I have been pretty busy over the last week or so with the first push for publicity for the book, and things have gone fairly well. I did a couple of interviews on local BBC radio stations in the UK, and several other interviews with online broadcasters too.
I have created a new Press Coverage page for the website, and have added links to some of the recent press and publicity about the book. The latest links are to:
– The Creative Penn, an author blog, which I mentioned in my previous posting
– The Stuph File, with Peter Anthony Holder
– Cheap Travel radio, with Brian Peters
They have all been fun interviews to do, and all are available online if you want to listen to them.
With Amazon being the main target for as many of my sales as possible, I have been looking at ways to improve my ranking there, as well as find ways that will help others to stumble across my book as they browse through Amazon’s huge catalogue of around 8 million books.
I have discovered a couple of things that look like they will help, and if you care to assist a little, your input would be very gratefully accepted. Here are a couple of things that you can do that will only take a few seconds.
1. This is the quickest and easiest way you can help out a little – just a few seconds will do! A very influential part of a listing on Amazon is the “Reviews” section. For reviews that have already been written, there is a “Did you find this review helpful?” section. Below each review there is a “Yes” and a “No” button, and you can indicate whether the review was of assistance to you. “Yes” votes for good 5* reviews help keep these reviews on top of the review list.
2. Another really quick way to assist – Amazon makes use of tags to assist people to search for products. You can add your own tags, or agree with tags already suggested by others. I think the most relevant tags are: travel, adventure, goals, goal setting, eBay, auction, life changing, separation, divorce, love… tick the ones you agree with, or add your own. You are allowed to tick or add up to 15 tags.
I was looking into the tagging system a little more last night, and it is very interesting to see how it works. When you search for a book on, for example, the subject of “goal setting”, the page first shows recently popular products tagged this way. As I write this my book appears at #5 on this list. This is wonderful, and is due to those friends and contacts who have recently done a review or some tagging. Thank you all very much.
The list can be sorted several ways, and right now I am #1, as the most recently tagged product under “goal setting”. However, I guess it is overall popularity that really counts, and the #1 book in this section has 97 tags for “goal setting”. I have 8 “goal setting” tags right now, so have quite a way to go, but if you want to help out, go to the book page here, and scroll down to the tags section (after you have voted “Yes” to a couple of helpful reviews, on the way, of course!)
In overall popularity I am currently #18. The top 15 books display on the first page of results, and the book at #15 has been tagged “goal setting” 9 times. So only two more people tagging A LIFE SOLD as being relevant to “goal setting” will put me on the first page.
Tags I think I should particularly target are:
– adventure
– goals
– goal setting
– eBay
– auction
– inspirational books
– travel
– adventure travel
Anything else you can suggest?
You can add up to a maximum of 15 tags, and as always, anything you can do to help is greatly appreciated.
There is another new page on the website with a few other ideas and suggestions for ways you can help, should you have the time and inclination.
Many thanks once again to all blog readers out there for your on-going support and encouragement.