Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: Shoe on January 30, 2019, 05:53:42 AM
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How soon does Amazon send out new release emails to readers who have clicked you "follow this author" button?
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I've seen the ones for my books come out in five days, twenty-one days, eleven days, fifteen days, nine days. It seems to be totally random. They probably roll a 26 sided dice to decide. For the book I published last fall, the Zon sent out the notification twice - once at twelve days, once at 17 days.
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I've had a surprising number of sales on a book released Dec. 12th. I'm not advertising it, so I'm wondering if Amazon finally sent out a new release email. If I was clever, I'd follow myself and know for sure.
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I've had a surprising number of sales on a book released Dec. 12th. I'm not advertising it, so I'm wondering if Amazon finally sent out a new release email. If I was clever, I'd follow myself and know for sure.
D'oh. :dizzy
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Also, duh. I just followed myself. :dizzy
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Usually never, sometimes weeks after the book is out. I think this is another thing Amazon really doesn't care about.
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It's all over the place. Sometimes I get more than one notification for the same book release.
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Double ditto duh. Just followed myself.
Side note: the link to my author page lists my three "best selling books". The book I've sold the least amount of copies of is first on the list.
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Usually never, sometimes weeks after the book is out. I think this is another thing Amazon really doesn't care about.
I'm sorry to say that's probably true. The sad part is that I'm sure Amazon could automate the process so that the email went out a day after the book went live or something.
I do follow myself, and I don't recall seeing either of my last two new releases.
Needless to say, I don't bother trying to get people to follow me on Amazon. The only benefit of that would be new release emails, and Amazon is appallingly hit and miss about those.
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Double ditto duh. Just followed myself.
Side note: the link to my author page lists my three "best selling books". The book I've sold the least amount of copies of is first on the list.
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There's no rhyme or reason to that, either. I also have a book that sells seldom among my bestsellers, and the book that really has sold the most copies hardly ever appears.
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Double ditto duh. Just followed myself.
Side note: the link to my author page lists my three "best selling books". The book I've sold the least amount of copies of is first on the list.
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They messed that up the sort function on the author page several months ago. I used to sort by most reviews but it doesn't work anymore.
I do follow myself and other authors. I also follow some of those authors through their own mailing list. I'm always notified by the author first, sometimes weeks before I get a notice from Amazon.
I'm now directing people to Bookbub and D2D. They both have follow functions that I'm sure work much better than Uncle Zon.
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I'm now directing people to Bookbub and D2D. They both have follow functions that I'm sure work much better than Uncle Zon.
Yeah, I have links to those at the end of all my books. Bookbub is really nice about sending out new release notices.
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
Not surprised.
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
I've had a number of them, all over a month after release. And they were also books I'd bought in the first week, having found they were live on my Facebook feed.
It's getting to the point where the followers emails on Amazon are total joke.
But one cant help thinking some beancounter at Amazon thinks follower emails will manipulate ranks, and so nerfed the whole feature by pushing back the emails to the point of uselessness.
Or more likely Amazon now consider the followers email as competition for AMS, and have deliberately nerfed it so followers have to find out through ads.
There is absolutely no reason why these emails cant go out on day 1, imo.
(Moving this to the Amazon area.)
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
Then this is what must have happened with my December 12 release and explains the upswing in sales over the last three days. On the upside, it means "followers" are genuinely interested in my books. On the downside, they're almost eight weeks behind learning of my new releases.
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Within the last 90 days I've seen myself, and/or heard from trustworthy author friends, reports of everything from next-day notices, to 5 weeks.
There seems to be an algo that ranks, weights, prioritizes and yes, manipulates these things--probably not with malicious intent, just Amazon trying to maximize sales and so on--but that obviously can screw up planning and it helps or hurts individual authors.
Just one more reason I'm wide, with a strong mailing list and other ways to get the word out about new releases.
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Zon may save up the new release notifications and release them when the algos say business is slacking. It would be logical to do so from their perspective. Has anyone else noticed a bump in sales with their December releases? In my case, as I was doing NOTHING to promote my December release, it's easy to see the surge in interest, which is already dying down (it was a three-day spike).
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I followed me yesterday. Just got a notice I have a new release out.
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I followed me yesterday. Just got a notice I have a new release out.
Is that the one from December?
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I followed me yesterday. Just got a notice I have a new release out.
Is that the one from December?
Yes, so of course, it was on my page already when I clicked "follow".
Tight ship.
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
I've had a number of them, all over a month after release. And they were also books I'd bought in the first week, having found they were live on my Facebook feed.
It's getting to the point where the followers emails on Amazon are total joke.
But one cant help thinking some beancounter at Amazon thinks follower emails will manipulate ranks, and so nerfed the whole feature by pushing back the emails to the point of uselessness.
Or more likely Amazon now consider the followers email as competition for AMS, and have deliberately nerfed it so followers have to find out through ads.
There is absolutely no reason why these emails cant go out on day 1, imo.
(Moving this to the Amazon area.)
It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Amazon was thinking in those terms. However, as with many things it does, either of those attitudes is counterproductive.
We know the only reason Amazon introduced the idea of following authors in the first place was as another way to tie people to the platform. By making it obvious to authors that the new release emails are basically useless, Amazon removes the only reason authors have to use the service. But that doesn't necessarily mean authors will spend more on AMS. It just means that whaever energy authors were putting into follows on Amazon will get put into venues they control, like their own mailing list.
Amazon follows were actually a reason to do Amazon giveaways, but between the way Amazon has butchered that system and the fact that Amazon follows are basically worthless anyway is bound to destroy that system in the long run.
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At the moment, the new release emails to followers are working on two time scales. If your book is on a longish pre-order, it will go out on release day. If not, it will go out 3-6 weeks later. I'm still getting notices about mid-December releases. I've just had an alert today for my next release, which has been a live pre-order for 6 weeks now.
It's stupid. How hard can it be to schedule these things? They have all the information they need the instant a book is live. If they were smart, they could even monetise it by getting us to pay for a specific day. I'd certainly pay, if it wasn't too expensive. But it's yet another of Amazon's Good Ideas that they failed to properly implement and so rendered it useless.
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At the moment, the new release emails to followers are working on two time scales. If your book is on a longish pre-order, it will go out on release day. If not, it will go out 3-6 weeks later. I'm still getting notices about mid-December releases. I've just had an alert today for my next release, which has been a live pre-order for 6 weeks now.
It's stupid. How hard can it be to schedule these things? They have all the information they need the instant a book is live. If they were smart, they could even monetise it by getting us to pay for a specific day. I'd certainly pay, if it wasn't too expensive. But it's yet another of Amazon's Good Ideas that they failed to properly implement and so rendered it useless.
What Amazon really needs is a suggestion box. Of course, they'd probably use an algorithm to figure out which suggestions should actually be read. Sigh!
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I follow a bunch of authors and also specific reviewers on Amazon. Its the only way really I follow any authors so its all in one place, rather than getting a gazillion different emails from the authors individually.
I just went through my email box for some of the recent ones I got and they are all either in advance, or on the day of release. And sometimes they come a week later. Since I follow many, I also get a digest type version called "updates from who you follow", or however its called once a week or so. This is usually mostly filled with new reviews from my chosen reviewers as they review more than authors put out books.
So like today I got a notification on Amanda's new book that comes out in mid March. I got notifications from a couple of other authors with books coming out february and july. Then I got a few where it says released today and it got that on the same day as the release.
I also get other emails from amazon that are based on what I bought, borrowed. Even if I don't follow that author. I think, just based on what I see in my inbox over time, that they take in account what I read, what I buy, what I borrow via KU and library. Anything that goes through the amazon system, they take in account. Since I read everything on my kindles and most all books I read are kindle books, its easy for them to track. But I can't say I got those emails about a specific release that far behind. Its usually ahead of time for me on future releases, day of or a few days at most.
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Amazon used to push me to follow authors. Now they want me to join Spark. Social media centered around random stuff I've bought.
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What is Spark, don't think I ever heard that.
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I just received a new release notice from Amazon yesterday, on a book I published Dec. 20.
I echo this with exact dates. I also released a book on December 20 and just received a notice for it. There was a time a few months ago when Amazon seemed to be doing better about this. I've followed myself on Amazon for years. I never received a release notification for a few of my books, including Book 3 of my latest series (released Dec. 10, 2017). Received a notification about Book 4 (released Mar. 31, 2018) a few days after it released. The same for Book 5 (released June 28, 2018). Book 6 took over a month. Had a surge in sales for Book 6 that day, too. I've also received an oddly high number of sales for books 4, 5, and 6 as if many of my readers have missed out on the past few notifications. I've talked about this on my website and encouraged readers to sign up for my newsletter instead, but otherwise, what can you do? :icon_rolleyes:
Contrarily, I get duplicate emails from some authors I follow. I follow Warren Ellis on Amazon and sometimes get multiple emails for the same comic issue. Amazon only deals in extremes, it seems.
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Zon's servers are being used by other companies and since they probably pay mega-bucks, they get priority. We're so far down on the totem pole, we're underneath it.
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I've always followed myself just for this reason. The soonest I received a notification of a release was five weeks later. My most recent notification was seven weeks later. No difference in my long pre-order releases or regular releases. Pretty much useless and long enough for readers to forget you existed. I've been seeing more and more the bigger (than me) authors pointing their readers to follow them on bookbub like someone above mentioned. Thanks for the reminder I need to get on that...
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I guess there really is no consistency in Zon's performance getting those new release emails out. On the upside, we do get a boost in sales when the newsletter goes out, which explains my situation above.
Are we permitted to put our BB links in Author Central bios?