Authors. KindleScout - My Campaign Experience

Details of the KindleScout program itself were provided in my blog post titled "Authors. Meet KindleScout!"

In late 2015, I learned of a program for authors sponsored by Amazon’s Kindle division. Since Amazon was the leading sales point for books in the world then, and the carrot was a “guaranteed” contract with them, I investigated.

Sherry Frazier, my publicist at the time, encouraged me to finish the manuscript I was editing and submit it. Fortunately, as things turned out, I did not submit.

In August of this year (2017), I finished a different manuscript. Much shorter than the one that I didn’t submit, Patterns on Pages is Volume 4 of the Traveler’s HOT L series.

The screenshot above is the campaign at a glance. I don’t know how many nominations Patterns on Pages received. Amazon is careful not to allow that information out. Ultimately there were 1,600 visits to Patterns’ KindleScout page.

I was glad for, not happy with the first day’s count of 100 hits. It suggests that my “core” group jumped on the chance to help me. I was disappointed with the drop-off that followed.

You have to keep your book’s nomination in front of your social media audience. I suspect that there are authors who use KindleScout often. The offer for the book I mentioned in the first post on this topic indicated that by following the plan in the book, she kept her books in the “Hot and Trending” category 90% of the time.

Following the peaks and valleys on the screenshot, you can see how effective my “pushes” were . . . or weren’t. I call the flat line from August 26 through September 6 Death Valley. No matter what I put up as a reminder or an incentive, there was little response by my audience.

• I made new groups on Facebook and posted just for them.
• I posted in other Facebook groups I belong to. Below are the posts I put on one of the sites for graduates from the high school I attended. I had more on my personal and professional Facebook pages. 

I tweeted and posted on LinkedIn, too.

Notice the DRASTIC change in the style and wording of the example in the lower right-hand corner. Notice the date. Now, look at the graph of the number of hits on the scout page for the date that was posted. IT’S NOT a coincidence that the highest peak on the graph is the first day that was posted.

I didn’t write that lower right-hand corner post. I wasn’t the first to post it.

This is important!

A complete stranger found the book. She looked at my less than stellar pathetic communiqués and took it upon herself to help the cause because she thought the book had promise. This is that magnanimous person.

Ms. Reed is an editor and author. Her website is minimalistic but effective. I will use at least one of her services on a forthcoming book. 

I’ve been in contact with her since the close of the campaign. Here’s her suggestion for follow up since Patterns didn’t get chosen, basically how to turn the rejection by Scout into a positive.

Had I known that before I started, some percentage of my post soliciting nominations would have included the “free book either way” plan. I tried it with Patterns.

All non-selected books get the same verbiage notification when the author publishes them on Kindle, so I had to try and get folks who nominated to take me up on the free book offer. It sputtered. Fewer than 100 copies were downloaded during the 5-day span. Over a week later, not a single review has been posted.

On the plus side, as you can see by the photo below, Patterns was in the top 3175 Free Kindle books on the first day—only 32 downloads. If 400 people —that’s only 25% of the site visits—would have downloaded the book, I suspect that would have gotten Amazon’s attention.

Amazon's algorithm for what book to publish is not public record. I've nominated about a dozen books. I thought four of them were top drawer. Only one was selected for publication, and that one was selected early in the program's existence. 

Nominations and Hot and Trending must be connected. I've decided that how many nominations you get over a given time period must be the driving forces in the selection of a book for publication.

That being said, KindleScout now has a ranking system for authors who post books. 

My score and rank in the photo are the October 14, 2017, numbers. Here are the current top 8 authors that day as well.

Methinks that this ranking and what it takes to get points is a sizable chunk of the selection algorithm's matrix.

Kindle allows up to 30 days for each author to “polish” an accepted manuscript. It took me 27 days to get Patterns ready for Kindle after the rejection slip. That was too long. Too many people who nominated my book were “on to something else” by the time Patterns was published, and they were not expecting to get a FREE copy if it wasn’t selected.

Will I try KindleScout again?

Maybe.

Possibly.

If I do, I know I’ll change my strategies to include

• Earlier heads ups to potential readers on the possibility of a KindleScout campaign.
• More focused posts on Twitter.
• Mentioning the FREE book option whether the book is selected for publication or not.
• Having the book ready to publish through Kindle IMMEDIATELY if it’s not selected.

BTW: No more than two of the books in the thirty-day cohort that Patterns was in were selected for publication.

If you found this series informative, please spread the word. Thanks!

Next Authors post is Reprised/Revised Archival Posts

Follow me on Twitter: @CRDowningAuthor and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CRDowningAuthor

My website is: www.crdowning.com

I'd appreciate your feedback as a comment on Blogger!