It's been a while since I've checked my own books on Amazon, B&N or any of those other sites. Mainly, that's because I used to get extremely obsessive about watching the sales ranks rise or fall. Since I'm already doing whatever I think I can, there's no reason to keep fussing with it. Just keep writing and trying to promote and the rest will be there whether I look at it or not. Sounds like a level-headed approach, doesn't it?
Well, I checked the Amazon site yesterday. I was only there to see if they had the cover of Book 4 up already. Good news -- They did! Bad news -- Book 3 only had 1 review! Granted, it was a great review, but I see other books in genre series that are at the same point as I am as far as number of releases, etc and they've got like 50-60 reviews. Does this make any real difference? Do books with more reviews show up on more pages? Does 1 or no reviews place a book lower on the food chain as opposed to straight-up sales? I honestly don't know. I just figure that more reviews couldn't be a bad thing. More GOOD reviews would be awesome!
So here's the deal. I hear from a lot of readers how they like Skinners and I do my best to respond to you all any way I can. If you've got the time, do you think you could write up a review and place it on a site like Amazon, B&N.com, or any other place that might review the book? Word of mouth truly helps sales of any kind and this would be great. I never wanted to come out and ask like this before because it seemed cheesy. Still does, actually. Sorry about that, but I can only create so many fake accounts on Amazon before they realize it's me who LOVES Skinners. Heh.
Now, since I'm a firm believer in being grateful and showing it. I was thinking about offering free signed promo covers for any / all of the Skinners books, but I've been sending those out for free anyway and don't want to suddenly slap a price tag on it. Do you guys want something like that as a thank you for helping me out by writing a review? Maybe I could come up with something cool to give away. I've been working on a promo project recently, but it really won't make sense until Book 5 is published. Let me think it over. Maybe bookmarks? How about a signed VIP pass to Shimmy's? I can think of something. In the meantime, just let me know what you think of this whole campaign. I'm new to the whole "aggressive marketing" thing.
