Comparable in Amazon blurb

[The Masked Scrivener]

Sorry if this has been asked and answered before, but I couldn't find it in a search.

My question is, does anyone know what Amazon's policy is on naming a comparable book/series/fandom in your book's blurb?

[TimothyEllis]

I don't know what the policy is these days, but personally, it puts me off.

The moment an author feels the need to compare their books to something else, I stop reading, and go to the next book.

I know it's not meant that way, but a lot of the time the comparison makes me think the book is really fan fiction with the fan removed, and I'm not interested in that.

Also, a lot of the wording is just author ego wank.

[LilyBLily]

Amazon doesn't like it by indies but trad pubs get away with it all the time. A safer comparison is one I saw recently to a movie in the same genre. Tricky if the movie is based on a book, but it might work and be acceptable and not come off as boasting. That's a lot to ask and maybe isn't worth the trouble. 

[Crystal]

Has anyone actually had issues with Amazon over this or is it speculation? Because there's one romance author who stuffs a dozen authors names as keywords at the end of her blurbs (for fans of x, y, z, a, b, c). And the list is not specific either, just popular romance authors, some writing wildly different things. She's been doing that for a long time on many books & she runs a ton on Amazon ads.

If it was an issue, I think she'd have an issue.

You can't refer to other books in your actual keywords but I think you can do it in your blurb.

[LilyBLily]

Has anyone actually had issues with Amazon over this or is it speculation? Because there's one romance author who stuffs a dozen authors names as keywords at the end of her blurbs (for fans of x, y, z, a, b, c). And the list is not specific either, just popular romance authors, some writing wildly different things. She's been doing that for a long time on many books & she runs a ton on Amazon ads.

If it was an issue, I think she'd have an issue.

You can't refer to other books in your actual keywords but I think you can do it in your blurb.

You're probably right, although I think it's not so much speculation as transference. We can't use other author names in our Amazon ads, and we can't use them in our keywords (but we can in our ad keywords), and we can't use them in our subtitles. We see blurbs with "For fans of  ____" all the time, but most often from trad pub books because that in fact is a traditional thing in trad publishing. It's hard to keep it all straight and we err on the side of caution.

So, bottom line, list those other authors after all if you think that will help.