Summary

is sales velocity that considers the rate of change and timing of the change. For example, sales made
within the last few days will be weighted more heavily than sales from two weeks ago, as retailers
will always want to sell what is hot and moving today. Because bestseller charts usually get readers’
attention, so it is worth considering targeting sales efforts to a specific time in order to make the
spike in sales and appear in the bestseller ranking. Retailers also adjust their algorithm to ensure a
strike between reader satisfaction and profitability. Therefore some retailers might promote a $9.99
ebook instead of a 99-cent ebook that is selling more in terms of quantity.
Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” is another algorithm that taps
into the purchase history of readers. Positive reviews and recommendations will improve chances of
getting into this contextual connection. Therefore authors can consider partnering with other authors
of the same genre into cross-promoting each other’s books at the same time to get into this algorithm.
While Amazon use purchases as part of their algorithm, other retailers use browsing history as an
indicator of reader preference. Becoming a series writer and releasing more books will also help in
selling more.
Understanding How Ebook Retailers Select Titles to Feature
While publishers pay to get their books displayed face up at prominent positions on the book
shelves of brick and mortar stores, merchandizing managers from ebook retailers use several
methods to identify books that are worth bestowing their promotional boost.
These methods are:
Sales trend, reviews and quality of book cover.
Monitoring national ebook bestseller lists and even competing ebook retailers lists.
Genre-specific bestsellers are also noted.
Monitoring influential book review platforms such as New York Times, national network
talk shows or popular blogs to check out the next buzz.
Asking distributors like Smashwords for recommendation.
Looking at the author’s entire catalog of available titles to generate more follow-up sales of
other titles.
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