Buying your own story

Could you do it? probably. Should you? I wouldn't. I have no idea if people do it but because at least one person has thought about it, there are probably many people doing it. Is it honest? I think the fact you have to ask is telling.
To me this is akin to writing positive reviews pretending to be a reader. Not as bad, but in the same vein.

I think there are far better (and more honest and positive) ways for an author to get their ebook to stand out.

People have been buying attention for millenia (at least), but is that really what you want? Only to have attention you've bought?

hi Chaze,

yes. you can do that, and it isn't unethical for an author to buy tons of copies of a book (i just bought 10 copies of my book at my last signing to do giveaways), it's just not going to work. smash's rankings are such you'd have to buy bulk on a grand scale to get any more attention than any other book. why? because people sell hundreds of copies of a single ebook title A DAY when they are successful.

if it were so easy everyone would do it. to get your book noticed is indeed the golden ticket that all self pubbed (and epubbed, which is different) authors seek. here are some ways: get people to review your book. solicit self pub friendly blogs to review your book. guest blog at authorly blogs to promote your name. join communities and be active, creating a small pool of online friends who will help pr your book. create a paid banner presence on key blogs (see the 3 book covers AW forces us to look at every time we change a page here? like that) if you want to go nuts, pay a PR company to do some of this for you. i'm not sure why i'm going on about this, AW is so huge they must have a thread on this already.

PR is a HUGEHUGEHUGE headache. and generally the rule of publishing is that the very best and very cheapest form is to keep writing. write well, write steadily, and people will find you, pass the word, so you can gather reviews. it's very cool when you find a good book on goodreads and it says 54 rankings put this book at an average of 4.5. that's reassuring in terms of purchase. it's much less assuring to find a book with 2 rankings of 5 stars. so getting some kind of mass behind you is key, and hard.

And regardless of all the above.... what does it prove? Ok, you get the rating you want? But this does not mean more people are reading your book, just that an abitrary number goes up. And are you going to do this every week, spending hundreds of dollars, just to keep it there? And if you get found out, well then you lose everything and more because any future success is just going to be put down to the same thing...

Ask yourself why you write. Is it to get a ranking on Smashwords? Is it to make money? Is it to let many other people read what you have written?

Chazemataz said:

What's stopping me from say, buying my own e-novel fifty times to push up sales rankings and hopefully attract more attention? This seems like a good idea, even if it does sound like cheating. Does anyone do this?

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The question is what do you intend to do with the fifty copies?

If you intend to send them to fifty people (or organisations) who you think should be interested in the story, in the hope that may lead to orders for more, then that's a legitimate marketing practice.

If I were you I'd put that money and time into real promotion, aimed at getting your work in front of readers.

And I'm sorry, CaseyMack, but I'm not sure that buying copies of your own book in order to give it away is "legitimate marketing practice": sending out press packs and press releases is more common. I've never known trade publishers buy copies of their own books in order to hand them out to reviewers, and I don't think most self-published writers do it either.

Aside from the ethics issue, there is a practical one that I don't think anyone has mentioned. With Smashwords and many other epublishers once you have bought the book, it remains linked to your account, noted as purchased, and available to re-download. In practice you can download it many times, but you can't buy it more than once unless you create multiple accounts. Many e-book retailers prohibit that.

Wouldn't it be simpler (and cheaper) just to make it free and get legitimate readers?

Oh my, I see a real need for a writers marketing class - there are far too many people on here who think the only way you're legitimate is if you don't have to employ standard marketing techniques.

Of COURSE you can buy your own book in order to try and get it ranked. Why not? Ethics? WTF are you guys talking about? This is the same thing as buying a ton of advertising space - there is no difference.

I don't think it is the best use of your money though - and if I were going to do that I'd run a contest and give them away to say the first 50 people who joined my newsletter list (I'd buy them and gift them to people) instead of just buying them myself.

In fact, I'd probably throw a follow up contest and offer a $100 amazon gift card to a random person who leaves a review of the book afterward.

You guys really need to get a little more creative if you want to sell lots of books...

Hey Chaze,

Sorry to hear you can't find an agent, if that's what you're really saying. Look, I've been there, but I got a lucky break and actually found a publisher on my own. Personally, I wouldn't do what you're contemplating doing. The key is to do more promoting of your e-Novel. I was looking at a few websites today and they seem interesting. One was BookDaily and the other one was GoggleBooks. Even though I haven't self-published, I realize I'm going to have to work really hard promoting myself if I want my eBook to reach as many people as possible. I don't just want to rely on a publisher to get the word out.

Old Hack said:

If I were you I'd put that money and time into real promotion, aimed at getting your work in front of readers.

And I'm sorry, CaseyMack, but I'm not sure that buying copies of your own book in order to give it away is "legitimate marketing practice"

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With respect, sending out 50 books as described is akin to the common marketing practice of "loss leadering." In that sense, and in the sense that there is nothing illegal or fraudulent about it, then it is "legitimate"--strictly speaking.

Whether or not it is advisable is a different matter. I agree that other methods might be preferable.

Sorry, Casey, I see what you were getting at now. I meant that publishers don't go out and buy their books from retail outlets in order to bump sales: they already have stock of their books because they've bought a print run, and those are the books they send out to reviewers.

The question here was about e-books.

I don't know how you'd even go about buying fifty copies, or how you'd go about sending them to folks.

With physical books, sure, you could do that. But e-books?

If I wanted to send fifty copies of my Smashwords book to folks, I'd just send them a coupon for that book.

Heck, here's a coupon for my novel, Bad Blood, at Smashwords. Get it free, one week only: XY79H

If you like it, tell a friend.

I've read Bad Blood and happily recommend it to you all. It's a good fast read, and fun too.

Buy it now!

James D. Macdonald said:

The question here was about e-books.

I don't know how you'd even go about buying fifty copies, or how you'd go about sending them to folks.

With physical books, sure, you could do that. But e-books?

If I wanted to send fifty copies of my Smashwords book to folks, I'd just send them a coupon for that book.

Heck, here's a coupon for my novel, Bad Blood, at Smashwords. Get it free, one week only: XY79H

If you like it, tell a friend.

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A coupon is a good way too - but don't forget the "Gift" option at Amazon.

Old Hack said:

I've read Bad Blood and happily recommend it to you all. It's a good fast read, and fun too.

Buy it now!

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I just did!

Reviews are always welcome. Good reviews, bad reviews, it's all okay. The greatest enemy of the writer is obscurity.

James D. Macdonald said:

Reviews are always welcome. Good reviews, bad reviews, it's all okay. The greatest enemy of the writer is obscurity.

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I've bought a book off a bad review. The reviewer hated the things in the novel that I love (comedy in a tough guy mystery? Bring it on!) and it gave me a solid idea of what I was getting.

James is right. A bad review is still a review. Someone is paying attention.

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
-- Oscar Wilde

I wouldn't buy copies of my own book just because I look at it as cheating. I want my sales to be legitimate, not because I went on a spending spree.

One thing to add to this... if we are following Yog's law (which still applies to self publishers...) then you need to be absolutely exhausting all the free options of publicity (social media, blogging etc) before even thinking about spending money in any way. And even then, I think buying 50 (or more) copies of your own book is more expensive and less effective than other methods you could employ. For example, you could spend a few dollars on printing paper leaflets and take them to a book convention or local book shop and ask if you can distribute them (always best to ask - some places don't like it). Maybe stick a discount code on the leaflets so that those who have them can get it for cheap.

The thing about Yog's Law:

Publishers can and do spend money to sell books. Authors never pay to be published.

The publisher and the author are the same physical person when you're self-publishing, but it's very important to separate the roles.

Scammers, vanity presses, and other assorted sleazoids are attempting to appropriate the language of self-publishing in order to confuse the unwary and separate the marks from their money. There's a lot of smoke in the air. You, as a self-publisher, have to be clear on what the words mean, and you have to be very clear on what you're doing and why.

Good point... but one thing I would still say is that even trad publishers, with a marketing budget behind them, will still look at the free options.

There is also the little matter of you can't buy your own book on Smashwords without making another account (so you'd have to make 50 unique accounts to buy 50 copies).

Give-aways and making something free for a limited time can boost sales and give you easy publicity. Of course, it still has to be a book people want to read (I have a Kindle, there are many books free on Kindle, and yet I have only downloaded a few while I've purchased many more un-free books).

The best thing to get noticed? Work on your craft and write more books

Darn, I missed out on the coupon for Bad Blood! Maybe next time.

As for the original post, I don't think it's a good idea to buy that many copies of your own work. As someone else already mentioned, it would be better to invest that money doing promo work for your book instead.