Preliminary results of my first 2 months self-publishing

[Graylorne]

Brian

There is a difference in layout between the two. Both look perfectly normal to me, but the Rhidauna one looks cleaner, less cluttered. I did find on the web that Amazon changed its product page layout, but that was in March.
I can't find anything else.

 

[Graylorne]

Thanks, Devor, I'll have a go at it.

 

[Graylorne]

(EDIT: To elaborate, even though I understand that I should expect low sales volume, there's a part of me that can't help but dream that my book, against all odds, is going to sell really well. If I get less than 50 sales in the first month, I'm going to be disappointed.)

I checked other sites where authors talk about their self-pub efforts. I understood that it can take months before you're selling and even then it won't be in quantities. The more titles you have on Amazon, the quicker the process goes. Ofc when you've a large circle of fans already, it will go faster. Well, I have no fans or family worth mentioning, so I didn't expect any sales already. That made it a surprise to see I had.

 

[Nihal]

I know nothing about publishing strategies, yet I know something about webdesign.

If your primary goal is to promote yourself as an author and get your work selling you must facilitate your potential reader's life. No one will be happy about having to search all your site after a link to buy your work; put a link to your Amazon page (and wherever else your work is available) right in the front page or place it in the menu. I can see a social widget on the top of your page, you can include a button to amazon here and voilà, one problem solved.

Oh, and you can place more than one link in your signature there, not needing to remove your website–you could just have pushed it down to a new line. Also, you can display a link with an user friendly text.

[url="http://your-url-goes-here.com/"]The text goes here[/url]

@BWFoster78
I don't get either what is wrong with his Amazon page. Are you sure it's not a browser issue?

Here is what I see:

I actually like the first option better, it's less cluttered.

 

[BWFoster78]

Nihal,

Maybe. On mine, there's a huge blank spot under the title.

What I don't like about the top one is the book description. Notice there's no title saying: Book Description like on the second one. Also, it cuts off after only two lines. To me, that description is quite important. I don't want to have to hunt for it, and the more I see without having to click More, the better.

 

[Nihal]

Well, after 4 words I got it's a book description. The "read more" was surely thought out by Amazon's dev team to keep huge careless descriptions from pushing the other information below the fold. I care less about having to click a single link to keep reading if the first words interested me than having to scroll down and locate the book description among other sections with the same size and type of orange title. The description will be always at the side of the cover, under the title. There is no "hunting" there.

In fact, I don't know if the author can change the layout at all. I believe it's probably a new version they're pushing to the new books first.

 

[Graylorne]

If your primary goal is to promote yourself as an author and get your work selling you must facilitate your potential reader's life. No one will be happy about having to search all your site after a link to buy your work; put a link to your Amazon page (and wherever else your work is available) right in the front page or place it in the menu. I can see a social widget on the top of your page, you can include a button to amazon here and voilà, one problem solved.

True, I saw I had forgotten to add the sales links for Rhidauna. I've put them in.

In fact, I don't know if the author can change the layout at all. I believe it's probably a new version they're pushing to the new books first.

No, I can't. I got the impression the change was to oblige the tablet readers. And indeed, they do the new books first

Thanks for your advice and research, Nihal.

 

[Graylorne]

My second GoodReads giveaway (for 5x Rhidauna) ended just now with 1153 participants (from US, CA, GB, AU, BE, BR, FR, DE, IN, IT, NL, NZ, ES and on special request IE). That's a lot of exposure.
I wonder if I'll see direct results in my sales, or that it works more gradually.

As a comparision, I did another Giveaway, only in Netherlands/Belgium, for 2x my Dutch edition of Zihaen. That ended with 53 participants, which is statistically even better. That too, aided by one of our major fantasy websites, is a lot of publicity.

The Dutch giveaway cost me only $8.00 shipping.
The international giveaway will be more expensive, some $30.00 books + $60.00 shipping = $90.00. Of course I could have used less books to get the same result, but I hope for some reviews as well.

NB: Just got the names of the winners. Extremely curious, seeing the size of the countries involved: 1x BE, 1x DE, 3x GB.

Funny how chance works. (One of the 2 Zihaen winners was a fellow author from my Dutch publisher.)