The Virtual Alliance - How My Book Became an Amazon.com Best Seller

May 2005

How my book became an amazon.com bestseller overnight - Part 1

Suzanne Falter-Barnes

Nancy Cleary

by Susan Falter-Barnes

When I first heard about the trend among authors to have 'Amazon Bestseller' campaigns, I was skeptical. After publishing three books with major publishers, I'd come to realize that bestseller status is something that's bestowed upon very few. And it's orchestrated months or even years in advance. Furthermore, creating bestsellers has traditionally involved armies of sales people, high-powered PR flacks, and mega-marketing strategies.

I also knew none of this was going to happen for me.

In fact, my book, Living Your Joy; A Practical Guide to Happiness, was solidly parked in what is euphemistically called the 'midlist' in publishing, i.e. the bottom of the publisher's heap. A decent number had been shipped as the book was about to launch, but the phone wasn't exactly ringing off the hook for interviews. In fact, my publisher, Ballantine, had done little or nothing to promote the title.

Enter Nancy Cleary, a reader of my ezine, the Joy Letter, who casually mentioned that another author she'd been working with had just peaked on the amazon.com bestseller list at #1. Just for a moment, I decided to listen.

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing

Nancy is the force behind Wyatt-MacKenzie, an indie publishing outfit, and she understands the value and imperative to guerilla book marketing. She's also the kind of gracious, energetic person one finds it impossible to resist. Nancy made it all sound very simple: just line up a lot of buyers to purchase your book on a particular day, and in return offer them lots of free bonuses.

Admittedly, I had my doubts. First of all, the plan seemed simplistic. And it was all very well and good to get on top of Amazon for a day or two, but then what? Back to the bottom of the heap? I saw my amazon sales rank surging up to #3, then plummeting back down to #28,888 in a single day. And anyway, how was I going to be able to pull this off? Yes, I had a healthy ezine list of nearly 25,000 but that was not nearly enough people to boost my book so far up the list. That would take hundreds of book purchases, and thus hundreds of thousands of advertising impressions. Maybe this Amazon campaign was really more like author-centric ego building tactic, rather than a proven sales technique.

Yet, being a published author, I also understood that it was up to me to get my book to sell. And I knew that Nancy, the graceful power-house, really knew how to make this work. I gathered up my doubts and proceeded as directed.

Read Part 2 of How My Book Became an Amazon.com Bestseller Overnight.

About the Author:
For more information on how you can turn your idea into a publisher-ready self help book proposal one that's truly tuned into what New York literary agents and publishers need visit Suzanne's Self Help Author's Crash Course at http://www.getknownnow.com/selfhelpbook.html