Wednesday, October 10, 2012

News from Amazon about your book's sales rank

At a recent library workshop, I reminded the audience that they can always check their book's sales rank on Amazon, both in direct sales and by tracking how it compares to similar titles.
 Now, Amazon has announced, Amazon Author Rank, They call it "the definitive list of best-selling authors on Amazon.com." They use BookScan sales data to display your ranking.
While the list of top 100 authors and top 100 books in specific genres is intended to help readers find best-selling books, it is also a useful tool for you as an author.
Your Amazon Author Rank:
151785 in Literature & Fiction
You can see your Amazon Author Rank trending over time in Author Central.
You can find your Amazon Author Rank in Author Central under the Rank tab
Historical rank data is new, since the service just started on September 28, 2012,
but it should be fun to track your book's success over time.

Here's a snapshot...

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Getting more out of Google

I participated in an great panel discussion and presentation at Barrington Area Library last night. A big crowd who stayed with us for over two hours with these authors.Presenters who joined me were Ted Grippo, Chris Lindberg, and Eleanor Anne Sweet. We had a terrific audience.




Following the panel, I gave an overview of the self-publishing world today.

Eleanor made specific mention of something we don't usually cover in basic level workshops -- the use of Google keywords. I've invited Eleanor to give us a guest post here, to explain in full detail. It includes finding the search keywords used by books similar to your own, and making use of those words in order to show up better in search results.

Here are a few other critical benefits of increasing up your Google skills.

1. Work your blog. Blogs are more visible in search engines because there is more text, fresh text, and they are updated more often than stale web sites.

2. Use YouTube to promote your events, do author readings, and share your book video on YouTube. Link to it from your site and your blog. Remember, Google owns YouTube, so use keywords in the 'tags' on your video and it will also increase your visibility in searches.

Write on,

Helen

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Just for fun

This from the Chicago Tribune:



They're just joking about The Weather Channel's (TWC) bold idea to begin naming storms, like the National Weather Channel does.  Now, if I can only get them to change it to ...

Winter storm Helen, author of Release Your Writing !!