A Cozy Hello from a cozy writer

Hi, everybody, I'm Joyce. I've written two mysteries, Died On The Vine and Bidding On Death, both part of the Passatonnack Winery series. I've self-published them as ebooks on Smashwords and Amazon. (Can I provide links?) So far the books have sold quite well on Barnes and Noble, and very slowly on Amazon - I'm baffled. Anyone want to chime in with some marketing-to-Amazon advice?

Hiya Joyce and welcome to the forum

Huggles,
Katja

WELCOME!

Hi and welcome. I have the opposite. I seldom sell on B&N and often on Amazon. There may be a price difference? Also, where do you direct people in your signatures and social networking?

No, the books are the same price on every platform. And now when I promote my book, I always link to Amazon, because Amazon has become my great white whale of an obsession.

I think the answer lies somewhere in the esoteric depths of the Also-Bought Algorithms. My first book was just inching along everywhere in the spring, and then all of a sudden, it sold 1400 copies on Barnes and Noble in April. At the time, it was a front-page Also Bought for a book that was in the top 20, so I think that's what did it. But since then, it's stayed fairly high in the rankings (a heck of a lot higher than on Amazon!), and has had some coattails for the second book.

It just seems harder to get your book to Also Bought on Amazon. The books have also-boughts listed in the writeup, but very few of those also-boughts return the favor; IOW, when I click on an also-bought on my book's page, that book doesn't list MY book as also-bought.

I think there's some threshold of number of sales in a certain amount of time that would give my stuff higher vis in the Also Boughts, but what that threshold is... who knows?

Hi Joyce,

Welcome to the forum!

Hey Joyce,

Others here can give you much better advice than I. For me, Smashwords and B&N have not worked very well. In fact, I pulled my books from both platforms. Amazon works better for me, but I do no advertising or promotion other than an occasional free book or two on LibraryThing and Goodreads. And only one of my three self published books has had reasonably consistent sales every month.

Hi Joyce! That is really odd, I have my book "Gifted" published on Amazon and BN. I have only sold 6 copies so far on Amazon (published last week) which is no real accomplishment since half of those are probably friends. But BN has done ZIP, nada, zero, nothing, it's a bottomless pit of no sells hehe. I am focusing on Amazon because I like the promo option they have. Also, I look at amazon like Walmart. One stop shop. I, as a customer, like to put things in my cart and when I get to the free shipping...click.

Anyway, on writing two books!! I have started my second book, it will be a trilogy, I have the synopsis in my head already so most of it will be creating more character depth left out on the first book and maybe even dabble in some romance hehe.