For book/ebook authors, publishers, & self-publishers

Experiences with Buy x Get y program on Amazon.com?

Has anyone had any experiences--positive or negative--with Amazon's Buy X Get Y (aka BXGY) program? Amazon does not give statistics on the success of the program, though it seems like it might work well. The program costs between $750 and $1200 a month, depending on which book you pair with.

I am considering BXGY for the book, Feeding the Kids. But, at that price, we'd need to sell a lot of books to have the program pay for itself!

Thanks for any feedback!
Pamela
www.FeedingTheKids.com

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Permalink Reply by Bill Frank on July 28, 2007 at 1:58pm

Pamela, you may want to consider other Amazon strategies before embarking on BXGY. Although your book is perfectly situation to take advantage of it, there are lower cost alternatives.

First, congratulations on an Amazon ranking of 63,201 (as of this writing).

BXGY is purely a financial play. At a $16.95 list price, you're getting $7.63 from Amazon for each sale. I don't know what each book cost you to print, although I imagine it was in the $4-$6 range, which means you'll have to sell between 500-800 books in a month to make BXGY work financially for you. That's a pretty tall order.

The good thing about BXGY is that it is so data driven. If you decide to pursue BXGY, there is an easy choice of which book to pair yours with to maximize sales. Looking at all the books that are listed on your Amazon page as alternatives to yours, one book leaps to the top of the pile, "The Sneaky Chef." It ranks #542 on Amazon which means you'd have to pay $1,200 to pair your book with it.

Before I'd invest in BXGY, however, I'd try some alternative strategies. First, your book sells 73% of the time a reader lands on your Amazon page. Good, but "The Sneaky Chef" sells 97%. One place to start is to tweek the book description on your Amazon page. Look for ways to make it more compelling. You may even consider putting in something that compares your book to "The Sneaky Chef" so potential readers get an idea of what your book is about.

Second, get more reviews. The reviews you have are good. Congratulations! There aren't enough of them, however. Critical mass on Amazon is seven reviews, at least. Amazon used to have a feature called the Spotlight Review. A Spotlight Review was triggered when an author had at least seven reviews on their page. Amazon has done away with Spotlight Reviews, but the magic number of seven still exists in the "plumbing" of Amazon. Have seven, or more, reviews and Amazon will treat you differently than someone with six or fewer.

Third, write a review for "The Sneaky Chef." What?, you say. Why would I write something good about my closest competitor? Write it because "The Sneaky Chef" gets more hits than you do. Include in your author's block that you are the author of "Feeding the Kids..." Put a link to your Amazon page in your author block. Perfectly legal. Amazon allows you to do this. People who read your review will also see your author block and may link to your Amazon page instead. It goes without saying that you should write a positive review about "The Sneaky Chef." It doesn't pay to talk down the competition.

Fourth, invite Missy Chase Lapine, author of "The Sneaky Chef" to write a review on your Amazon page. When you contact her, remind her that you wrote a kind review of her book and ask her to recipricate.

Finally, create a ListMania! for your book genre on Amazon. Include your book, naturally, along with the others in your category on your list. Add at least 25 books to your ListMania! to get your list noticed by Amazon and potential readers. Then, e-mail the authors of each book on your ListMania! inviting them to view your list. Ask them to vote that your list was useful. The more people you have look at your list and the more people who find it useful, the more Amazon will notice your book.

Notice none of these suggestions cost anything, other than your time and energy. Try these first before spending money on BXGY. If your book doesn't move up in the rankings, you can always go back and do BXGY in the future.

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Permalink Reply by Revvell on July 28, 2007 at 2:42pm

Oh m'gawwd! What useful information!!! Bill, thank you for taking the time to put this out here for all of us Amazon amateurs.

Revvell
www.Revvellations.com

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Permalink Reply by david b mclaughlin on July 28, 2007 at 6:23pm

Yes, Bill-Great information!

This is the kind of info in the Brent Sampson book, How To Sell Your Book on Amazon. I am getting a lot of info from it.

And no royalties.
:)