You are what you eat on Amazon 🍔

Feed the beast. View in browser Hey, Pretty much everyone these days realizes that tech companies collect all sorts of data while we are browsing around, and then use that to target them with ads or product recommendations or content suggestions. What people might not know is that there are very different ways of doing this. Most companies try to figure out what kind of person you are and then recommend you things that Person Type X137 typically enjoys. Amazon doesn't care what kind of person you are; it focuses on what you consume. It was the first company to map connections between products instead of people – Customers who bought printers also bought paper being an obvious example. Both approaches work, but Amazon's is far more accurate – it gets a higher hit rate as a result, which means that customers like and trust the recommendations more, which in turn increases the value of Amazon's recommendations to both sides of the equation. Readers who bought The Expanse series also bought The Murderbot Diaries is less direct than the paper/printer example but hardly a surprise. Less obvious, perhaps, is that readers of James S.A. Corey enjoy the equally epic and intrigue-filled (but decidedly fantasy) worlds of Robert Jordan –the kind of connection that Amazon has mapped out across 8 million books in the Kindle Store and billions of transactions and trillions of page views. You are what you eat, and Amazon is tracking every crumb. The Problem With Being New Amazon has a lot more data to chew through when it comes to monster hits like The Expanse or a hot series like The Murderbot Diaries or a generational bestseller like Robert Jordan. It has rather less data to go on with a smaller author, or a new book – which is what makes that initial data Amazon receives on your book so important. If you feed Amazon the wrong data, it will recommend your book to the wrong readers. But if you feed it the right data – i.e. sell your book to your target audience – then it will have a better idea who should be recommended your latest release. This assessment is something that Amazon is constantly revising, so don't worry if you have made missteps in the past. It's also important to note that Amazon's recommendation engine fundamentally works at the book level – so if your first two books weren't a hit, that won't count against the launch of the third. (This is a really common misconception about Amazon.) The Importance of Starting Well That said, I think it's important to get yourself off on the right foot, which is why I always recommend being careful who you are pointing your book at when it is finding its first readers.  Make sure you are feeding Amazon good quality data – and that's more important for those who haven't built their audience yet (more established authors will have their mailing list driving purchases during launch week, which will teach Amazon pretty quickly who the audience for a book is). It's not just about marketing though. The metadata you attach to your book is pretty important too. Aside from being a strong signal about what kind of book it is, keep in mind that Amazon doesn't just make recommendations based on those product connections I spoke about above; it also looks at things like category metadata, and makes category-themed recommendations to customers – both on-site and by email. What's Up With Category Squatting? Anyone who takes a spin around the Kindle Store these days will see a fair few miscategorized books – many of which have been miscategorized on purpose. It was a trick popularized by scammers but which bled over into the regular author community, and one which is sometimes used by publishers as well. Most of these authors and publishers seem to be motivated by increasing the visibility of their books – it's much easier to rank #1 for Fairy Tales than Contemporary Romance, but you get that lovely orange sash anyway, which is a nice dollop of social proof for anyone browsing around. Perhaps authors in giant genres like thrillers or romance feel like almost any visibility on Amazon is going to drive sales for them, because such a huge percentage of readers like thrillers and romance novels. There is a danger with this approach, however (aside from whether Amazon will finally start policing blatant miscategorization of this nature – which is a very real possibility, more on that soon). And the danger is this: Amazon doesn't just work very hard to make the right recommendations to readers, it's also constantly assessing the performance of those recommendations, and then self-correcting. So being liberal with your book's categories like this might grab you some quick wins, but might end up being a big loss over time, as Amazon recommends you to the wrong readers, sees that your book isn't converting when it is recommended, and then starts recommend you less. Scammers don't care about this so much because they need to grab everything they can today, in case tomorrow never comes. Authors on the other hand need a more sustainable approach. They aren't just grabbing what money they can from Amazon's till today, they want to build a career, a readership that keeps coming back for more. Keep all this in mind next week when I show you how to massively expand your visibility on Amazon – because not all visibility is good for you. You need to be selective with your choices. You don't want to appear in every category possible. Instead, you want to be visible to the right readers. Your target audience. Dave P.S. Far too on-the-nose writing music this week is FR David with Words Don't Come Easy. DavidGaughran.com Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin, Ireland You received this email because you signed up at DavidGaughran.com. Unsubscribe