Millions of people use Amazon and Amazon is stuffed full of millions of products. If you were a customer visiting Amazon and had never heard of Peter Carroll or his top notch novels (oh, come on cut me some slack…it is my website after all!), how would you find him or them? The chances of merely stumbling over them are pretty slim – unless you live in Dunblane and I am bending down to tie my shoelace at the time!
Nope, an author needs ways to be found and one way is Tags.
My novel Pandora’s Pitbull has some tags already. It’s a crucial step in the marketing of any novel on Amazon. If you open the book page you can scroll down to get to this area:
There are nine tags here. I can have up to fifteen maximum. At the time of writing this piece, I had most of them ticked five times. Here’s how it works and why it is important.
If you clicked on the underlined word apocalypse, Pandora’s Pitbull was the 54th item that cropped up. That’s a long way back and effectively invisible to most customers. This is because apocalypse occurs in lots of actual book titles and it is a small number of folks agreeing that my book involves an apocalypse (it does by the way!).
If you clicked on pitbull, it was the number one result! This is partly because no other book appears to have pitbull in its title and this gives it an instant advantage regardless of how many tags.
Now, here’s the clincher…
If you clicked on scotland Pandora’s Pitbull was number 61. However, In Many Ways was number 11 and on the front page. Neither book mentions Scotland in the title. In Many Ways ranked higher because fifteen folks had agreed with that tag as opposed to five for Pandora’s Pitbull.
As if to emphasise the point, someone clicked on each tag between drafts of this blog. The effect was to move Pandora’s Pitbull from 61 to 44 as far as scotland was concerned! One tag and it leapt 17 places.
So, can you do me a favour? Sign into your Amazon account, go to the pages for my books (links on the right) and agree with the tags by clicking on the tick box next to each underlined word. Only do it once or you will cancel it out.
If you do find the time to help me with this, I’ll be very grateful. If you are also an author, let me know you did this in a comment, leave the link to your book, and I will gladly reciprocate.
Thanks!
Discovered ‘In Many Ways’ by complete chance in Kindle Bookstore.
Thoroughly enjoyable on three levels; one as a thriller with some real depth, one in the entertainingly clever and often amusing use of language and one for the person, like me, who has had more than a nodding acquaintance with Glasgow.
Thank you for the pleasure of reading your book. I look forward to Pandora’s Pitbull.
Tried to do your tags but not sure if I got it right! Gordon.
Hi Gordon,
Thank you so much for the kind words! It means a lot to me to hear that someone enjoyed the book so much. I think a lot of folks are not sure whether they’ve done the tagging correctly but I can’t really tell from my end whether your particular tags have worked or not. Just making the effort to try and do it is much appreciated – regardless of the outcome!
I hope you do enjoy Pandora’s Pitbull and thank you so much for supporting me by buying both books. If you haven’t already done so, can I be incredibly cheeky and ask you to post a short review such as the above on Amazon?! It is incredibly helpful for authors and readers alike.
All the best and thanks again!
Peter
Peter,
Following up on ‘In Many Ways’ I have just finished ‘Pandora’s Pitbull’.
You cannot just ********** without some explanation…or did I miss something?
I have to be honest and say I preferred ‘In Many Ways’, although ‘Pandora’s Pitbull’ was certainly something of a surprise and a change from my usual diet.
What are you planning next….another thriller or another fantasy/horror?……and when? As I said previously, in In Many Ways I really enjoyed (and at times even laughed out loud) some of your use of language particularly when describing some of the characters and situations. Not much of this in ‘Pandora’s Pitbull’ but I guess that it was set in a situation beyond black humour.
I have good friends in Dunblane and will be visiting in July so maybe I will run into you ‘on the street’……disease quarantines permitting!.
In the absence of another work from you, and given how I enjoyed ‘In Many Ways’ what other work of a similar nature by other authors would you recommend?
Regards,
Gordon.
Hi Gordon,
I hope you don’t mind but I have blanked out a bit of your comment as it is somewhat of a spoiler. I will email you directly in relation to that point for your opinion on somemthing I am planning.
I really appreciate your positive comments and leaving those reviews on Amazon for me. It makes a huge difference to sales to have them there. I am also very flattered that you enjoyed In Many Ways so much – makes the hard work putting it together worthwhile when I get feedback like that!
As for next, well, I am in the process of writing the third novel. About a fifth of the way through. It will be more of a return to the crime thriller area but I have not nailed down the exact details yet. Ideas popping up as I go and a possible re-working on the cards!
As for similar writing style I would thoroughly recommend Christopher Brookmyre. He’s a Scottish writer with a real black comedic touch. Start with ‘Quite Ugly One Morning’. That’s his first and if you read in chronological order you notice some clever touches from novel to novel.
Cheers and maybe see you in Dunblane right enough!