Amazon page “autopsy” on Gary Vaynerchuk’s new wine book

I saw a tweet this morning from @garyvee, aka Gary Vaynerchuk, where he was thinking about new ways to promote his book. Gary’s a master of social media marketing, and I’ve been looking forward to reading his book for a while.   Instinctually, I went to his Amazon listing page (ok, so I maybe I was just looking to see when my pre-order would ship). and saw a couple of things that he could do immediately to help sales of his book.

1. Search inside - no, the book hasn’t shipped yet, so that’s probably why. But this is a must for any book. How can customers virtually “leaf” through your book without it? We’ve seen this make a noted difference in sales of titles, so he should make sure his publishers have this feature enabled at publication.

2. Author comments - authors can put blog posts on their pages. I know some authors who don’t like to duplicate posts, or want to drive all traffic to their own blogs. Regardless, authors should put some blog posts on their page. It’s as if you were standing at the front door of a store waiting to hand sell your customers. And who doesn’t want to hear what Gary has to say?

3. Better Together - some of these are automatically selected, some are picked by publishers as coop (can’t for the life of me remember how to tell the difference). Ideally, you want the book you are paired with to be ranked higher than yours - they’re getting more traffic, which means more visibility for your book. Right now, the Better Together is probably doing more for the Dornenburg book than for Gary’s.

In less than 5 minutes, I came up with these three things.  If I spent more time there, I would probably find even more.  Well, to be truthful, I work with the best marketers in the industry, and THEY could really do some big pimping here, along with our Amazon rep, who is also aces. 

Every author should do an autopsy on their Amazon (and B&N, and Borders eventually) pages and make sure they and their publishers are doing everything they can on them, in an effort to help the customer and eventually maximize sales. 

Now, off to find a good red zin…

 

Name that bookstore section!

When we bring a new book proposal into the publishing house where I work, we often spend a lot of time talking about what the right shelf for a book is.  It’s not always an easy thing.  For instance, back in “the day”, circa 1995 or so, most books on the Internet, regardless of topic, went on a “General Computing” shelf.  So you had your how to hook up your computer to the Internet books sitting along side your Internet business, Internet marketing, Internet job search, and online dating books.  Over the years, these books have migrated to more topic specific shelves in other areas of the store.  Still, in the new era of social media, we’re often faced with a quandary when it comes to these titles.  Is a book on social media marketing best shelved in technology or in business?  We tend to make the decisions based on a number of factors:

* How techy exactly is the book?  Does it require basic knowledge (setting up a WordPress blog, opening a twitter account) or does it expect you to understand more intricate procedures (hosting your own blog, creating widgets)?  Techier books tend to go in the Technology section, while books without many screenshots and procedures go into Business.  It sometimes breaks out to theory books vs. practice, but it’s not always that cut and dry. 

* Where is the target customer going to be most likely to find the book?  The answer is rarely “at the front of the store”.  Even if we did get a front table or cash wrap placement for a title, a rare thing indeed for most tech and business books, that isn’t a category for shelving and every book needs one.  If the customer is more likely looking for similar books in tech rather than business, that’s our shelf.

* Where have other books we’ve done that are like this book gone, and how well have they sold?  A big consideration, results in the field do often sway our thinking, but the shelf is not static, and prior results are no guarantee of future performance. 

There are more considerations, but those are by far the most frequently referred to.  Now, I’m not a retailer, but I would love to see our bigger bricks and mortar chains come up with a section for social media books.  One where we could find “Naked Conversations” next to “WordPress For Dummies“, one shelf over from “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” and stuff like that.  Me, Ellen, as a customer is reading all types of books like this.  I’d love to find them on one hot, juicy social media shelf.  Not tech strictly, or business strictly, but my stuff.  This kind of stuff.  Not having to go all over the store to find it, but having one special place where it all resided.

The issue is irrelevant on Amazon, BN.com and other online retailers.  It’s in a physical store where books can only be shelved in one place where this really matters.  So I ask you, dear readers, what would you call the shelf where you can find all these books?  Social media, social networking, digital lifestyles, the cool books that everyone should be reading?  I’d love to make the pitch to some bricks and mortar retailers to create such a shelf, with the right name, of course.  The right name will give the signal to the customer that this is where they can find these books, but be in some senses lowest common demominator so as not to confuse or worse, scare away any prospective book buyers.  I think social media is great, but does everyone book buyer know what the prospect of a shelf with that header means?  Is Digital Lifestyles too 1999?

So, feel free to comment away!  Vote early and often. 

 

Kindle me

If you’re considering buying Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, or just want to hear what people are saying about them, our publisher and blogger Joe Wikert has set up a special Kindleblog called Kindleville.  Be sure to check it out as it looks to be shaping up as a must-read.  I’m reading it because I want to see if noted cheapskate Wikert is shelling out the $400 to become an early adopter of this product.  The man who changes his own oil is not necessarily the target audience for Kindle but who knows?