Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Marketing Loft [Public] => Topic started by: LilyBLily on October 02, 2019, 12:51:58 AM
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Reading Tammi Labrecque's excellent Newsletter Ninja, I thought again about finding who my target audience is. This is preached at us constantly, but it's hard to guess from sales just who is buying. I get most sales evenings and weekends, it's true. Then again, most people tend to be busy with things other than searching Amazon for books during weekdays, even if they actually do spend all day reading. So the timing of sales isn't a help.
Then I followed the Amazon review trail of one of my faithful ARC readers and realized that she likes the same kinds of books I do and the same kind I (sometimes) try to write. So from now on, some of my newsletters will be aimed at her specifically.
There's a caveat. That same Amazon trail will reveal if people usually buy books or if they are ARC team members for multiple authors or agencies. If the latter, converting them to paying customers would probably be very difficult, although they could still be useful as dedicated ARC reviewers.
I've occasionally followed a reviewer's trail just to see what s/he says about other books. If a 1-star review is out of the norm for that reviewer, it's likely to be heartfelt and not just a case of a cynical person who is mean to everyone.
As I understand it, reviewers can set their body of reviews to be public or private, so this isn't an invasion of privacy.
Just another angle in attempting to understand readers.
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I think it's a great idea, but I actually prefer Goodreads to do this.
You can click on a profile, click on reviews, then click "compares books". It brings up the books you have in common and the ratings! Of course, you can also browse their ratings and see which books they liked and didn't like.
I don't rate books on my author account, though, but perhaps I could have another account with the books I like just to do this with people who read and review my books.
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Maybe useful to find other books/authors to target on AMS too. Thanks for posting this.
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Reading Tammi Labrecque's excellent Newsletter Ninja, I thought again about finding who my target audience is. This is preached at us constantly, but it's hard to guess from sales just who is buying. I get most sales evenings and weekends, it's true. Then again, most people tend to be busy with things other than searching Amazon for books during weekdays, even if they actually do spend all day reading. So the timing of sales isn't a help.
Then I followed the Amazon review trail of one of my faithful ARC readers and realized that she likes the same kinds of books I do and the same kind I (sometimes) try to write. So from now on, some of my newsletters will be aimed at her specifically.
There's a caveat. That same Amazon trail will reveal if people usually buy books or if they are ARC team members for multiple authors or agencies. If the latter, converting them to paying customers would probably be very difficult, although they could still be useful as dedicated ARC reviewers.
I've occasionally followed a reviewer's trail just to see what s/he says about other books. If a 1-star review is out of the norm for that reviewer, it's likely to be heartfelt and not just a case of a cynical person who is mean to everyone.
As I understand it, reviewers can set their body of reviews to be public or private, so this isn't an invasion of privacy.
Just another angle in attempting to understand readers.
Interesting idea. I recently got a one star review and looked at her profile. She only gives one star reviews. She needs an attitude adjustment. :lalala
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How do you do a review trail? :confused:
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I assume they meant just click on the reviewer, either on Amazon or goodreads, and see all the other reviews they have written.