👓 the real value of visibility 👓

Decoding Amazon further View in browser Hey, Amazon will announce its Q2 results today, and I suppose they will be stellar because they always are. And I presume these impressive numbers will be followed by a lot of handwringing in the press because the tune is so familiar at this point that we all know the words. But here's the thing: for all its faults, and its capacity to play hardball when it wants to, Amazon is where it is primarily through innovation. And here's the other thing: all these thinkpieces tend to be totally wrong about which innovations propelled Amazon into dominance. Zooming in on our industry, we all know that ebooks (and self-publishing) were around long before the Kindle Store, and that there were many fine devices which predated that first, clunky-looking Kindle — and many would argue that there are superior devices out there today, if you just look at them in isolation. But it's a huge mistake to do that because the real difference-maker is not what those Kindles are, or what they consume, but what they are attached to. The Kindle Store is so far ahead of the competition that comparisons are largely pointless. I'm not talking about the obvious stuff either: the peerless ecommerce platform that converts better than anything else; the sheer ease of one-click purchasing, an innovation which Amazon patented in the 90s and exclusively held until recently; the unmatched selection of books, helped along these days by exclusivity – there's that hardball; the competitive pricing and constant drive to deliver value to readers. Amazon's genuinely unique strength, the aspects that make the Kindle Store so attractive to readers and so hard for others to compete with, is something less obvious: the network of algorithms which constantly rearranges the Amazon bookstore so that all your favorite types of books are right there under your nose. When I released the first edition of Amazon Decoded, I got a kind of mixed review from a reader who was disappointed it didn't have more information on how Kobo worked. While that was somewhat amusing, given the title and clear focus of my book, I did understand their frustration. I'd write something like that about Kobo if I could, but the simple fact is that Kobo – as well as Apple and Google and Barnes & Noble – simply don't have recommendation engines and algorithms and machine learning and AI-powered, data-crunching systems to the same level. I wrote about this on my blog yesterday as part of my post hoping to dispel some of the current worries around Also Boughts. That post on my blog is on a similar theme to last week's email breaking down Amazon's recommendation engine — which you can read here — but it drills down specifically on the topic of Also Boughts, showing which Amazon recommendations they feed into. And how these are 100% unaffected by Also Boughts disappearing from book pages. There are a lot of myths out there about Also Boughts, and I hope that blog post goes some way towards dispelling them. In short, the real power of Also Boughts is nothing to do with what happens on your page. Read more here, if you are curious. There was one point in that post I wanted to pull out here for you guys on my mailing list, to discuss in more detail. We often throw around phrases like the "halo" after a promotion, or say things like "a sale on Amazon has sale-babies," or "visibility on Amazon is so valuable," or "getting Amazon to do the selling for me." At least, I say things like that regularly. Often the statements are just that vague. So, let's drill down and explore exactly what these phrases mean. Promotion Halo If you are a wide author and you run a five-day sale on all retailers, and you have nice, strong sales across the whole period you are discounted, you will often see two very different things happen post-promo. On Google, Kobo, Apple, and Barnes & Noble, you usually see a dead cat bounce — a sharp drop off in sales until you're all the way back down at your regular baseline. On Amazon, you can often experience a higher level of sales post-promo for days, weeks, or even months afterwards. The difference is often pretty stark, especially if you really do stick that landing on Amazon. And then if you are a Kindle Unlimited author, if the promotion generates a critical mass of sales, enough to significantly improve your position on the Popularity list, then you will also see a page read wave commencing a few days after your promotion — again, something that can continue for an extremely lucrative period of several weeks, if you are lucky. This is a halo. And here is why it happens on Amazon (and why it doesn't happen elsewhere). Amazon Sales Beget Amazon Sales If someone buys my Book 1, Amazon will recommend them Book 2 right there on the checkout page — assuming my metadata is in good shape, and that Book 2 is the #1 Also Bought, of course. Even if they don't act on that recommendation right away, Amazon will persist — recommending that Book 2 in various slots on-site, on my actual device itself, and also by email a couple of weeks later, often more than once. And if I'm pushing that Book 1 hard, either by discounting it or making it free and/or advertising it, then lots and lots of those recommendations to readers will be set in motion. The other retailers do have rudimentary recommendation engines, but they are nowhere near as sophisticated. Sales on Barnes & Noble don't have sale-babies. Would that it were otherwise, as someone in 1920s Britain might say. The Value of Amazon Visibility Everyone understands the value of appearing in the charts on Amazon, so I don't need to explain that — millions of readers use Amazons charts to find books every single day, and the 13,000+ categories on Amazon all have their own Top 100 list (and another for freebies, and another again for new releases). However, some people assume that's all people mean when we talk about the value of visibility on Amazon. There is so much more to it. When I open up Amazon.com, I'm immediately recommended 10 books to purchase, and Amazon explicitly flags that these are related to the book I'm reading — not what I browsed recently, or purchased. This is a new development in Amazon's recommendation engine. It has always tracked what we read (and the pace we read it at too, by the way), but this is the first sign I've seen that this data is finally getting harnessed by the recommendation engine. Meaning Amazon might be about to take another great leap forward in the world of recommender systems… before the competition has even caught up with the last one. Anyway, guess what determines which books fill those slots? That's right, Also Boughts. And just to tie things into yesterday's blog post, and further undermine the Also Bought panic, this system is completely unaffected by whether Also Boughts disappear from book pages. If you remember from my geeky tangents last week, Amazon figured out almost 20 years ago that its recommendation engine produced better results if they focused on mapping out connections between products instead of people — if they focused on grouping together similar books instead of similar readers. This was a such huge innovation that turned Amazon's USP from being the Everything Store to being the You Store — from a store where you could search for almost anything, to one which had all your favorite things on the front table as soon as you walked in. Also Boughts feed into Amazon recommendations into endless ways. They determine your checkout recommendations, your purchase confirmation recommendations which come by email, various different recommendations that pop up on lots of different spots on the Amazon itself, and lots more variations on your specific device too. Also Boughts feed into the system in all sorts of different ways. Regardless of whether they are currently appearing on your book's page. When I say that visibility on Amazon is valuable, I don't just mean that appearing in the charts can drive reader discovery, and further sales. I mean that every single sale you make on Amazon builds connections between your book and others. It might not be as visible as jumping into the charts, but each time you have a spike in sales, you are also improving the strength of those connections, and improving your position in the Also Boughts of all sorts of other books. The cognitive scientist in me thinks of this rather like neural pathways in the brain — the way we often learn best is by doing something over and over again, and neurons firing repeatedly in certain patterns can create these kind of pathways, so that the next time you take that action the communication between those neurons is more efficient. Also Boughts really are quite like that. Every sale makes those connections between books stronger. Your book then starts getting recommended on more checkout pages, on more devices, on more homepage carousels, in more emails. You are more visible. And that is incredibly valuable. And this is only one small slice of the whole, giant recommendation engine! There is so much more to it. So many layers of complexity. The other retailers simply don't have systems which are anything like as sophisticated. Which is why we have a greater post-promo halo on Amazon than elsewhere. Which is why it's usually easier to get sales going on Amazon than elsewhere. Which is why it's often easier for authors to bootstrap their way to success in the Kindle Store. And I honestly don't know how the competition can close that gap because it would take a change in mindset that I'm not sure will be forthcoming, aside from any gap in expertise. Apple is the richest company in the world and manufactures some of the most popular phones and tablets. Kobo has the best ereaders going, many feel, and has led the way there for some time now. Barnes & Noble has the biggest bookstore network in America and the support of the entire traditional end of the publishing business (and the media too), and then Google has been at the bleeding edge of tech innovation for the last twenty years. Because of all this, sometimes the media seems puzzled at Amazon's success, arguing that Amazon became dominant because of playing hardball, putting the squeeze on suppliers, gobbling up competitors, running operations at a loss until the competition were forced out of business, or whatever. But I respectfully suggest they are focusing on the wrong things and are completely missing the key innovations that led to Amazon's dominance. And I don't think the competition will close that gap with Amazon until they start focusing on building a better recommendation engine — and specifically one that is price- and publisher-agnostic.  In order words, one that can recommend cheap books over expensive ones. One that can recommend small press or self-published work over a Big 5 new release, if that is really what the reader is most likely to purchase. A store where the front tables are open to everyone. Which contain the books readers want to buy, not the ones retailers prefer to sell. I hope that gives you something to think about. Before I go, let me share a recent podcast I did with Mindy McGinnis (a trad author) and Kate Karyus Quinn where we discuss the business from our own different perspectives, how it might be affected by the current crisis, and the value of keeping readers engaged inbetween releases. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is the perfect soundtrack to a wistful summer morn, and surely the best song from 1976 which you've never heard: Seabird by the Alessi Brothers. DavidGaughran.com Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin, Ireland You received this email because you signed up at DavidGaughran.com. Unsubscribe