The Best Way To Help Your Favorite Authors

As an avid reader, I enjoy finding the works of new authors, and discovering new stories to read. Alas, it can be difficult to do so. The advertising major publishers purchase is directed towards existing, established big-name authors. We all know that JK Rowling has a new novel out, and unknown thousands flocked to buy the book. My children read Rick Riordan’s work, and they’ve been chomping at the bit to read his latest book in the world of Percy Jackson. Authors like Stephen King, James Patterson, James Rollins, Dan Brown, and others have the type of clout that will draw readers to new and existing works without much effort, however, and in many ways the advertising for these works seems wasted on authors that would sell well regardless.

How can one locate new authors? The easiest method is to visit your favorite online book retailers. You can look at the bestseller lists for works unfamiliar to you, and learn more through the book description and possibly a sample chapter or two. Or, you might search for a topic or genre you’re interested in – “science fiction” or “historical romance” or “woodworking guide” – and see the results shown from those efforts.

Have you ever wondered how these sites build these lists? After all, most “science fiction” books don’t include the phrase “science fiction” in the title, subtitle, or in the work itself.

Though the exact formula is a closely-guarded secret for any site, observation suggests that sales (heavier weightings toward more recent purchases – otherwise Harry Potter would dominate these lists for eternity), “Likes,” tags,  and reviews and ratings all have an impact on the visibility Amazon provides to an author or a specific book. Remember, Amazon* is in business to sell books. The easiest books to sell are those that people want to buy. The easiest way for Amazon to compute which books people want to buy is to find those most liked, with the best review ratings, and strong agreement on descriptive tags. While none of us can control actual purchases, we can help our favorite authors through actions on their author pages and book pages. The initial purchase you make helps an author today; going through the steps I’ll outline below helps an author in the long term.

*For reference, I will be using examples for Amazon, which is the largest online book retailer.

Like A Book

The quickest way to indicate that you like a book is to click the “Like” button on the book’s page. It’s found at the top of the page, between the book title and the pricing information. Click the button. Make sure the button text changes from “Like” to “Liked” to ensure that Amazon’s servers have recorded it. That’s it.

Tags

Tags are descriptive phrases indicating the nature of the book and the type of content that might interest potential readers, and is used for searches potential readers perform while seeking out new material. Generally speaking, Amazon will rank a book higher in the search results based upon the accuracy of the match between the tag and the search, weighted by the number of people who have agreed with that tag. In essence, you are “liking” a tag to show agreement. Most tags are added by the author; you can add others if you’d like.

Tagging is very easy to do. Once you are on the page and have clicked on the “Like” button, hit the “t” key (for “tag”) twice in a row, and quickly. You’ll see a box show up on the page, allowing you to type in tags for the book. You don’t need to type anything, however; there are suggested tags included below the text entry box. Just click on each tag word or phrase, and they’ll be entered in the box. When you finish, click Save Tags. Voila! You’re done. Total elapsed time for both of these activities should be about thirty seconds.

Ratings and Reviews

Amazon allows you to rate a book with one to five stars. While there are no specific guidelines on what each means, I personally use the following as a rule of thumb:

5 stars: Fabulous, I’ll buy the author’s next work as soon as it comes out and stay up late to read it. I may stalk the author to encourage them to write more quickly.

4 stars: Very good. I’ll read more by this author, though I won’t promote it to the top of my to-read list and stay up all night. I will happily recommend the book to others.

3 stars: Enjoyable. I won’t seek out new work by this author, but I won’t avoid it if a new title seems interesting.

2 stars: Not enjoyable. I read the book, but something prevented me from enjoying the book completely. This could be anything from boring characters, a dull story/plot, uninteresting prose, or editing/proofreading errors so frequent and glaring that they disturb what might otherwise have been an enjoyable book.

1 star: Nothing about this book was enjoyable. There was no story or plot. There weren’t any interesting characters. The editing and formatting were poorly done. It’s unlikely I managed to make it through the entire story.

Obviously, such distinctions and ratings are subjective, as are the judgments on the stories themselves. One person’s 1 star piece of trash is another’s 5 star blockbuster. However, for purposes of ranking books, it appears that Amazon treats anything lower than 4 stars as a negative review.

Ratings are important for Amazon and other outlets authors can use for promotional purposes. Amazon has a number of promotions in which number of ratings and average ratings determine if a book/author is a candidate for inclusion, including such lists as the Kindle Daily Deal, which can propel books to the top of Amazon’s best-seller chart in a single day. Other promotion sites will communicate books to subscribers, but demand books included in their lists have minimums quantities of ratings and minimum ratings (frequently, this is 10+ ratings as 4.2+ stars). By leaving a rating and a review, you’re helping the author add additional tools to his or her marketing efforts.

Ratings are simple enough to leave on the Amazon site. Scroll down to the Customer Reviews section and click on the “Write a customer review” button.  Click the number stars for your rating. While you don’t need to leave a review to enter a rating, it’s your opportunity to explain what you liked about this book to help other potential readers decide if they’re interested enough to download.

Reviews need not by long; you just need to write enough to capture your sentiments. Longer reviews can be enjoyable, but tend toward summarizing the entire plot of the story, which can defeat the reading experience for others. I’d recommend limiting reviews to no more than two short paragraphs.

Please keep in mind two key points in the rating and review process.

• The author of the book has no control over the actual transaction and downloading process. If you try to buy and Amazon eats your credit card, or fails to send the eBook quickly via download, or fails to ship a physical book in a reasonable time period, or the physical book arrives damaged, you should contact Amazon directly to report the issue. I’ve had many writing friends tell me they’ve received 1-star reviews because of issues people had with downloads, not because of the quality of the story itself. Remember, the rating on this page reflects the quality of the story and the writing, not the quality of the vendor.
• Avoid spoilers! If you’re reading a murder mystery, don’t reveal whodunit in your review; you’ve just lost sales for the author because readers won’t need to read the book to know the ending. Those that do elect to read the story anyway will have the experience lessened, and it may impact the rating and review they leave as well. It’s perfectly acceptable to say that the ending was a great surprise, or that the identity of the killer came as a great shock to you. Don’t be the person who tells the world that the butler did it, why they did it, and how they were caught.

Conclusion

These four steps can be completed in just a few minutes, but they can provide a lifetime of benefit and opportunity for the authors of books you enjoy reading. The next time you find yourself finishing an enjoyable book, please take the time to help the author reach others by going through this process.