1) Buying a copy of your own book along with other books in order to get your book connected with "customers also bought" doesn't work. I've done it twice now with my paperback, and the books I bought don't show up on my page or vice versa.
2) Books that you know no one has bought along with your book may show up in the "customers also bought" lists. Look, I've only sold 64 copies of my paperback through Amazon so far (and a fair number in person, but those don't affect this), and I know who every single buyer is except one. So, unless that one person bought all the stuff listed in this section, someone at Amazon isn't telling the truth.
3) You know all those other sellers who list the book for cheaper prices and/or used? They're lying. I used to be naive and assume that those people who listed that they had copies of books for sale actually had copies of books for sale. And maybe some of them do. But, as I mentioned above, I can account for all sales of my paperback except for one lone book. But there are 7 sellers claiming to have copies of my book available. And one person claiming to have a used one. People, there are no used copies anywhere yet except for the ones at my school library. And six of those seven other sellers are lying. The book is POD; it's not even printed until you order it. And when you order it, it shows up on my account. These resellers are lying their stinkin' pants off. They don't have copies of the book; they'd have to order them just like you in order to get the book. Why wouldn't you just order it yourself and save the trouble?
4) The Kindle pages seem to reflect what other buyers are purchasing more efficiently, but whoever links this stuff is slower than molasses in January. I had a rash of kindle book purchases in February while my book was up for a Goodreads giveaway, but I've only had 2 purchases of the book so far in March. By the end of February, the "customers also bought" list was 3 books long. By last Wednesday it was four pages long. Yesterday it shot up to 14 pages in length.
5) Books in the "customers also bought" list may not really have much to do with the book being sold on the original page. Of the books listed on the 14 pages with my e-version of Half-Vampire, there are 34 vampire books. Okay, that's understandable. There are also a couple of werewolf and angel books and one sleazy dystopia. Well, okay. At least these are YA.
And then there's this.
Uh. Okaaaay then. Other than the fact that I'm from Utah, I cannot really see where the connection is between this offering and my book.
Oh well. I'm sure it'll get even weirder as time goes on.
That's crazy! Whoa are these other vendors, and what incentive do they have for selling in this way? Maybe they are secretly Amazon subsidiaries, created to hide from the IRS. (Sorry for the overly creative reply. I may be just. Bit bored today.)
ReplyDeleteThat's the problem with computer programs. They're logical but only to the person who programmed them.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder if Amazon isn't the true seller behind the "used books" sellers? Just another underhanded means of upping their sales? Now that I think about it, there've been quite a few books I've received from the used book sellers that seemed pretty new despite being listed as "good" (i.e., I immediately thought the book deserved "almost new" status).
ReplyDeleteSo much fakery out there. It's really discouraging.
Well, I've purchased several used books, most of them former library books, from resellers on Amazon, and things have gone fine. Also, the addresses on the packages indicated mostly small, independent bookstores. So I think some of the resellers are real.
ReplyDeletePlus, one of my neighbors is an Amazon reseller who's for real. You should SEE the stacks (literally) of mail that go out from her porch every week! She buys stuff at local import stores then resells it on Amazon.