Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: TimothyEllis on December 16, 2022, 11:00:39 PM
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Not sure if I'm being paranoid,
But every time I bring my next pre-order in to less than 2 weeks away, the current book drops like a stone one week out form the release date.
It's happened enough times now that it looks like Amazon make it happen deliberately.
This time I changed the release date of CAG to be in 10 days from then. Bonko was still selling reasonably.
At 8 days from CAG release, Bonko drops off a cliff. And that on a day when my sales were substantially better than average for 1 week before the next release.
Anyone else noticed this happening?
I thought previously it was a coincidence. But now it looks deliberate. Like Amazon suddenly made the current book unfindable with the next one a week away.
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Anything is possible, but what would Amazon's motive be?
We all know that Amazon does what's best for Amazon, not what's best for us. But I'm not seeing a benefit for Amazon in the behavior you're describing.
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Anything is possible, but what would Amazon's motive be?
We all know that Amazon does what's best for Amazon, not what's best for us. But I'm not seeing a benefit for Amazon in the behavior you're describing.
My guess is, now the also-bought and also-viewed sliders are gone, that it's to force me into AMS ads.
That won't be happening though.
I've noticed a one third drop in my income since those sliders vanished, and most of it is from KU, where apparently my books can;t be found now that my last book is no longer in any of the top 100s.
What the also-bought slider was doing was keeping my books on the product pages of the authors doing better than me, and that had a definite flow on effect. Now I'm not there, and so people can't find my books as easily.
I'm not quite sure how to respond to it at the moment. But it won't be gambling at the AMS table.
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This month, AMS accounts for 69% of my sales and probably some part of my KU pages read. (Those aren't broken out monthly.) But I can't say I'm really making money. From what I can tell, one would need a much bigger budget to do that, and I'm not willing to gamble at that table.
Right now, Amazon page layout seems to be in flux. I haven't seen also boughts recently, but I saw some also viewed just yesterday--but only on some of the pages. Whether or not the pages have Goodreads reviews also varies, seemingly in no obvious way. Other aspects of the layout also varied.
A/B testing? Maybe. It seems Amazon may be experimenting to see what works best. Perhaps they'll discover that taking out the also bought carousel actually hurt sales in general. (I can dream, can't I?)
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A/B testing? Maybe. It seems Amazon may be experimenting to see what works best. Perhaps they'll discover that taking out the also bought carousel actually hurt sales in general. (I can dream, can't I?)
I'm not sure they care about sales.
They make more from advertising.
But I've noticed as well that I simply can't find a book worth reading now. Nothing much on the current sliders passes my first page test. 1 of them did, but by the time I got to the end of the first book, I wasn't interested in book 2.
The also-bought slider was always where I found most of the books I read which were not already known authors. I miss it as a reader.
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It's commonly said that Amazon makes more money from advertising than from sales, but I've never yet found figures that back that up.
For example, if you look at https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/amazon-revenue/ (https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/amazon-revenue/), you discover that Amazon sales in Q4 2021 (not counting third party) were worth 66.08 billion. Advertising services were worth 9.72 billion--not even close.
I suppose one could argue that Amazon gets more advertising money than sales revenue from indie authors specifically, but I've never seen data to back that up, either.
Of course, it's possible Amazon could decide that it will prioritize selling advertising over making sales. The problem with doing that is that most indie authors don't have huge advertising budgets, so making their sales drop won't necessarily make their ad spends go up. And those indies with more advertising money to spend probably won't be willing to operate at a loss, as a newbie might attempt for a while. In other words, an author operating like a real, successful business would operate will only put more money into ads in certain situations, not in a knee-jerk way if sales drop. They will consider many factors, and I'm not sure Amazon can accurately measure them all.
With both populations, it's possible Amazon will lose money if it miscalculates (sales will drop more than advertising will make up for).
Then there's Amazon ego to consider. Amazon wants to make money. But it also wants to rule the world. It wants to be the dominant seller in every field it can manage. That's not consistent with throwing away sales right and left. Discovering new things to read keeps people looped into Amazon's ecosystem, as you yourself point out. Making discovery worse raises the specter of people actually shopping somewhere else.
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It's commonly said that Amazon makes more money from advertising than from sales
I've never heard anyone say this.
In fact, if I were to hear anyone say it, I'd consider them an idiot.