Atomic Peril launched a week ago. As this is my debut novel, I’m learning more during this launch phase. One key to early success is to guide your newsletter subscribers on how to buy the book so that it becomes more visible in the extremely crowded Amazon book market. So, to help boost my launch, I sent these suggestions:
- Open the Amazon page on your browser
- Search for Atomic Peril
- Buy it
- After you read it, post a review on Amazon (this step helps tremendously)
Then I cautioned: Leave a review only after you’ve read the book. That might seem obvious, but some eager readers (including my beta readers) might jump the gun.
- If you purchase a Kindle eBook, Amazon will track your progress in reading it. Posting a review before you’ve read the book will likely cause the Amazon algorithm to reject your review.
- If you purchase a paperback, allow at least several days to go by after you receive it, even if you are a fast reader.
- For those of you on GoodReads, post your review there as well.
Several days after the book launched, I was checking my Amazon book page, because some features still had not appeared. On the section that shows things like book length, publication date, etc., there’s a link labelled “see all details.” When I clicked on this link, I was stunned to discover it showed Atomic Peril ranked as #93 in the technothriller category. I checked the ranking later that afternoon and it was #86, but at midnight it went down to #111. Clearly, a volatile figure! I’m not aware of how Amazon determines these rankings, but evidently a few sales in a short time can shoot your book up the list.