Interesting Amazon Information

I like Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, too. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to the "Text Stats" portion.

Can one of you savvy tech types help me?

Thanks.

Barbarique said:

I like Amazon's "Look Inside" feature, too. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to the "Text Stats" portion.

Can one of you savvy tech types help me?

Thanks.

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It's not enabled for all books; if it IS enabled, you'll see a link after you click the "look inside the book" option.

maggie2 said:

On another forum I belong to someone just posted some interesting information about Amazon I'd like to share. This person had just been to a seminar with Amazon and one of the most useful things they said is that books where you can search inside the book have a 7% better sales rate than those that don't have this feature. So for anyone with books on Amazon, it might be good to insure that you are using this feature.

Hope this is useful to some here on the forum.

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Without any stats, I've always believed that to be true, esp for a debut author. Someone who reads the description of the book and thinks it sounds interesting will often want to take a quick look at it to see if the writing style seems like something they would enjoy.

Ace, my publisher, is supposed to have an agreement with Amazon that they will provide the feature on all their books, but they don't. I don't think they have the staff. Why some books are chosen and others aren't is a mystery even deeper than their ranking system.

I begged and pleaded for my first book to have that feature, to no avail. A year and a half after publication, it still hasn't been implemented. But the second book in the series got the look inside feature within a few weeks.

What they'll do with the next is anyone's guess.

maggie2 said:

. . . books where you can search inside the book have a 7% better sales rate than those that don't have this feature. . . . .

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Without more information, one cannot be sure there is a cause and effect relationship going from search availability to greater sales. It could as well be (absent more information) that books with better market potential in the first place are more likely to be put into the "search inside" program by publishers.

But sure, a look inside a good book could help to clinch the sale. That works at bookstores.

--Ken

rugcat said:

I begged and pleaded for my first book to have that feature, to no avail. A year and a half after publication, it still hasn't been implemented.

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Can't you just send Amazon a copy yourself? That is how self-published authors get "inside the book", I believe.

Vomaxx said:

Can't you just send Amazon a copy yourself? That is how self-published authors get "inside the book", I believe.

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If the author is truly SELF-published (author owns the ISBN and the publishing rights and managed the process), probably so. But if the book is contracted for someone else's publishing, maybe not. That will depend on the terms of the contract. Not a laywer here, but that seems pretty basic.

--Ken

ResearchGuy said:

If the author is truly SELF-published (author owns the ISBN and the publishing rights and managed the process), probably so. But if the book is contracted for someone else's publishing, maybe not. That will depend on the terms of the contract. Not a laywer here, but that seems pretty basic.

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That's not clear. Amazon has a feedback option, and an author can make changes – for example, if the publisher sent them info indicating the book is 302 pp but it’s really 320 pp, the author can notify them and Amazon will change it.

But the publisher has more leverage – they’ve already sent the book, and if Amazon hasn’t gotten around to including the look inside feature, I doubt that a request from the author will make any difference.

Best selling authors in my genre, like Jim Butcher or Kim Harrison, have the feature on almost all their books. (Although ironically, they’re not the ones who really need it) But for the rest of the UF authors it’s hit or miss. Rob Thurman who is quite successful, has the feature on the first book in her series, but not the rest. Another author I know, less successful, has his first three books all with the feature.

Some publishers seem to have more presence than others. Bantam Spectra and Eos seem to do particularly well in terms of getting it implemented.

However, it’s not worth worrying about. In my genre, at least, Amazon sales account for a surprisingly small percentage of total sales – bookstores are still king, though this might well change in the future.

Interesting. My book (published in January) all of a sudden got the "look inside" feature. I have no idea how that happened!

To get the search inside feature on Amazon you will need to hound them for a while. The author can submit their work directly to Amazon although it will be quicker if you're publisher does it - it does not matter who the publisher is or if you paid to be published.

One of the problems that authors face when they are submitting their work to amazon for this is that they do not have the correct type of account with Amazon - there isn't a charge for setting the account up it's just that it can be a little awkward. The second problem is that a lot of authors simply send them a copy of the book, they do say that you can do this and they will scan the book but chances are you will be waiting years for search inside to be activated on your book because you're giving them a fair amount of work to do.

My suggestion is to contact amazon at this email address;

[email protected]

Tell them that you want the search inside feature activated on all Amazon platforms - there is little point in only using Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk by doing so you're limiting yourself. Asking them to activate it on all platforms increases the possibility of sales, as there are I believe currently six Amazon platforms;

Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.fr - France
Amazon.de - Germany
Amazon.jp - Japan
Amazon.ch - China

Asking them to do this does not increase their workload - it's a click of a button.

Send them your pdf galley and a jpeg of your full cover. They will also ask you for other information give them as many details as you can.

As I said at the begiinning if you're the author you may have to hound them a bit but it will be worth the couple of emails. If you have a publisher of any type - use them - for whatever reason Amazon prefers not to deal directly with the author. I don't know why this is and I think it's a bit unfair but no matter if you've paid for publishing or not they prefer to deal directly with the publisher who should have no problems in getting this sorted out.

If anyone has any questions about any of this let me know and I'll do my best to help you sort it out.

The best, and easiest way to get into the Amazon Search Inside program is to have your publisher upload the .pdf version of the book from the original InDesign or Quark file. If they do that, it will show up in about a week on the Amazon site. If your publisher doesn't do it, then you can as an author, but that is a lot of work.

I don't know if this will be helpful at all. I'm a rookie and going the "supported self-publishing" route through iUniverse and they included the "inside the book" feature for free. They also make the book available in Kindle and Sony Reader format for $100, which I think is a pretty fair deal considering that Kindle is becoming a more competative venue for fiction. It makes sense to me that the more available a book is, the more likely it is to sell. Especially for unknowns (like me). If hypothetical Amazon shopper is able to read a snippet and he/she enjoys it, he/she would be more inclined to buy. No?

Here is how you can add the "Search Inside" feature for your book on Amazon:

1. On your book's Amazon page, click on "help" in the upper right-hand corner.

2. In the left-hand column, way down toward the bottom, under Publisher & Vendor Guides, click on "more."

3. Click on "Publishers and Book Sellers Guide"

4. Scroll down, and click on "Inside the Book"

5. Click on "Participation and Submission Guidelines"

From here you will see a list of questions to guide you through the process. I found it to be a 2-step process. First, you have to apply and be approved. Once that happens, you submit the PDF version of your book, as well as the cover. After that, it takes a few days for them to process this.

Hope this helps!