[Promotion] Author Trade

You are witnessing the start of something very, very big. Because of this, we can't tell you exactly how our software works.

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Okaaaay......

But if you can get a guaranteed number of sales every day, you can easily place top 10 in your genre ... that's when organic sales start to happen!

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What happens if eleven people in your genre all join this program with you? They can't all be in the top ten....

This seems like yet another plan to manipulate Amazon Sales Ranks. It'll last until either a) a lot of people join, making it worthless for all of them, or b) Amazon changes its algorithms again, making it worthless.

Or c) both.

The Author Trade Promo Plan is a dumb idea, whether or not Amazon is behind it. My guess is that it's just another manifestation of writer endstate thought #1: "And then everyone will read and love **M*Y** **B*O*O*K**."

Why? Because authors can already buy each other's books. What distinguishes this idea is the way it avoids that tricky part where the readers do what they want.

As for the suspicions about Amazon and CreateSpace, those will continue until Amazon comes up with a reliable, all-inclusive, realtime system for reporting authors' sales.

HapiSofi said:

What distinguishes this idea is the way it avoids that tricky part where the readers do what they want.

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The nice folks at Author Trade don't actually guarantee anything, other than that they'll take your $50/month/book for each title you're trying to promote, and that you'll have to spend up to $5.94/day buying other folks' books. Their plan requires at least 180 new people joining their plan every month. (Right now they have as an FAQ some helpful hints on what to do if you're told to buy a book you've already bought: Delete it from your Kindle, log out, log back in, then buy it again.)

You'll have to sell at least 472 copies/month that you wouldn't otherwise have sold in order to break even.

If your bank account can handle being $165 in the hole every month (after taking into account the royalties you'll earn on other folks buying your books), then why not?

Or you could buy $165 worth of Girl Scout cookies and donate them to your local fire station. Your choice.

Mrsmig: better they should spend their time writing another book.

Jim Macdonald is right. This scheme can't work as described, and it costs more than buying half a dozen e-copies of your own book every day.

James D. Macdonald said:

Their plan requires at least 180 new people joining their plan every month.

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There's a term for that kind of business model.

Pyramid scheme?

That's the one.