So why is this year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest any different?

Perhaps a little background on the contest, for those who don't know. The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, or ABNA as most people call it, is held every year by Amazon to find the best and brightest new authors and books in the industry. I entered the contest for the first time in 2011 with my debut novel, The Time Weaver, and didn't make it past the first round.

The pitch round.

That is the source of my anxiety. A 300-word pitch that gets judged by Amazon editors, and only two thousand out of ten thousand entrants will move on to the second round. Why should I be so confident that I will make it? Because for the last four years, I've spent time helping countless writers hone their pitch for this contest. Many of them have made it through.

I haven't.

Three years I've entered ABNA, and three years I've failed to move on. I try to put on a happy face and cheer on my other friends, but there's always a part of me that burns up inside, wondering what I did wrong, or how I could have written a better, stronger pitch, so that it would make it through along with my friends.

Amazon gives us no feedback on the pitch. Either you make it through, or you don't. So I'm left a veritable expert on how to write a great pitch for a story who can't come up with something to get my own book through the first round.

This brings me back to the source of my anxiety.

I've entered The Time Weaver one last time. Fourth time's a charm, right? Thing is, if it doesn't make it through this year, it will likely be the last time I attempt it for The Time Weaver. Because what's the point of beating a dead horse? When the contest comes around again, I'll have The Spell Breaker ready to enter, and maybe have a better chance at coming up with something great to get it through.

In the meantime, ABNA 2014 is under way. My entry is in, my pitch is written, and I've done everything I can in order to get it through this year. All I can do it sit around and wait in an ever-building pool of anxiety for March 18, and then search for my name on the list of those who made it through.

Wish me luck.

That phrase was on a poster in the classroom where I once learned the basics of the French language. It was put there by my very wise French teacher. He lived by those words, and pushed those words on everyone. It's about setting goals, but also, it's about setting targets.

Marketing is such a huge topic that it would take me months of steady writing to cover it. There are whole books, whole courses, and people who dedicate their lives to marketing. They do it full-time and get paid big money for it.

I don't get paid big money. In fact, as far as marketing goes, I'm pretty much a novice. But the one basic concept I do understand is the most absolute fundamental and important concept in marketing: you must have a target.

Nobody starts a marketing campaign without a target audience. In fact, it's impossible to make any real decision in marketing without knowing your target audience. The success or failure of your marketing campaign, no matter what the form, will depend on you knowing your target. Knowing your target will also have a big hand in whether you succeed or fail on Amazon.

Being an author, the rest of this article will be geared toward book marketing, but the concepts are the same for any product you happen to be selling. Whether it be generic widgets, books, or trips to Cancun, in order for you to really make sales your target must be well defined.

A while back I made a blog post about the Amazon Recommendation System. If you haven't read it, follow that link and read it now. Much of the following post will reference concepts introduced in that post.

Amazon's recommendation system depends very heavily on two items having lots of common purchasers. The more purchasers two items have in common, the more likely Amazon is to recommend one item to customers of the other. On top of that, only purchasers in the last six months are considered in their recommendation system. Why? Because they want to keep the recommendations fresh. They understand the value of targeted marketing. People who bought one item are very likely to buy another item that has already been purchased by many of the same customers. Their system is designed to do the targeted marketing for them.

Having a Good Product is Important

The rating on any given product makes a difference in the Amazon recommendation system. Given two books with identical purchasers, the product with the higher rating will get recommended first. This means that when the reviews start rolling in, you better make sure you've put the best product up that you possibly can.

It's also important to know who buys the type of book that you are selling. The idea is to target just the right people with your efforts so that you make the most of the purchases you get. And no, this doesn't mean relentlessly spamming message boards and Facebook groups full of people who are trying to have real discussions. You need a real plan in order to draw in those customers, and it's almost certainly not going to happen with the first book you release.

What About Amazon Select?

Select is no exception. Here's a secret that many people don't consider when they decide to have an Amazon Select free promo:

Every single person who downloads your book for free counts as a purchaser.

Yep. When Amazon starts recommending your book to people after the free promo ends, it will consider all those new "purchasers" in its system. If you target your promotion right, you can enjoy an extended period of strong sales as a result of those recommendations.

If you splash your free promo out in front of thousands of people, and do no targeting, then many of the new "purchasers" will have no books in common, and your recommendations will be next to worthless. Even worse is if those new "purchasers" have the wrong books in common, which will end up recommending your book to the completely wrong audience. This is a situation you want to avoid at all costs.

If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

It's such an important concept that it warrants stating it again. You can't sell a book effectively without targeting your marketing efforts. Do yourself a favor before you do anything else to market your books, and take some time to define your target. Write it down, focus it as narrowly as you can, and then create a plan on how to hit that target. This will help you get the absolute most out of all of your marketing efforts.

Good luck!

If you haven't already, pick up a copy of The Time Weaver (Book I of The Time Weaver Chronicles) from Amazon.com today. Subscribe by email to my blog, and don't miss a single post!

What Recommendations?

If you're not sure what I'm talking about, you should stop reading right now, go to Amazon, and look at any page, even their home page. Everywhere you look on Amazon, you'll see "More Items to Consider", "Customers Who Bought This Item, Also Bought...", "Inspired By Your Wishlist", or any number of other recommendation lists that they feed you while browsing. These lists are where you want your book to be.

"Why?" you ask? Because these are going to be some of the best recommendation lists that you will ever encounter. Seriously. The technology that goes into creating these lists is unmatched by any other site in the industry, except maybe Netflix. These lists will sell your books, I guarantee it. You just need to get your book there.

Oh, sure. Is that all?

Thing is, Amazon wants to sell your book. They want to sell everyone's books. They want to sell millions and millions of everyone's books. Know why? Because they make lots and lots of money. How do they make sure they sell the maximum number of books possible? By creating really, really good recommendation lists. Don't believe me? They're not the #1 book seller in the world for no reason.

Item-to-item Collaborative Filtering

Holy crap. I hit you right over the head with those great big words. Here's where the technical stuff starts. Put on your hard hat, and watch for falling math.

Amazon has some of the biggest data stores in the world. They keep track of everything. Every item that you've ever purchased, when it was purchased and for how much. Every item you've ever clicked, what you clicked after that, how often you visit certain pages, how often you purchase an item after visiting the page, and how many times you visited the page before you bought it. Thing is, Amazon is greedy. They don't like to share data, because that's their competitive edge over everyone else.

I don't blame them.

Their recommendation system is based on one thing and one thing only, and it's really very simple when you tear it down to just this: who bought what items. But they don't even care about who bought what, all they really care about is how many people bought the same two items.

Here is the basic algorithm, in all it's glory:

This list is computed based on something called a Commonality Index (CI). The CI of any two items (Item_X,Item_Y) is calculated using the following equation:

Take 3 items:

• Item_X = purchased 300 times (N_x)

• Item_Y = purchased 200 times (N_y)

• Item_Z = purchased 30000 times (N_z)

Find which item (Y, or Z) has the most in common with Item_X, where:

• N_common(Item_X, Item_Y) = 20

• N_common(Item_X, Item_Z) = 25

So:

• CI(Item_X,Item_Y) = 20 / √(300 * 200) = 0.08165

• CI(Item_X,Item_Z) = 25 / √(300 * 30000) = 0.00833

Meaning?

Item_X has MORE in common with Item_Y than Item_Z, even though Item_X and Item_Z have more common purchasers.

This is important. It means that you have no immediate hope of being paired with Item_Z until you have a fair number more purchasers in common. Want to be recommended to people who buy the big guns at the top of the list? You need to get MORE people who buy the top books to also buy your books. In this case, Item_X and Item_Z would have to have almost 250 common purchasers in order to top CI(Item_X, Item_Y), and get recommended over it.

But Wait, There's More!

It's still not as simple as just a single score, and you had to know it wasn't. So what's the catch?

Your sales have an expiry date. That's right. When working out the recommendation list, Amazon only considers the last six months' worth in sales data. By doing this, they keep the recommendations fresh. They don't sell books by recommending what was popular last year. They want to show you what's popular now.

The rest of the recommendation lists are figured out based on what you've looked at recently, what you've bought recently, what's currently in your cart, what's currently in your wishlist, what products you've marked as "liked", and what products you've reviewed. Each of these factors produces a different list of items based on the same equations above.

Lighting the Fire

So how do you take this information and use it to light the Amazon Recommendation fire?

Two Words: Targeted Marketing.

Most people don't know what that means. Do some research, and get started today. I'll do that as well, and will bring you another post later on, all about it.

Good luck!

I hope this helps at least some of you out there. If you're looking for a way to help me out and spread the word, clicking the Tweet and +1 buttons below are quick and simple ways that I would greatly appreciate!

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is based on a principle: Software Freedom. It is given away under a license that allows you to do with the software as you please. You can modify it, redistribute it, and never pay a penny for it so long as you abide by the terms of the license. This model has worked very well for FOSS. But this model doesn't work for everything.

Amazon's KDP Select allows you to give your book away for free for up to 5 days out of a 90 day period. Taken at its face value this seems like a good promotional tool, but I don't think so. Consider this: How many indie authors out there have made it big because of KDP Select promotions? How many have maintained a good sales rank for any significant length of time after the promotions are done? How many of those free giveaways actually get read?

Ask around, I think you'll be surprised.

Some report decent sales bumps when the promotions are done, but those don't last. They are bumps in the road. Many are okay with this, happy to be "good enough". To each his own, but I've never been willing to settle for "good enough".

There's a second side effect of this program, something that not many people thought of. Not even Amazon themselves, at first. If people are always scheduling books to go on sale for free, eventually you breed a culture of consumers who expect everything for free. I'm positive this isn't what Amazon wanted, and their actions appear to reflect that.

If you're going to give your work away for free, I highly recommend you do it for the right reasons. I'm simply not willing to give away 10,000 books to sell 100. That doesn't make sense to me.

I want to see my books at the top of the bestseller lists. That's best "seller" list, not best "free" list. The only way that's going to happen is through hard work, perseverance, and constant work on my craft. I would suggest the same thing to all indie authors out there.

I believe I have a good product, and they're only going to get better going forward. This is what will drive my sales. My exposure comes from you: the people who believe in me enough to keep coming back, the people who enjoy my writing enough to share my posts, and the people who refer others to my books so that I might win over more readers. I love you people. I want you to know how much I appreciate it every time you click the tweet, +1 and stumble buttons, or otherwise share my work.

But don't take me at my word. I do free for the right reasons. The first chapter of my debut novel, The Time Weaver, is available to read right here on my website, and for the first time, I'm going to offer the first chapter in a downloadable PDF, Kindle Format, and ePub format. Grab it, read it, and then pick up the whole book for a measly $2.99. That's less than a cup of coffee at certain coffee shops, and don't forget, a portion of that money is donated to Reglue, a charity that distributes computers to underprivileged children.

PDF Format

Amazon Kindle Format

ePub Format

If you already think you'll enjoy my book, you can pick it up in the following places with my full appreciation:

Amazon Kindle eBook

Kobo Books ePub eBook

Paperback

If I Knew Then What I Know Now...

Many of you know that I'm a full-time software developer by trade. I write my books in my spare time, and publish them as a hobby. I bring this up only because it gives you some background on how I look at the world. I don't see things through a normal person's eyes. If you've ever spent time with a software developer, you'll know that we see things from a unique perspective.

When I look at a system, I don't just see a black box with an input and an output. I see all the inputs and how they relate to each other. I see how a small change in one can create a big change in another. I see the processes, data structures, algorithms and code involved in that system. I can't help it.

It drives my wife nuts sometimes.

Here's the thing: I didn't start looking at Amazon in any real detail until just recently. But now I understand so much more. I wish I had done this a long time ago.

On With the Show

When you first publish a book on Amazon, their system will file your book into a number of lists:

• Bestseller Lists

• Popularity Lists

• Recently Tagged Lists

• Recently Popular Lists

• New Release Lists

• Movers and Shakers

• Hot New Releases

• 90-day New Releases

• and many more.

A great many of these lists are then subdivided by genre, price, and so forth. Amazon is basically just a complex filing system. For the first thirty days, forget all of those, except the New Release list. This is a list of all books that have been released in the last thirty days.

Why forget all the others? Because Amazon's current sales rank system (THE list) bases your position on many factors, but most particularly your last thirty days of sales. If you don't have thirty days in sales, it doesn't count this against you, it simply considers what you DO have. But for the first thirty days, you enjoy some extra publicity. All those grand slam blockbusters that fill the top of the bestseller lists are not in the New Release list (unless they are less than thirty days old) and many of the greatest books of all time are not on this list. It's just you and a whole lot of other fresh meat.

For the first thirty days, if you focus your promotional efforts using a layered approach, you can drive your book to the top of the new release list and pick up a whole lot more sales from people just browsing. More sales = better sales rank = more exposure on Amazon = more sales. See how it works?

Setting the Fire

If you're looking to really make a run at being the next great indie author, consider this advice: don't just create sparks all over the place and expect things to burn. Lay out your tinder, your kindling, and then your wood on top, and when the time is right, you'll only need one spark to set that blaze.

This was a piece of advice that I was given by a very wise indie author by the name of Rodney Walther. He's sold more than 30,000 copies of his book, Broken Laces, and is still sitting up in the top 1000 month after month. So there must be something to this.

What does it mean? It means stop floundering around and wondering what to do. Use a planned approach. Get lots of people on your side: Twitter friends, Facebook friends, book bloggers, reviewers, and yes, even some paid promotions (select these wisely!). Have them all focus on promoting your book in that critical first thirty days, and make sure to carry some forward as well. If you pull it off, your sales rank coming out of those first thirty days will carry you forward for a long time.

A Note About Amazon Select

If you know me, you know how I feel about this program. Having a successful book launch is all about exposure. Limiting yourself to Amazon for your eBook is only going to limit your exposure. You may not see tremendous sales on the other sites, but I promise you, if you remove your listings, you will see a drop in your exposure on search engines like Google.

Even if you do choose to embrace Amazon Select, I don't recommend using a giveaway promotion anywhere in the first ninety days with your book on Amazon. Each time your book goes from free to paid, your sales rank resets and is recalculated based on the last thirty days of sales. The catch is that the freebies you give away are not counted 1:1 with sold books. It is more like 10:1 free:sold, meaning you need ten free books to equal one sold book. Not only that, but long term sales ranks barely consider freebies. If you supercharge your first thirty days on Amazon, you'll never need to use a free promotion for exposure.

Putting It All Together

There are hundreds of factors involved in a successful book launch. Amazon's algorithms and understanding how it all works is just a small piece. You absolutely must have at least a decent book to begin with, a professional cover, a good blurb, and lots of other stuff. Don't cut corners. Get your book professionally edited, take the time to set up web pages, blogs, etc before you go live. Build up some hype about your book, and get people excited about it.

Good luck!