bookstolistento:
Certain books? Are these paid for promotions? We customize the customer's post-login page according to their stated preferences in relation to customer reviews.
Partly paid for, sometimes because a release is obviously going to be so big that they want to ride the tails.
Sometimes Amazon/iTunes just get behind something because the guys like it.
Either way, the point is that they will spend their own money to promote books. You clearly don't.
bookstolistento:
We started to, but it is taking time to gain critical mass. Does that mean we shouldn't try.
It means that you shouldn't be using/relying on authors to bring customers to your site.
bookstolistento:
We do not charge the authors any money and we do not require exclusivity.
That's disingenuous. Your own website FAQs state:
bookstolistento:
We take a small commission on each sale and the rest is yours. Currently, the commission is £0.40 (forty pence, GB) plus 10% (ten percent) of the cover price.
So that's commission, plus 10% and it's the author who probably brought the sale in in the first place.
And to pre-empt the inevitable whinge about start-up costs, technology blah-blah-blah, you should be getting out there getting customers in to help increase profit. Instead you are sitting back and letting your authors do it. And then charging them.
bookstolistento:
We simply offer another channel. They can sell their books on their own sites or elsewhere at the same time as they sell through us.
And they'd probably be better off doing it through their own channel.
bookstolistento:
It takes time to reach the tipping point. Watch this space...
You've been in business for at least 18 months and not yet reached the tipping point. How much longer do you think it's going to take?
bookstolistento:
We also incentivize customers to write reviews with our one-for-three offer.
Yes, I saw this and wasn't clear how the royalties worked on it. If you're assigning someone a free ebook/audio book based on their preferences, what monetary compensation does the author of that ebook/audio book get?
bookstolistento:
But there is no incentive as to the content of the reviews only to write one, so the reviews will reflect their honest opinion. Vanity publishers do not do this.
Not true, vanity publishers are perfectly happy for authors to review each others books because they'll be the ones earning money from the sales.
In any event, what practical worth do you think reviews are to an author? If customers don't know about your website in the first place, what are they going to care about what the reviews say?
MM