In what situations is slow better than fast?
I am testing the slow method of book launches for my new novel, published on the 14th. So far I am not promoting it to “sell.”
Why? Because ads don’t work for books with no reviews and the final proofreading was only completed a few days before the upload. So it only went on NetGalley on the 15th and on a Facebook page for the book on the 16th.
I am offering it to everyone who reads this email for free, if you take it from my BookFunnel page here.
Why free? In the hope that you will enjoy it and leave a reader review on the Amazon book page, which has none so far at this link. See what it’s about there.
We used to call this a soft launch in my IT days.
No paperback yet either. I’m giving the ebook away in the hope of getting some good reviews on Amazon in the next month. You don’t have to buy a book to review it. You do need to be an Amazon customer spending over $50 in the last year.
Good reviews are what sustains long term sales.
So I hope you’ll like my new book…and review it!
I will update you on how this slow launch is going in a month! Your review will be appreciated on Amazon!
Clarifications
Last week, I said you could lose your Amazon account if you don’t follow their rules.
It was pointed out to me that these rules have been there for years, like not putting links to sign up pages in your books, and lots of authors do it.
This is true, but reports have come in to us of more people losing Amazon accounts, and this being a possible reason - Amazon don’t always say - so I decided to cover the issue. It appears from multiple reports of people losing their accounts that Amazon is tightening up on sticking to its rules.
We help authors to upload books to Amazon to their accounts. If we broke a rule and an author lost their account, that would not be a good day at BGS HQ.
The other thing I said was about not being able to unpublish a book.
What I should have said is that you cannot remove an Amazon print edition book page from Amazon. That page will always be there to facilitate 2nd hand book sales, but Amazon will not sell new print editions if you tell them not to.
My issue was with a book page that will not disappear. The book’s unpublished but still there as a page on Amazon as if its stuck in some publishing limbo between published and unpublished with the title hanging around the Author Central Page like a ghost too!
Lovely! Anyone know how to remove a book from Author Central?
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I was completely unaware about the Amazon rule. After reading your post last week, I updated all my books to change the back matter and remove newsletter signup links. Thank you!
Loved the sample chapter on Amazon. As a fellow author, I did you one better and purchased. I also borrowed your approach to ask for reviews for my recent release.