HELPING FELLOW INDIE AUTHORS PART 1
This is a two part post I’ve been thinking of writing a while. I wanted to cover a few points I’ve had time to think about and reflect on since starting to write and publish to the kindle.
The first is about reviews. I am constantly telling people “Don’t just leave a review on http://www.amazon.com leave it on http://www.amazon.co.uk too!”
There’s nothing wrong in this. Amazon allows it. If you’re reviewing it one side of the site, then why not the other? A book may have 10 5-star reviews in the US, but only 1 3-star review in the UK. This way you’re helping the book immeasurably in finding an audience it may not have had you not posted on both versions of the site.
Still, though, people don’t bother. It’s merely a case of copy and paste. What’s hard about it? Takes you less than a minute to copy and paste the review on to both versions of the site (the same site I should add!) and it is truly worth its weight in gold to the author of that particular work.
The second point to make mention of is tagging. Do you use the tagging function? Probably not. A lot of people don’t. For instance, I’m a contributor to ‘The Kindle All-Stars Present: Resistance Front,’ and when it was published I went onto its page and tagged it.
All you do is press t twice, quickly. It brings up a tagging box. So for example with Resistance Front I tagged it Alan Dean Foster, Bernard Schaffer, Harlan Ellison, and of course Tony Healey. Because I want myself linked to it in some way or the other. It helps to network book A with Book Z on Amazon, and the more that people do it, the easier readers will find a certain writer’s work.
If you’re not doing it already, shame on you! Get on it now! Go to your own book pages on Amazon and tag them with those you admire, or those who had an influence on what you’ve written. But also go to your fellow I Indie author’s pages and do the same.
And getting back to the reviews again, when you’re posted one on Amazon for an Indie author, let him or her know. They will appreciate it no end. It lets them know that you’re helping out, in any small way that you can. If you tweet or blog about the fact that you’ve left a review, too, then you’re shouting from the rooftops your reaction to an Indie author’s work. It makes people curious. They might go to Amazon after seeing that you left a book 5 stars and purchase it themselves. If they do? Job done.
PART 2 TOMORROW
Tony Healey 