The Value of a Good Amazon Ranking
Did you know that every time you read a good book, and DON’T put a review on the author’s page on Amazon, an author fairy dies? Ok, so maybe that’s a little Peter Pan-ish, but you get the picture right? This is about encouraging you to take the time to give a star, and maybe even write a one-liner about every good book you read. Why? Well aside from the whole issue of an Amazon Ranking, the first and best reason is that it rewards the enormous effort that the author and his or her team have actually put into to making the book read-worth in the first place.
Just writing a book is only a very small part of the process – there’s editing, design, reviewing, formatting and few other things that go into taking a manuscript from raw to published. Good authors take the time to ensure their work is presented and published in the best possible form so that you the reader don’t have to stumble over mistakes, grammatical errors, and formatting malfunctions.
The other reason is that every time you do post a note or rate a book on Amazon, the author’s Amazon ranking goes up just a little. It’s not always only about how many copies are sold, it’s also about how popular a title is and the best way to gauge that is by seeing what people write about the work done. If Amazon likes the results of the Author’s efforts, the reward is to give a nudge along on the search-ability and ranking figures.
Just a minute or two to acknowledge you enjoyed a book (or not) will affect the author ranking, and that in turn can affect sales potential. So why not do the author a favour and rank their efforts.
The other side of this is that when you take another minute or two to actually write something about the book – even just a few words, like ‘Loved it, kept my mind engaged all weekend’ or something similar, means that the author also gets feedback on what you the reader (that he or she created the book for in the first place) enjoyed.
If you are yourself an author who never bother’s to write feedback, then I’d like to suggest that Karma is a witch! You have to put it out there to get it back. So please make an effort. This will come back to either bite you or reward you – I promise.
Getting into the top 100 in any category is a big deal for any author – of course it’s always really great to achieve top 10 or even number 1 for your work, but the very ability to reach a category top 100 placement means you more readily appear on search lists.
However – without feedback and rankings, just sales are not enough, and sales are assisted hugely from reader feedback, especially when the Author Amazon Rankings are high. So please – if you love books, take a minute to consider the following:
- A minute to rate a book
- Two minutes to review a book
- Another moment to click on the author’s page and if you really like their work, then follow them…
And let’s keep all the author fairies happy, healthy, and joyfully buzzing about the book business for the benefit of everyone involved.