraps at the feet of Emperor Bezos. As much as I would love The Book and the Blade to be 100% indie… only available in small shops with quirky cafes and book sellers who double as baristas, or perhaps even in unique little corners of the internet on websites run by enthusiastic book bloggers, I will still need to play The Amazon Game!
3(0) is the magic number! Yes it is, it’s the magic number!
– 30 reviews gets your book noticed by Amazon’s algorithms (Wizards. Wizards sounds cooler.)
– reviews get you onto lists
– lists get you exposure
Lists like these…
But then there’s the strange caveat that reviews from people you know sometimes disappear. I’ve seen this with author friends and there are many indie authors on Twitter who testify to the same thing… any reviews they have which may be linked to, say, people on their Facebook friends list, can mysteriously vanish. Forget algorithms and wizards, that is the work of Amazon’s Dark Overlords!
(A smidge dramatic? Maybe.)
This doesn’t always happen but it has occurred enough times for it to be “a thing” for indie authors.
I don’t know how it will play out for The Book and the Blade but I do ask (and will repeatedly beg) that if you do read my little book, please leave a review. They might vanish into the ether, they might not. Either way, all interaction makes a huge difference. Perhaps together we can unite and overthrow the overlords? And they don’t have to be complex reviews or even analyse the story in any way. They just have to exist.
Here’s a few examples…
***** Excellent cover
I.P. Freely
***** Interesting title
Ivana Tinkle
***** It’s a book
My mate Mitchell
***** Looks great on my shelf
Seymour Butts
***** That bit with the cat was funny
Al Coholic
***** It’s not that shit
Oliver Klozoff
Thanks for reading!