Selling books on Amazon and other online platforms is disorienting to writers who grew up with actual bookstores and readers browsing shelves of books. Online booksales revolve around search, algorithms and keywording, an alien world for many. Yet it is a world of great potential for independent writers who take the time to understand it, and with a vastly greater potential reach, not to mention margins unimaginable to traditionally published authors, who have to wait while bookstores, distributors, publishers and agents subtract their considerable take. Jericho writers has some suggestions regarding both blurbs and keywording that are well worth watching.
“Picking the right metadata basically defines how your book will be shelved in Amazon’s system – and therefore which readers are most likely to encounter it.”
None of this guarantees online success of course — persistence, quality, a backlist and luck all play a significant part. But getting the basics right with your online publishing presence at least gives an author the opportunity to succeed, and often at minimal cost.
“That means you have to snag that reader fast. So what do you write? How do you structure your blurb? How do you format it? What 2 models have been endlessly tested and proven to work?”
