What goes wrong with the Bestseller Campaign books? Some of them are probably wonderful books, but nobody's buying. Meanwhile, books with genuine word of mouth can have strong, steady sales for years.
A bit more digging into these Bestseller Campaigns shows the real reason they can collapse. When readers follow their own curiosity, they tend to buy lots of the same kinds of books. For example, the Amazon customer who buys Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times tends to buy the following books, in precisely this order:
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
1776
His Excellency: George Washington
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
Easy to see the connection, isn't it? These five titles are the Also-Bought list, the guts of Amazon's recommendation engine. (You can see the Also-Bought list for any book on Amazon under the heading #Customers who bought this item also bought#....") Customers who've bought only some of the books on the list soon receive recommendations for the rest in personalized e-mails or on the Web site. This results in tons of sales, and Amazon has it down to a science.
Bestseller Campaigns, however, throw a monkey wrench into this recommendation process. Instead of Amazon recommending similar books, it spits out unrelated books. For example, one Bestseller Campaign book, Hidden Souls of Words, is categorized Religion/Spirituality but its Also-Bought list includes completely different kinds of books:
The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth...
How to Be Wildly Wealthy FAST: A Step-by-Step Guide...
Turning Passions into Profits: Three Steps to Wealth and Power
The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness...
Life's Missing Instruction Manual: The Guidebook You Should...
What's the connection? There isn't any, except they're all Bestseller Campaign books. They were all pitched, high-pressure, perhaps to the same lists of people, no matter what their tastes in books. A few people bought, but some of them may have wanted the "valuable free bonuses," not the book.
And now we see the real problem: Amazon isn't recommending Hidden Souls of Words to anyone who actually might want to read it--people who like Religion/Spirituality books. This book's best chance at word of mouth is gone.
To be fair, a few of the Bestseller Campaign success stories really are bona-fide successes, including books by Gary Renard, Gary Rebstock, Dr. Bruce Lipton and Joe Vitale. Books by these authors sell year after year on Amazon, but is it because somebody ran an Amazon Bestseller Campaign? Or is it because these authors energetically promote their books year after year by blogging, writing articles, and giving interviews?
To be doubly fair, the consultants who advertise Amazon Bestseller Campaigns would surely tell you that a single technique doesn't support a book for long; steady sales depend on continuous promotion. Still, the question remains: Why do their clients actually fare so poorly?
Authors who ignite real word of mouth using techniques described in this book can draw a real audience who buys and recommends their book. But don't expect to hit the jackpot next month, if ever. Nothing in publishing is simple, easy and guaranteed.
Another problem with Bestseller Campaigns is the increasing unreliability of e-mail blasts. Despite laws against spam, junk e-mails are a growing problem. Increasingly, Internet Service Providers are deleting some e-mail blasts, even legitimate ones.