Amazon Bestseller Campaigns

by Sandra Beckwith

Several recent postings in writers’ forums asking about Amazon bestseller campaigns got me thinking. In one case, an author had heard about a program that would teach him how to do it, was intrigued by the concept, and wondered if anybody on the forum had purchased the package (at a cost of about $3,000!). In another case, the author asked if forum users thought she could create her own campaign without purchasing a pricey program that showed her how to do it.

These bestseller campaigns rely on a simple concept: The “consumer” buys the book on a certain day and the author rewards that purchase by sending the buyer lots of “bonus” free electronic downloads – books, booklets, audio files, and so on. Information products marketer Fred Gleeck did one recently for his book, Sell Your Brain Power: Information Marketing in 7 Easy Steps. Gleeck offered bonuses from his files and those of eight others (see the list here). His campaign took his book close to the top of the entrepreneurship category on Amazon.

You can create one of these campaigns without purchasing a pricey system if you know the formula, have saved sample messages you have received from others who have employed this technique with success so you know what language generates action, and if you’re already a skilled marketer and copywriter.

Here’s the basic formula:

I understand the appeal of these campaigns to authors. Really, I do. But they’re not as effective now as they were when the concept was new a few years ago. Let me explain a little bit why, and then I’ll explain why these campaigns make me uncomfortable.

They’re less effective because they rely on electronic mailing lists comprised of people who are savvy enough about Internet marketing by now to know how these things work. Unlike your Great Aunt Tilly, who might think that getting all of these free e-books when she buys a book on Amazon is a super duper deal, the people on these lists are a little jaded. Been there, done that. They have already received these freebies or others like them elsewhere in their travels and discovered that they didn’t have time to read or use them. The novelty has worn off. So . . . the return on investment for bestseller campaigns might not be as great today as it once was.

Why do these campaigns make me uncomfortable? Because they aren’t authentic. Campaign book buyers are often buying a book they have no interest in simply to get the freebies. They’re either interested in the free content or they are people who can’t resist a bargain – shucks, for $12.43 on Amazon, they get lots of stuff they didn’t have to pay for – “a $563 retail value!” If it works as hoped, authors end up selling their book to people who would never have bought it otherwise – which seems a bit like a scam to me.

Yes, I’d love to claim bestseller status for any of my books, but honestly, I’d want the buyers to make the purchase because they want to read the book. It’s a bit of a purist attitude, I know, and maybe it’s one that will cost me a few royalty checks at some point. And I’m all for adding incentives to make the purchase more appealing, but making those incentives available only on one day? That’s like admitting that your book won’t sell without them and I’m not willing to do that.

Back to the $3,000 price tag for a “system” that teaches you how to do it yourself: Seriously? If you have $3,000 for book marketing, spend it with someone who will do important promotional work for you because after you spend it to learn how to create an Amazon bestseller campaign, you still have to implement it.

What do you think about these campaigns? If you’ve done one, what were the results?

Sandra Beckwith is a former national award-winning publicist who now teaches authors how to be their own book publicists. Get free tips and subscribe to her free “Build Book Buzz” e-zine at http://buildbookbuzz.com