# How to Gain Traction on Non-Amazon Platforms?



## 75814

For those of you who have had luck on the non-Amazon platforms, how did you gain traction? What sort of strategies did you use? Seems like the majority of the ad sites I've seen focus mainly on Kindle. I've gotten a few sales and free downloads on the other platforms, but not even my freebies get much love. I get more free downloads in a day on Amazon than I do in a month on all other platforms combined.


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## Patty Jansen

When a new platform opens, jump early and quickly.

Write series.
Make the first one free
Advertise the hell out of the free book.
When you mention it (website, Twitter, Facebook), give links to places other than Amazon.
Patience


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## 75814

What advertising sites do you recommend? As I said, most of the ones I've seen are Kindle focused.


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## Mark E. Cooper

Patty Jansen said:


> When a new platform opens, jump early and quickly.
> 
> Write series.
> Make the first one free
> Advertise the hell out of the free book.
> When you mention it (website, Twitter, Facebook), give links to places other than Amazon.
> Patience


The above, AND work on your blurbs. The moment I added keyword rich blurbs to Google Play sales started. Just got my payment from them. It was almost £800 which is roughly $1200 I think. Barnes through D2D is also over $1000 using the same info. iTunes is my smallest channel. Less than $100 from there. Kobo is growing, but again it took a perma free first in series and keyword designed blurbs.


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## Patty Jansen

Perry Constantine said:


> What advertising sites do you recommend? As I said, most of the ones I've seen are Kindle focused.


I don't advertise that much.


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## Frank Tayell

.


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## Mark E. Cooper

Patty Jansen said:



> I don't advertise that much.


I don't advertise much either, but the only sites I've had success with are:

Bookbub
ENT
Freebooksy
Midlist (hopefully, I have 2 set up)


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## Patty Jansen

Mark E. Cooper said:


> I don't advertise much either, but the only sites I've had success with are:
> 
> Bookbub
> ENT
> Freebooksy
> Midlist (hopefully, I have 2 set up)


I only advertise when I can get a spot at BookBub or ENT at a time that suits me. For example, not much point advertising when I'm a month away from releasing a new book in a series. Better do that when the book has come out.


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## 75814

Frank Tayell said:


> I saw mentioned on this or a different forum (I can't remember) that Booktastik gave good results for Itunes. I got a few sales, but the figures remained too statistically small to draw any conclusions (I got some amazon sales too from there, enough to pay for the cost of the advert).
> 
> Might be worth trying.


Thanks, I'll look into it.


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## Patty Jansen

Perry Constantine said:


> Thanks, I'll look into it.


Booktastik is one to watch. I just recently looked through their follower list and it's very high quality. As in: a lot of readers and not many junk followers. Plus the site is run by a friend of mine  Who, by the way, is very pally with the ibooks people.

They're still small. But they don't advertise permafrees. Your book must be on special. Not quite sure how that can work. Next time I see Dionne, I'll ask her how she thinks that's going to work.


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## 75814

Also good to know, thanks Patty. If you could report back what your friend says, that'd be awesome.


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## Vaalingrade

ENT is what set mine off.

That and my serial. Having the book store where all my books have a nice block of links to all the places I sell books does wonders, especially with an international audience.


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## CoraBuhlert

Patience is the key. It takes longer to gain traction on non-Amazon platforms, but once you do, sales are usually more consistent.

Like Patty said, link to all places that sell your books on your website and wherever they let you enter non-Amazon links. Occasionally mention the other sites on Twitter. Link to all sites in your newsletter.

I use the same blurbs everywhere and don't bother with "keyword rich blurbs", because I don't like "keyword rich blurbs". It might be important for erotica (which I don't write), but mostly keyword stuffing sounds spammy and desperate. Kobo is my second biggest plattform, so you can sell there without keyword stuffing.

Can't help you on the advertising, since I rarely advertise.


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## Mark E. Cooper

CoraBuhlert said:


> Patience is the key. It takes longer to gain traction on non-Amazon platforms, but once you do, sales are usually more consistent.
> 
> Like Patty said, link to all places that sell your books on your website and wherever they let you enter non-Amazon links. Occasionally mention the other sites on Twitter. Link to all sites in your newsletter.
> 
> I use the same blurbs everywhere and don't bother with "keyword rich blurbs", because I don't like "keyword rich blurbs". It might be important for erotica (which I don't write), but mostly keyword stuffing sounds spammy and desperate. Kobo is my second biggest plattform, so you can sell there without keyword stuffing.
> 
> Can't help you on the advertising, since I rarely advertise.


Key word rich blurbs does NOT NOT mean keyword stuffing. It means writing a description with your audience in mind. It means if your book is science fiction military focused like mine, you know that your fans will be searching on military themes/words. So you don't focus on the love interest that you really liked writing into your book, you think like a reader and you write your blurb with military terms. My soldiers are cyborg infantry who use nanotech, so I use those words. One of them is a space marine and is recruited, so i use the words cyborg, marine, infantry. The book is about first contact with aliens and subsequent war. So say that.

Basically, just take your blurb and rework word choices to use obvious words that your fans are likely to use. That's all.


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## Mylius Fox

Mark E. Cooper said:


> Key word rich blurbs does NOT NOT mean keyword stuffing. It means writing a description with your audience in mind. It means if your book is science fiction military focused like mine, you know that your fans will be searching on military themes/words. So you don't focus on the love interest that you really liked writing into your book, you think like a reader and you write your blurb with military terms. My soldiers are cyborg infantry who use nanotech, so I use those words. One of them is a space marine and is recruited, so i use the words cyborg, marine, infantry. The book is about first contact with aliens and subsequent war. So say that.
> 
> Basically, just take your blurb and rework word choices to use obvious words that your fans are likely to use. That's all.


Nice response.


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## KelliWolfe

Using keywords in your blurbs works on Google Play because their search actually indexes the blurbs. It does *not* work on Kobo or Barnes and Noble because they don't index the blurbs. This is why you see so much keyword stuffing in the title/subtitle/author name fields there.


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## Vaalingrade

Keywords is where using original races and monsters really hurts the intrepid fantasy writer.

No one is searching 'hailene'.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot

As far as promo sites go, ReadCheaply gave me 80+ downloads on my freebie at iTunes.


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## boo4321

First of all: always, always, ALWAYS go direct on other sites (if possible depending on your country, etc.). ESPECIALLY Apple. If you don't have a Mac - either 1) borrow a friend's computer for an hour an upload your books (this is what I usually do--in fact, it usually only takes about 15 minutes per book AND you can access your account, see your sales, and edit metadata from any computer after that), or 2) use an uploading service (I did this for my most recent book--it cost $30 and the uploading service does NOT have access to any of your financial info, etc.).

Aside from letting you have more control over your categories and keywords, I think that some of these retailers "bury" books from aggregators like Smashwords and D2D (Amazon does this too, at least according to the Smashwords channel manager, but since most people go direct to Amazon it doesn't really matter).

General observations/tips about other retailers:
* The readerships are much, much more likely to pay higher prices for books, at least in my experience (as in--that multi-book bundle priced at $6.99 has solid sales at the price on other vendors but only seems to move copies on Amazon if it's heavily discounted). Amazon tends to be where the bargain hunters are.
* There are a lot of AVID readers on other retailers (again, at least in my experience). For example: B&N tends to make up 10-20% of my total sales (Amazon and iTunes are my big 2), but my street team is about 60-70% Nook readers.
* It takes more time (and patience) to build traction at other sites, but when you do, it tends to be "stickier" than at Amazon.
* Make sure you have vendor-specific links in the back of each book on each vendor! (time consuming, but worth it)
* I agree with what others have said about Tweeting vendor-specific links for other retailers. I'd add that you should always include the Twitter handle of the retailer and/or their self publishing arm at the end of the tweet (like @Nook or @KoboWritingLife or whatever) because sometimes they'll RT you.
* Treat all of your readers the same. As in--it's probably not the best idea to release your new book in Select first and then release it everywhere else 90 days later, especially if you use social media or a mailing list to announce new releases. Readers tend to be loyal to their ereaders/retailers of choice and may get upset if they think they aren't important enough to get the book at the same time. (For my last release, it took iTunes 3 days longer to go live than the other sites, and I got a lot of emails about it--and that was only three days!)

What's worked for me so far:

B&N: Generally speaking, they've been a hard nut to crack for me. A lot of people seem to assume they should be #2 in sales behind Amazon, but that hasn't been my experience--and remember, unlike a lot of other retailers, they don't have much of a presence outside of the US. I did have some AMAZING BookBub results with them last fall--my first book made it to #12 in the whole Nook store, and the second one as high as #50. I haven't quite been able to duplicate those results since (though I've had decent results with some of the other ads mentioned in other posts above), BUT as I said, the readers that do find me on there tend to be extremely enthusiastic and among my most avid.

KOBO: First of all, make sure you've signed up for their newsletter about any Kobo Writing Life promotional opportunities. Then sign up for every one. They run regular "sales" on their site (where they offer special discount codes on certain books and promote those books heavily). So you'll be selling your books at a discount (so your royalties will be slightly lower) BUT you don't have to deal with changing the price yourself (or with Amazon price-matching, since it's done with discount codes), and I use them as a funnel to other books in my series. Also, if you have any permafree books, apply for the Free First in Series promotion--I believe there's a thread on Kboards somewhere? And a link on the Kobo Writing Life blog. On that note, you should make sure you're reading the Kobo Writing Life blog--they'll sometimes post about new promotional opportunities or tips for getting noticed (like a recent post by Zoe York about submitting detailed marketing plans to retailers). Like B&N, their site is more "curated" like a traditional bookstore, but unlike B&N, they are actively trying to make indie publishers part of the action. They offer lots of opportunities.

Also: they don't really have much of a market in the US, but they do have a good worldwide presence. I'm currently experimenting with different pricing strategies in different territories. I'm noticing a lot of sales (randomly) from South Africa and Singapore.

iTUNES: They're the big dog for me (fighting with Amazon for my #1 slot). I was going through Smashwords for months, then this spring I decided to borrow a friend's computer and upload direct. It took a little time to build traction, but WOW, did things take off from there. My books actually took off at iTunes UK first, then iTunes US a few weeks later, with Canada, South Africa, and Australia close behind. Permafrees seem to work well here. Another tip: when choosing categories, don't just use the BISAC (North American) categories. I tend to use three BISAC and two BIC (UK, etc.) categories, which is probably why I see good foreign sales there. Again, I'm currently playing with foreign prices to see if that makes any difference (after listening to Joanna Penn talk about this on a podcast--though I'm not sure I could find that specific episode right now!).

GOOGLE PLAY: My Google Play sales are so-so, but I know people making BANK there. Serials seem to do well there. Make sure you read TK's uber GP post for tips on pricing. And yes, there have been horror stories about GP randomly making books free, but 1) that seems to only be a risk if a book is doing SUPER well on Amazon, and 2) supposedly Google still pays you as if those had been sales. For me, it's worth the risk. But I've heard others suggest doing special GP-editions to avoid this issue. GP is one place where I've heard that it's important to have lots of keywords in your blurb (or at least word things in a keyword-heavy way) and subtitle. I even put a list of keywords at the very end of my blurb ("Keywords: [insert appropriate categories/keywords]") and they don't seem to have a problem with that (and the way their book pages are set up, it's out of the way and not very noticeable to your average person browsing).

OTHER RETAILERS: I currently use Smashwords to distribute to a handful of other places such as Oyster, Scribd, OverDrive, etc. because I figure, Why not? But I don't really do any specific marketing for those places. I've actually started seeing some traction on Oyster recently--about 30-40 borrows a month, and hopefully going up from there! And I've started getting some purchases from libraries, too.

Hope this helps! The "other" retailers make up about 55% of my income for 2014, and I'm hoping that stays steady (or grows!). I'm actually going to experiment with some targeted, retailer-specific Facebook ads to see if they get me any bumps. I've also heard people suggest using different covers for different vendors (by studying the covers of the books that tend to get featured and/or dominate the bestseller lists on each individual site), though admittedly that might be extra work (and overall branding becomes a concern). But the takeaway is that you DO have different readerships looking for different things on each site, and it's important to study your results and see what's working in each place (different categories, keywords, even prices).

(Disclaimer: I write romance, so your results may vary by genre! Also, just spent way too long writing this when I'm supposed to be working on my book, so forgive me if there are typos, etc in this post!)


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## MissingAlaska

EmC said:


> Hope this helps! The "other" retailers make up about 55% of my income for 2014, and I'm hoping that stays steady (or grows!). I'm actually going to experiment with some targeted, retailer-specific Facebook ads to see if they get me any bumps. I've also heard people suggest using different covers for different vendors (by studying the covers of the books that tend to get featured and/or dominate the bestseller lists on each individual site), though admittedly that might be extra work (and overall branding becomes a concern). But the takeaway is that you DO have different readerships looking for different things on each site, and it's important to study your results and see what's working in each place (different categories, keywords, even prices).


Yes, this helps. What a great post. Thank you.


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## W.W.

Does Apple still insist on displaying your real name as the publisher if you go direct? That's a deal-breaker for me.


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## John Ellsworth

EmC said:


> First of all: always, always, ALWAYS go direct on other sites (if possible depending on your country, etc.). ESPECIALLY Apple. If you don't have a Mac - either 1) borrow a friend's computer for an hour an upload your books (this is what I usually do--in fact, it usually only takes about 15 minutes per book AND you can access your account, see your sales, and edit metadata from any computer after that), or 2) use an uploading service (I did this for my most recent book--it cost $30 and the uploading service does NOT have access to any of your financial info, etc.).
> 
> Hope this helps! The "other" retailers make up about 55% of my income for 2014, and I'm hoping that stays steady (or grows!). I'm actually going to experiment with some targeted, retailer-specific Facebook ads to see if they get me any bumps. I've also heard people suggest using different covers for different vendors (by studying the covers of the books that tend to get featured and/or dominate the bestseller lists on each individual site), though admittedly that might be extra work (and overall branding becomes a concern). But the takeaway is that you DO have different readerships looking for different things on each site, and it's important to study your results and see what's working in each place (different categories, keywords, even prices).
> 
> (Disclaimer: I write romance, so your results may vary by genre! Also, just spent way too long writing this when I'm supposed to be working on my book, so forgive me if there are typos, etc in this post!)


This is terrific info. Thanks Emc! Hope the WIP didn't suffer.


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## SB James

Bookmarking this thread, getting some really good tips here! I tried to upload direct to some of these places, but Kobo (of all places) gave me a hard time with my cover! So I went to D2D. Despite that, I'm getting traction with my permafree at B&N and Apple. I'd love to get more. 
I definitely think the blurbs need a bit more in the way of keywords. I have no way of knowing if the keywords I used when uploading to D2D are having much effect.


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## boo4321

Glad to help, you guys! It's been something I've been thinking about a LOT lately, and I'm always trying to adjust my approach. You never know where your books will take off. For me, it was iTunes, but as I said above, I know people who are killing it on GP. And I had a friend last year who made the USA Today bestseller list without even cracking the Amazon Top 100 (though she came close)--her books randomly did really, really well on the other platforms.


W.W. - I believe they still do use your real name. I know people who filed a DBA to avoid that issue and it seemed pretty painless. I ended up not worrying about it and just letting my real name appear (obviously not everyone has that luxury). But if it WERE a concern of mine, based on my *own* experiences, it would be worth the time to set up a DBA. I don't know what genre you write, but if you write romance, definitely consider it--the romance market is huge there. I can't speak for other genres (but maybe someone else here can!). I do hope they change that in the future (among other things). But I've learned that waiting for ANY of them--iTunes, Amazon, GP--to make the changes I want is a lesson in futility, haha.


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## Lydniz

Mylius Fox said:


> Nice response.


OT, but I remember your thread on your pen name. If that's you in the photo then the name suits you.


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## Guest

Interesting. I wasn't aware that Kobo offered so many promotional opportunities for indies.

As for iBooks, do you only need a mac to upload the epub file? Can you really do everything else on a non-Apple computer?


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## boo4321

Joe Vasicek said:


> Interesting. I wasn't aware that Kobo offered so many promotional opportunities for indies.
> 
> As for iBooks, do you only need a mac to upload the epub file? Can you really do everything else on a non-Apple computer?


Kobo is really listening. They're still small compared to Amazon, but they've got some smart people working there and they're really adapting. I hope they keep growing, because they really could develop into a force with time.

And to your question about iBooks, yes--you only need to use a Mac to upload. You can access your sales data & royalties statements, as well as make changes to your metadata and prices, from any computer.


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## Mark E. Cooper

KelliWolfe said:


> Using keywords in your blurbs works on Google Play because their search actually indexes the blurbs. It does *not* work on Kobo or Barnes and Noble because they don't index the blurbs. This is why you see so much keyword stuffing in the title/subtitle/author name fields there.


If it doesn't work at kobo, my sales must have been coincidental, which is possible because although I reworked my blurbs I also had a permafree and mark kobo put it in kobo's free first in series page. I use the same blurbs in different channels, and Barnes sales are pretty good too, but not iTunes.


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## theaatkinson

EmC said:


> First of all: always, always, ALWAYS go direct on other sites (if possible depending on your country, etc.). ESPECIALLY Apple. If you don't have a Mac - either 1) borrow a friend's computer for an hour an upload your books (this is what I usually do--in fact, it usually only takes about 15 minutes per book AND you can access your account, see your sales, and edit metadata from any computer after that), or 2) use an uploading service (I did this for my most recent book--it cost $30 and the uploading service does NOT have access to any of your financial info, etc.).


do you mind listing the service?


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## KateSparkes

This is such a useful thread! My sales are decent at Amazon, but basically nil elsewhere. I'm still glad I didn't go Select (I had okay sales elsewhere at release time, among other reasons), but being elsewhere seems pretty pointless now. I keep reminding myself that it takes time to gain traction, but it's hard to be patient. Thank you for the reminders of how important it is to be just that. 

I went through D2D for everyone but Amazon. If I pulled and re-published directly, I'd lose all of my reviews/the little traction I have, right? Best to just go direct with the next ones?


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## boo4321

theaatkinson said:


> do you mind listing the service?


Sure! I used these guys on the recommendation of a friend (I was overseas for my latest release and couldn't just borrow a friend's computer, haha): http://www.authorems.com/apple-upload-service/
Quick and easy.


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## C. Gockel

> Sure! I used these guys on the recommendation of a friend (I was overseas for my latest release and couldn't just borrow a friend's computer, haha): http://www.authorems.com/apple-upload-service/


Wow, thanks! I would pay to get out of uploading directly there. Is there a chance that if you put existing titles up, they'll port over your reviews?

I've been thinking of going direct with Apple; I have a lot more traction there than with Kobo--I had a Free First in Series on Kobo; and it increased sales by 500%--unfortunately, I was only selling about 2 a month there before so ... yeah. Apple, Google, and Kobo seem to be like Amazon in that they don't want to bury self-pubbers and pretend we don't exist.

There are some avertisers that feature other retailers besides Amazon: BookBub, FussyLibrarian, ReadCheaply, ManyBooks.net, ILoveVampireNovels, Freebooksy, Riffle.com, ENT, and a few little blogs and Facebook pages dedicated to Apple Books, and B&N have helped me move my first in series in those places.


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## Guest

If you upload directly to iBooks, can you set your price to free?


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## boo4321

KateSparkes said:


> This is such a useful thread! My sales are decent at Amazon, but basically nil elsewhere. I'm still glad I didn't go Select (I had okay sales elsewhere at release time, among other reasons), but being elsewhere seems pretty pointless now. I keep reminding myself that it takes time to gain traction, but it's hard to be patient. Thank you for the reminders of how important it is to be just that.
> 
> I went through D2D for everyone but Amazon. If I pulled and re-published directly, I'd lose all of my reviews/the little traction I have, right? Best to just go direct with the next ones?


For B&N, I've only gone the opposite direction -- I was going direct, and then I decided to go through Smashwords with the first book in the series so I could make it permafree at B&N -- but in that case, it was possible to merge the two editions. I kept the B&N version live, then uploaded a second version through Smashwords, making sure to make ALL the info match exactly. After a couple of days, the editions merged, and then I "unpublished" the B&N version without losing any reviews. I've never tried it the opposite way, but I suspect it might work.

As for the other retailers, I *believe* that yes, you would lose your reviews/ratings. As for traction, well... it depends on what you mean by "traction" in this case. You'll lose your current ranking (though I'm not sure that would affect you negatively as acutely as it would on Amazon), BUT the audience you've been building probably won't even notice the transition, so you won't lose the audience you've been building. If that makes sense, haha. But yeah, it really comes down to personal strategy--and how long you believe it would take to get as many reviews as you've lost through the transition. If we're talking about fewer than 6 months worth of accumulated reviews... I *personally* would risk making the transition. But that's me, haha.  You can always go back and make them direct later after you've experimented with the next few.


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## boo4321

Joe Vasicek said:


> If you upload directly to iBooks, can you set your price to free?


Yep!


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## 75814

That was a really helpful post, EmC. I go direct everywhere I can (the exception is B&N because they hate Japan), and I'll definitely be trying some of these things you mentioned. Thanks!


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## W.W.

Thank you! I guess I'd have to get multiple DBAs for multiple pen names.


EmC said:


> Glad to help, you guys! It's been something I've been thinking about a LOT lately, and I'm always trying to adjust my approach. You never know where your books will take off. For me, it was iTunes, but as I said above, I know people who are killing it on GP. And I had a friend last year who made the USA Today bestseller list without even cracking the Amazon Top 100 (though she came close)--her books randomly did really, really well on the other platforms.
> 
> W.W. - I believe they still do use your real name. I know people who filed a DBA to avoid that issue and it seemed pretty painless. I ended up not worrying about it and just letting my real name appear (obviously not everyone has that luxury). But if it WERE a concern of mine, based on my *own* experiences, it would be worth the time to set up a DBA. I don't know what genre you write, but if you write romance, definitely consider it--the romance market is huge there. I can't speak for other genres (but maybe someone else here can!). I do hope they change that in the future (among other things). But I've learned that waiting for ANY of them--iTunes, Amazon, GP--to make the changes I want is a lesson in futility, haha.


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## Mike_Author

Mark E. Cooper said:


> Key word rich blurbs does NOT NOT mean keyword stuffing. It means writing a description with your audience in mind. It means if your book is science fiction military focused like mine, you know that your fans will be searching on military themes/words. So you don't focus on the love interest that you really liked writing into your book, you think like a reader and you write your blurb with military terms. My soldiers are cyborg infantry who use nanotech, so I use those words. One of them is a space marine and is recruited, so i use the words cyborg, marine, infantry. The book is about first contact with aliens and subsequent war. So say that.
> 
> Basically, just take your blurb and rework word choices to use obvious words that your fans are likely to use. That's all.


This is an excellent point. I think the key is that the blurb needs to read naturally, with keywords used in similarly naturalistic ways. You can spot spammy keyword stuffing a mile off.

Has anyone else noticed this god awful trend on Amazon where spammy authors list keywords as book contributors (ie - in the "illustrator" or co-author section they have their keywords)? Eg - A book on constipation will be illustrated by "Constipation" and "Difficult bowel movements" (I'm not kidding btw)

It happened at exactly the same time on a wide range of authors (all in fairly spammy "informational product" segments) so there must be some kind of spammy author's group where they learned this technique.

Properly executed keywords however, is a non-spammy artform. To expertly utilise Amazon's search engine and still create a compelling, professional sounding blurb, is a thing of (marketing) beauty.


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## Kathy Clark Author

Not sure what made me read this series of posts but I did.

I did everything listed times five for 15 months straight and on my last 9 titles could never get the total of all the non-Amazon sites to exceed more than 0.02% of what Amazon did by itself.

I felt like the college kids in Les Miserable!  15 months and died on the barricades fighting.  In July I switched out 100% and went back to Amazon.  Writing more, watching more sales, etc.. I think it was Konrath or Hugh who said give it a few months...maybe 6 or 8 and it will start to catch on. 15 > 6 or 8!


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## Guest

Is it true that Kobo pays only twice a year? I also read something that said if you meet a certain threshold, it could be sooner.


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## boo4321

audreyclaire said:


> Is it true that Kobo pays only twice a year? I also read something that said if you meet a certain threshold, it could be sooner.


To get paid monthly, their threshold is $100 (just double-checked). Which is high compared to some other places, but considering how responsive they are to suggestions/complaints from indie authors, I'm hoping that that number won't stay that high forever. We'll see. If you don't make the threshold, then it's every six months.

On the plus side, if you DO make the threshold, you get paid ~45 days after the end of the month (just got paid yesterday, woo!) as opposed to a full two months (like with Amazon). And unless I'm confused, iTunes is somewhere in the ~35 day range. Which is VERY nice, haha.


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## Jerri Kay Lincoln

Mike_Author said:


> Eg - A book on constipation will be illustrated by "Constipation" and "Difficult bowel movements" (I'm not kidding btw)


A book on constipation . . . ? That sounds like a best seller . . .


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## Guest

Great! Thanks, EmC.


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## Mike_Author

Jerri Kay Lincoln said:


> A book on constipation . . . ? That sounds like a best seller . . .


And easy to write!

- Eat lots of fibre
- Drink lots of water

THE END

<wait for KDP cash to roll in>


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## Mark E. Cooper

Joe Vasicek said:


> If you upload directly to iBooks, can you set your price to free?


Yes, and you can set 52 individual prices at different country stores. In reality you won't do that. You will probably do The US, UK, Canada, and then set all the others by territory... eg. Europe or Asia


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## boo4321

For those interested, here's a link to Kobo's current promotion (which starts today) so you can see how they run: http://www.kobo.com/OctoberOffer?style=onestore

I ended up putting a book in each of the discount categories. Last month's sale was getting me about 9-10x my usual daily sales on Kobo, and even after the sale, my daily average had almost doubled. So hoping this continues the bump.  Every little bump counts!


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## theaatkinson

There are some great reads in there. I put 3 in as well. starting to love kobo promos. now...to just get them to pay me...


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## Patty Jansen

Yup, I have three books in there as well. Last month, I sold a crapload of my $9.99 omnibus.


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## Steve Vernon

I've got 3 books in that Kobo promo this weekend as well, Thea. I've done pretty well with these promotions so far. We'll see how this weekend goes.


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## Chrysta Euria

> Make sure you have vendor-specific links in the back of each book on each vendor! (time consuming, but worth it)


How do i do this? Am I supposed to publish book 3 first then get the vendor link and then use it in book 2?


----------



## deedawning

I don't remember there being keywords for Google? What do you mean?


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

EmC said:


> For those interested, here's a link to Kobo's current promotion (which starts today) so you can see how they run: http://www.kobo.com/OctoberOffer?style=onestore
> 
> I ended up putting a book in each of the discount categories. Last month's sale was getting me about 9-10x my usual daily sales on Kobo, and even after the sale, my daily average had almost doubled. So hoping this continues the bump.  Every little bump counts!


Interesting, but how do you get into these things? Am I the only one who cannot find a newsletter or promo sign up on their dashboards?


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

deedawning said:


> I don't remember there being keywords for Google? What do you mean?


There aren't, and that's the problem. To find a book there, readers type in the search bar, and the engine uses the title, sub-title, author, and blurb to serve up results. Keywords in your blurb (properly used in proper sentences not just dumped in) will help readers find your books while at the same time making your description more informative.


----------



## Patty Jansen

Mark E. Cooper said:


> There aren't, and that's the problem. To find a book there, readers type in the search bar, and the engine uses the title, sub-title, author, and blurb to serve up results. Keywords in your blurb (properly used in proper sentences not just dumped in) will help readers find your books while at the same time making your description more informative.


Keywords dumped at the end of the blurb will work just as well on Google Play


----------



## boo4321

hoangvu71 said:


> How do i do this? Am I supposed to publish book 3 first then get the vendor link and then use it in book 2?


After you publish a new book, go and update the back matter of all the previous books to include the new link (most important: make sure the link is right after the last page of the book that comes just before the new book, assuming you're writing a series). I know some people who use smart urls that can be redirected easily WITHOUT having to update the books themselves (they have "live" links for future books lead to a random landing page on their website that says something like, "This book hasn't been released yet, but if you want to be the first to know when it is, make sure you're on my email list..." or something like that. Then they update the smart url links with the ACTUAL product links when the books are live (haven't done this myself yet... only heard about it after doing a major link update on all my books, haha)

Mark and the others asking about the Kobo promotions -- I *believe* the correct newsletter is the one you opt into under your "Contact Information" on Kobo Writing Life. On your dashboard, click on "My Account" at the top and then "Contact Information." Under where your email address is listed, you should see the option to opt into "Email Updates."


----------



## Chrysta Euria

If you update the back cover after publishing, then wouldn't it mean that you will have to wait a couple days just so that the book would be published once again?


----------



## Adrian P

Patty Jansen said:


> When a new platform opens, jump early and quickly.
> 
> Write series.
> Make the first one free
> Advertise the hell out of the free book.
> When you mention it (website, Twitter, Facebook), give links to places other than Amazon.
> Patience


So, how do beginning or struggling authors afford to "advertise the hell out of" the first book? We just hope we make back the money fast enough?


----------



## Patty Jansen

Adrian P said:


> So, how do beginning or struggling authors afford to "advertise the hell out of" the first book? We just hope we make back the money fast enough?


You use some of the excellent site lists that get posted on these boards (mostly by C. Gockel who is awesome for doing this). Many sites will have submission forms for freebies. A lot of the smaller sites are free. They increasingly have links to non-Amazon sites. If, say, you can get a couple of free sites to take it and get 50-100 downloads per day, you should see some sales of subsequent books trickle in.

If not, you have to examine the books. Cover, blurb, sample, series branding, but sadly often also the content just doesn't work.


----------



## Patty Jansen

EmC said:


> For those interested, here's a link to Kobo's current promotion (which starts today) so you can see how they run: http://www.kobo.com/OctoberOffer?style=onestore


As a side issue, does this link work for anyone? I can't get it to load, and I logged in especially to advertise this. Dang it.


----------



## CoraBuhlert

The Kobo link doesn't work for me either, but then I suspect that it's because of my location. This probably applies to others as well, e.g. the promo is only for the US or Canada, so people elsewhere don't see it.


----------



## Patty Jansen

I'm trying two versions: the one I got in the email and the one posted here. Neither work. They worked yesterday.


----------



## JETaylor

http://www.kobo.com/OctoberOffer

Does that work? I've got a book in each category as well.


----------



## Patty Jansen

JETaylor said:


> http://www.kobo.com/OctoberOffer
> 
> Does that work? I've got a book in each category as well.


Nope. Does it work for you?


----------



## Incognita

I can see the offers, but that still doesn't answer the question a lot of us have been asking, which is how did you get your books into that promo in the first place? I don't see anything on my dashboard that's applicable.


----------



## JETaylor

Mark E. Cooper said:


> Interesting, but how do you get into these things? Am I the only one who cannot find a newsletter or promo sign up on their dashboards?


Unfortunately, I think it's by invite only.


----------



## TheGapBetweenMerlons

FWIW, both of those links are working for me.

I usually skim over the Kobo newsletters but haven't taken the time to read them in depth. The most recent one I see is "Kobo Writing Life Digest September 2014" from September 18th. I just did a more careful skimming of it and the only promo reference I'm seeing is the small Kobo Next promo section, which does not lead me to anything about featuring one of my books (if I felt I had one worth featuring). So either I'm _still_ missing something or this isn't the right newsletter...?



JETaylor said:


> Unfortunately, I think it's by invite only.


Oh. Well, I won't hold my breath then!


----------



## Kathryn Meyer Griffith

Mark
what exactly is "keyword rich blurbs"?


----------



## Incognita

JETaylor said:


> Unfortunately, I think it's by invite only.


Well, that stinks. Oh, well. I have seen my Kobo sales go way up this month, though, thanks to being included in their "first free in series" promo. Guess I'll have to be content with that....


----------



## Saul Tanpepper

ChristinePope said:


> I can see the offers, but that still doesn't answer the question a lot of us have been asking, which is how did you get your books into that promo in the first place? I don't see anything on my dashboard that's applicable.


It was by invite. I have three in and have sold quite a few copies of my $9.99 omnibus at 50% off. Not many sales at the 25% or 35% off levels, though. Anyone else seeing that?

Access issues likely have something to do with your ISP. Someone I know couldn't see the page until they went through a VPN.


----------



## Guest

ChristinePope said:


> Well, that stinks. Oh, well. I have seen my Kobo sales go way up this month, though, thanks to being included in their "first free in series" promo. Guess I'll have to be content with that....


How do you know if you get into that? I've applied through their google docs application and tried to find the page on their site, but I'm not sure I've found the right one ...


----------



## CoraBuhlert

I've had a book listed on the German version of Kobo Next and it gave me a nice little sales bump. No idea why they picked it, I didn't apply for it or anything and the book in question has never been a big seller. I guess someone at Kobo just liked it.


----------



## Patty Jansen

CoraBuhlert said:


> I've had a book listed on the German version of Kobo Next and it gave me a nice little sales bump. No idea why they picked it, I didn't apply for it or anything and the book in question has never been a big seller. I guess someone at Kobo just liked it.


Yup, they'll do that. That's how you get invited, too. They're small enough to have real humans look at listings.


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Patty Jansen said:


> Keywords dumped at the end of the blurb will work just as well on Google Play


Very true, but not as pretty


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Kathryn Meyer Griffith said:


> Mark
> what exactly is "keyword rich blurbs"?


Earlier in the thread http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,197218.msg2777897.html#msg2777897


----------



## boo4321

hoangvu71 said:


> If you update the back cover after publishing, then wouldn't it mean that you will have to wait a couple days just so that the book would be published once again?


I think you're referring to my comment earlier about links in the backmatter? I meant the pages after the end of the book (where you'd usually link to the next book, have a list of all your books, etc.). And when you update that, the old version stays live until the new one goes through, so the book will still be available. 

(unless I'm misinterpreting your question, haha. I haven't had my coffee yet.)


----------



## Mark E. Cooper

Patty Jansen said:


> As a side issue, does this link work for anyone? I can't get it to load, and I logged in especially to advertise this. Dang it.


Works fine for me. Chrome and in ye olde England


----------



## Patty Jansen

Mark E. Cooper said:


> Works fine for me. Chrome and in ye olde England


It's still crapping out for me. "Bad gateway" whatever that means.


----------



## boo4321

Ahh, I posted the original link to the Kobo promo, and though I'm American (and thus have American-based .com accounts everywhere), I'm currently in England. Didn't think about that, haha. I keep forgetting how confused all my normal sites are by me right now. (Last week Amazon.com kept asking me if I was in a different country each day--"Are you shopping from Austria?" "Are you shopping from Germany?" etc. hahaha.)

If you're in a country where the sale is happening, you can also access it from the main Kobo page... on the UK site (which I'm assuming is what I'm seeing) there's a big blue banner about 1/3 of the way down the store's homepage that says "Up to 50% off" and I just clicked on that to go to the sale page.


----------



## Patty Jansen

OK, since I looked on the Kobo site and I couldn't find a link to the promo there, I suppose it doesn't run in Australia. The link they sent me worked but only because the promo hadn't gone live yet. Now it's live and won't work anymore if you're not in one of the countries where the promo runs.

Kobo is a highly location-sensitive site. The top 100s are different for each country, and when you're in a non-English speaking country, the language changes automatically (as it does on Google).

Which is sorta OK but annoying when you're in Germany, kinda a bit more annoying in France, but wait until you go to Abu Dhabi and AAAARRRGGHHH CAN'T FREAKIN READ ANYTHING!!!!


----------



## 75814

Patty Jansen said:


> Kobo is a highly location-sensitive site. The top 100s are different for each country, and when you're in a non-English speaking country, the language changes automatically (as it does on Google).
> 
> Which is sorta OK but annoying when you're in Germany, kinda a bit more annoying in France, but wait until you go to Abu Dhabi and AAAARRRGGHHH CAN'T FREAKIN READ ANYTHING!!!!


This is one of the thing that really p*ss es me off about Kobo. I know Mark from Kobo was recently on one of the podcasts talking about visibility and one of the things he suggested is checking other top sellers in your genre in different Kobo stores and see what they're pricing. Which is pretty much impossible if you're an English language writer living in Japan, because there is no freaking way to access the English language Kobo sites without using a VPN. I had to jump through a number of hoops and email Kobo Writing Life several times before I could even access the writing life page to upload my books directly.

I mentioned this to Mark on one of the Kobo threads on here and he told me to email support about the fact that there is no way to switch to an English language version of the Kobo site when browsing from Japan, tell them he told me to contact them, but still the only response I got was basically "yeah, the site's in Japanese. Sorry, nothing can be done about it."

As many problems as I have with Amazon, at least I can view the sites from the different countries so I can see what sort of prices work there.


----------



## JETaylor

Saul Tanpepper said:


> It was by invite. I have three in and have sold quite a few copies of my $9.99 omnibus at 50% off. Not many sales at the 25% or 35% off levels, though. Anyone else seeing that?


I'm seeing the same thing. My 9.99 boxed set is selling at the 50% price point, but the others aren't yet.


----------



## boo4321

Weird. I never knew that about the Kobo site showing up automatically in different languages. I know you *can* change the US and UK sites to different languages by scrolling down to the bottom right of the main page. (At least it's giving me that option right now... but it's only European languages. Hmm.) On another note, I was in Croatia last week the ENTIRE site looked different... and I LOVED it.

(Can't figure out how to re-size the following pics on here, but at least you can read everything on them at this size.)

Main page (the "Free ebooks" link at the top took you right to the "Free First in Series" page):









Romance page (all the genre pages were set up like this). Note all the new ways of sorting searches on the left. And after the featured block of books at the top, the books were listed more like Amazon lists theirs--with ratings, lots more information available at a glance, etc. No more mosaic layout.









Of course, now I'm in the UK and the site looks just as it always did for me. Does anyone else see a site like the one in the pics above? Maybe they're beta testing the site in the screencaps above? (I hope so... it was so much easier to get around!!) Or is that just how the site always looks in certain countries?

ETA: Haven't checked the spread of sales of my books in the current Kobo promotion. Off to see now.
ETA 2: I have exactly equal sales numbers for the 50% and 35% books... but that's a bit skewed, because the boxed set I have at 35% off technically comes "first" (and is generally more popular), and the boxed set at 50% off is the spin off. Not seeing a ton of movement of the book at 25% off, but it was the same one I had in the promotion last month.


----------



## Incognita

Joe Vasicek said:


> How do you know if you get into that? I've applied through their google docs application and tried to find the page on their site, but I'm not sure I've found the right one ...


The only way I knew was by clicking on the link in the thread here about the Kobo Free First in Series program. If you do a quick search, you should be able to find it. I think the link is in the very first post by Mark, who works for Kobo.


----------



## Guest

EmC said:


> Weird. I never knew that about the Kobo site showing up automatically in different languages. I know you *can* change the US and UK sites to different languages by scrolling down to the bottom right of the main page. (At least it's giving me that option right now... but it's only European languages. Hmm.) On another note, I was in Croatia last week the ENTIRE site looked different... and I LOVED it.
> 
> (Can't figure out how to re-size the following pics on here, but at least you can read everything on them at this size.)
> 
> Main page (the "Free ebooks" link at the top took you right to the "Free First in Series" page):
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Romance page (all the genre pages were set up like this). Note all the new ways of sorting searches on the left. And after the featured block of books at the top, the books were listed more like Amazon lists theirs--with ratings, lots more information available at a glance, etc. No more mosaic layout.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course, now I'm in the UK and the site looks just as it always did for me. Does anyone else see a site like the one in the pics above? Maybe they're beta testing the site in the screencaps above? (I hope so... it was so much easier to get around!!) Or is that just how the site always looks in certain countries?
> 
> ETA: Haven't checked the spread of sales of my books in the current Kobo promotion. Off to see now.
> ETA 2: I have exactly equal sales numbers for the 50% and 35% books... but that's a bit skewed, because the boxed set I have at 35% off technically comes "first" (and is generally more popular), and the boxed set at 50% off is the spin off. Not seeing a ton of movement of the book at 25% off, but it was the same one I had in the promotion last month.


I do not see anything at the top (or anywhere else, for that matter) that links to "free ebooks" on Kobo's main page. Also, the site runs a script that comes within a hair's breadth of crashing my browser every time I click on something.

Balls.


----------



## Chrysta Euria

EmC said:


> I think you're referring to my comment earlier about links in the backmatter? I meant the pages after the end of the book (where you'd usually link to the next book, have a list of all your books, etc.). And when you update that, the old version stays live until the new one goes through, so the book will still be available.
> 
> (unless I'm misinterpreting your question, haha. I haven't had my coffee yet.)


You interpreted it correctly. Thank you for answering my question.


----------



## 75814

EmC said:


> Weird. I never knew that about the Kobo site showing up automatically in different languages. I know you *can* change the US and UK sites to different languages by scrolling down to the bottom right of the main page. (At least it's giving me that option right now... but it's only European languages. Hmm.)


It depends on the languages in your location, but in Japan, it gives you no option to change anything. They do have a free books section (if you can read Japanese), but there's no way to sort books by language. The only links that offer you something in a language other than Japanese are links at the bottom of the page to the different Rakuten sites. Rakuten, Kobo's parent company, can let you access sites in different countries, but Kobo is unable to do it.

I do think it's a bit ironic that Kobo reps are advising authors to do market research on the Kobo sites by looking at books in different countries and seeing how they differ in price, and then the Kobo site specifically prevents authors from doing that.


----------



## Caddy

> Mark
> what exactly is "keyword rich blurbs"?


You use the search words in your blurb that you think people use to find books by you. For example, Gastien is historical fiction, drama, and family saga. It's also about 19th century France and artists. So (and this is just off the cuff, it's not what I used, but you will get the picture) instead of doing this blurb:

"A young farm boy runs away to paint and learn about love in the bit city"

I would instead do this:

"In this *historical fiction novel* peasant Gastien escapes the farm with dreams of becoming a famous *artist*. But *nineteenth century Paris* teaches those without money or connections harsh lessons. Blah blah blah etc etc

This *drama* is book 1 of a 5 book *historical family saga* for adults. blah blah. etc etc"

See how the keywords got put in sentences instead of just dumping them in a paragraph at the end? However, in historical fiction you can actually dump keywords by putting in a "Historical places and events mentioned in this book" at the end and then listing them. BUt make sure they won't make people angry. Saying the Eiffel Tower as a keyword is not going to make people happy if all Gastien does is walk by it once.


----------



## Marti talbott

I submitted my books to Scribd through D2D and didn't think much would happen, but in August I sold 49 books. i am hoping to double that for September, because I heard from a guy in Nigeria who can't buy them anywhere else. Scribd can open the door to lots of customers. Here's the thing, I sell for $4..99 and up, and Scribd pays me $2.75 for each read. It's whole lot better than $1.52. So now I'm trying to find places to promote my books on Scribd other than on my website. I haven't sold anything on Page Foundry. Gave a couple of books away free there, but nothing more.

Kobo special offers are by invitation only, but I think it is based on the number of books you've sold. Don't give up and one day you might be surprised when you receive the email. Be sure to open their emails. In this promotion, I've sold 10 books at half price and five at 30% off. I normally only participate every other month because most of my books are in a series, and I have few I can promote.


----------



## TheGapBetweenMerlons

Inspired by comments in this thread, I just rewrote the blurb for _Wolf Block_ on Kobo. It's not active yet, not sure how long that takes. I'll be copying it over to KDP and Google Play next.

One thing that caught my eye is that Kobo is listing it as "#81575 in Romance." The book is totally devoid of romance, so that seems very odd. The categories I chose for it also do not reference romance. Am I correct that this is just an algorithm quirk on their side? Or might I have done something wrong? Nobody will be running across it browsing romance at that low of a ranking, so I'm not worried about disappointing anyone, I'm mostly just curious.

I'd hoped that making this novelette permafree would eventually lead to some sales of other titles on the non-Amazon platforms, just by getting my writing in front of more readers on those platforms. So far, no dice. I have yet to make a single sale of any book on Kobo and have only given away half a dozen copies of this title there. I've sold a handful of copies of my other titles on Google Play but I think those were all before I even wrote this one, so it has had no impact there despite distributing more free copies than on Kobo.


----------



## boo4321

Well, this thread inspired me to go back and re-vamp the blurbs for my most recent books on Google Play to make them more keyword-heavy. I'd done this with my early books and had reasonable results, but hadn't taken the time to do it with my latest. My most recent releases were both boxed sets of my series (priced $4.99 and $7.99 respectively), and since in my experience GP readers seem to go for Freebies, serials, and books at major discounts, I hadn't expected much from full-priced boxed sets. But this thread made me go back and fiddle with the blurbs a little.

Well. I don't check my sales on GP every day (their reporting is a bit of a pain, and it lags so often that it's just not worth the trouble to check daily), but I just checked and just about spit out my coffee. I've been averaging $500-600 a month on GP since I first uploaded my books, but it looks like I'll be making at least twice that this month. And it's all because of those boxed sets. They're doing much, much better than I expected.

So basically: 1) Keyword-heavy blurbs definitely make a difference over there! and 2) GP readers aren't as price-sensitive as I thought.


Other random observations from this month: My B&N sales are up, and I've talked to several other people who have noticed the same thing. iTunes sales, on the other hand, are down for me. Kobo sales are also decent (for them), but still less than where I'd like them to be. But they're growing a little each month, slowly but surely.


----------



## JETaylor

EmC. When you mention changing blurbs to be keyword heavy does that mean a string of keywords at the end or infused in the blurb?


----------



## boo4321

JETaylor said:


> EmC. When you mention changing blurbs to be keyword heavy does that mean a string of keywords at the end or infused in the blurb?


Both, haha. I normally wouldn't dream of putting a string of them at the end (it doesn't exactly look the most professional...), but I noticed a lot of top-selling books in my genre on GP (romance) were doing just that, so I decided to give it a go. The good thing is that because of the way the book information is laid out on GP, if you have a long blurb (or lots of extra information after the blurb), a reader has to scroll through to see all of it (which I doubt most readers do), so I suspect not many people actually see the list of keywords. (This *does* mean that those first couple of paragraphs of your blurb are that much more important on GP.)

But it was infusing them in the blurb that I think really help me here (it's what I focused on when I went back to revise the blurbs). Caddy gives a great example above.


----------



## 75845

Crenel said:


> One thing that caught my eye is that Kobo is listing it as "#81575 in Romance." The book is totally devoid of romance, so that seems very odd. The categories I chose for it also do not reference romance. Am I correct that this is just an algorithm quirk on their side?


You are correct and Kobo are in the wrong. I have a short story about domestic violence that Kobo categorise as romance, I suspect because the word husband appears in the blurb. So maybe I should follow your example and re-write my blurbs.


----------



## Avarian

A great ressource for keyword optimization is always Google's Keyword Tool, where you can see the number of searches for any keyword and keyword combinations.
For example "Elf" has an average of 1 million searches a month, while "Elves" has 60.500. Another note here is that both keywords were extra popular in December 2013 with 2.240.000 for "Elf" and 201.000 for "Elves". The reason is most likely the second Hobbit movie releasing, since "Dwarf" and "Dwarves" look the same for that month.

Since I have not published a fictional book yet, then I haven't tried matching a promotion with a blockbuster release, but seeing the increase in searches for related keywords that might be an idea. Promoting your story with elves and dwarves as the third Hobbit movie is released might show some good results.


----------



## 75814

That's a good tip, thanks!


----------



## TheGapBetweenMerlons

Mercia McMahon said:


> You are correct and Kobo are in the wrong. I have a short story about domestic violence that Kobo categorise as romance, I suspect because the word husband appears in the blurb.


Even after the rewrite went through, that book still shows a ranking in Romance. I checked my one other fiction book there, a collection of mostly sci-fi short stories which is also devoid of romance, and it, too, has a Romance ranking. Maybe they rank all fiction, or all short stories, in Romance for some inscrutable reason or as a bug in their system.

Discovering platform-specific quirks could be an important aspect of gaining traction outside of Amazon (either to avoid negative results or to take advantage of opportunities), but I suspect -- without data to back it up -- that Kobo and others get a lot less analytical attention from indie writers than Amazon.


----------



## boo4321

Crenel said:


> Even after the rewrite went through, that book still shows a ranking in Romance. I checked my one other fiction book there, a collection of mostly sci-fi short stories which is also devoid of romance, and it, too, has a Romance ranking. Maybe they rank all fiction, or all short stories, in Romance for some inscrutable reason or as a bug in their system.
> 
> Discovering platform-specific quirks could be an important aspect of gaining traction outside of Amazon (either to avoid negative results or to take advantage of opportunities), but I suspect -- without data to back it up -- that Kobo and others get a lot less analytical attention from indie writers than Amazon.


I'd contact Kobo Writing Life's customer service. They've been doing a LOT of updates to their site, and I've heard of similar stuff happening to a couple of other authors. But hopefully their cs department can sort things out.

And I agree about discovering each site's quirks--people tend to focus a lot on Amazon, but I'm hoping if we all keep sharing strategies and tips we can "crack" the other retailers, too. haha.


----------



## Lydniz

Hi. I've not really paid much attention to other channels since I started, as my sales have been so pitiful on them. This month, though, it looks as if my sales on D2D are going to be double my best month ever, and it seems as if I've started getting a little bit of traction on Kobo and iTunes. Obviously I'm keen to push this a bit, so I'm wondering what I can do. 

I see a lot of people recommend going direct rather than through D2D and I was thinking of starting with Kobo, but is there really any advantage to it (apart from getting more money, of course)? I gather they only pay twice a year - is that also true if you go through D2D? (I know it's bad that I don't know this, but I've really never paid attention to my D2D emails because I make so little from them.) I don't do permafree so promotional benefits for freebies isn't particularly an attraction to me.


----------



## Jerri Kay Lincoln

Lydniz said:


> Hi. I've not really paid much attention to other channels since I started, as my sales have been so pitiful on them. This month, though, it looks as if my sales on D2D are going to be double my best month ever, and it seems as if I've started getting a little bit of traction on Kobo and iTunes. Obviously I'm keen to push this a bit, so I'm wondering what I can do.
> 
> I see a lot of people recommend going direct rather than through D2D and I was thinking of starting with Kobo, but is there really any advantage to it (apart from getting more money, of course)? I gather they only pay twice a year - is that also true if you go through D2D? (I know it's bad that I don't know this, but I've really never paid attention to my D2D emails because I make so little from them.) I don't do permafree so promotional benefits for freebies isn't particularly an attraction to me.


Kobo pays when you reach $100 or six months . . . whichever is first. And it's forty-five days after sales, if I remember correctly.


----------



## boo4321

Lydniz said:


> Hi. I've not really paid much attention to other channels since I started, as my sales have been so pitiful on them. This month, though, it looks as if my sales on D2D are going to be double my best month ever, and it seems as if I've started getting a little bit of traction on Kobo and iTunes. Obviously I'm keen to push this a bit, so I'm wondering what I can do.
> 
> I see a lot of people recommend going direct rather than through D2D and I was thinking of starting with Kobo, but is there really any advantage to it (apart from getting more money, of course)? I gather they only pay twice a year - is that also true if you go through D2D? (I know it's bad that I don't know this, but I've really never paid attention to my D2D emails because I make so little from them.) I don't do permafree so promotional benefits for freebies isn't particularly an attraction to me.


I'm one of those people who believes that going direct is better 99% of the time (assuming you're in a country that allows you to do so, etc.). Each site has their own way of doing categories/keywords/metadata, and when you go through a distributor like D2D or Smashwords, you're sending them a "one size fits all" set of metadata, which can potentially affect your visibility OR get you mis-categorized (iTunes, for example, has a bad habit of bumping general romance titles into the Erotica category when they come from D2D or SW, which effectively buries them). I also believe (though I don't have any proof except my own experiences) that a lot of the retailers' algorithms "favor" those books that are published directly through them over ones that aren't--though again, it might just be simply that visibility is much better when you're actually individualizing keywords/categories for each site. All I know is that my sales have been SIGNIFICANTLY better going direct than otherwise.

And Kobo pays monthly, assuming you make their threshold (I think it's $100?). I've never had any issues getting paid by them. Or any of the vendors, but maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, haha. One small bonus (at least for me) from going everywhere is that the vendors all pay at different times during the month. iTunes and Google Play tend to pay the first week of the month, Kobo in the middle, and Amazon and B&N at the end, so you sort of regularly have money rolling in.


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## Lydniz

Jerri Kay Lincoln said:


> Kobo pays when you reach $100 or six months . . . whichever is first. And it's forty-five days after sales, if I remember correctly.


That's not so bad. Although in my case it's likely to be the six months. 



EmC said:


> Each site has their own way of doing categories/keywords/metadata, and when you go through a distributor like D2D or Smashwords, you're sending them a "one size fits all" set of metadata, which can potentially affect your visibility OR get you mis-categorized


The Kobo site didn't seem to have anywhere to put keywords. Although neither does D2D, so I don't suppose that's a particular problem.


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## David Alastair Hayden

Vaalingrade said:


> Keywords is where using original races and monsters really hurts the intrepid fantasy writer.
> 
> No one is searching 'hailene'.


That's why my blurb describes one character as a "cat-girl ninja," which I think is the sort of thing Mark is talking about. The character is actually a kchasan qengai, and no one in the world would refer to her as a cat girl, not without repercussions, and the term ninja means nothing to them.

That can be easy to do with some books and harder for others. I *try* to put my blurbs in relatable terms, even if the terms aren't exact.


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## bobbic

KelliWolfe said:



> Using keywords in your blurbs works on Google Play because their search actually indexes the blurbs. It does *not* work on Kobo or Barnes and Noble because they don't index the blurbs. This is why you see so much keyword stuffing in the title/subtitle/author name fields there.


Arrgh. good to know.


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## Patty Jansen

Uhm, D2D has keywords. Kobo and Google Play don't.


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## Lydniz

Ah, yes, you're right. I'd forgotten. Everywhere should have them, though.


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## boo4321

When I say, "Each site has their own way of doing categories/keywords/metadata" I mean in the general sense -- Kobo doesn't have keywords, but they have their own categorization system, which is different from iTunes categorization system, etc.  And depending on the site, going direct can allow you to  1) be able to get into more specific categories (for example--B&N has a lot more subcategories of romance than Kobo), or 2) cater your category choices based on your audience on each site (for example--you can reach a lot of foreign readers via iTunes, so when they let you pick 5 categories, I tend to choose 3 BISAC (North American) categories and 2 BIC categories (UK, etc.)

Google Play doesn't have a keywords field when you're uploading, BUT keywords play a HUGE role in visibility over there--which is why people will list keywords at the end of their blurb (something most other sites won't let you do), revise their blurbs to be more keyword-heavy, etc.

My point was that each site handles these things differently, and if you're going direct, you can customize how you use this data at each site, which can often help with visibility.


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## Vaalingrade

David Alastair Hayden said:


> That's why my blurb describes one character as a "cat-girl ninja," which I think is the sort of thing Mark is talking about. The character is actually a kchasan qengai, and no one in the world would refer to her as a cat girl, not without repercussions, and the term ninja means nothing to them.
> 
> That can be easy to do with some books and harder for others. I *try* to put my blurbs in relatable terms, even if the terms aren't exact.


Somehow, I think 'Angels who are clearly Nazis' wouldn't draw in the right audience.


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## 75814

Lydniz said:


> I see a lot of people recommend going direct rather than through D2D and I was thinking of starting with Kobo, but is there really any advantage to it (apart from getting more money, of course)? I gather they only pay twice a year - is that also true if you go through D2D? (I know it's bad that I don't know this, but I've really never paid attention to my D2D emails because I make so little from them.) I don't do permafree so promotional benefits for freebies isn't particularly an attraction to me.


EmC provided some pretty good reasons. Another one is back-matter links. Since a D2D or Smashwords file is a one-size-fits-all approach, you can't include direct links back to the site the reader bought it from to get the next book or to leave a review. So if you've got a Kobo reader who likes your first book and your second is already available, they can just click the link to go right back to Kobo and get the next one.

Of course, it is also a pain to keep all those links straight across all the different editions, so YMMV.


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## Patty Jansen

Perry Constantine said:


> EmC provided some pretty good reasons. Another one is back-matter links. Since a D2D or Smashwords file is a one-size-fits-all approach, you can't include direct links back to the site the reader bought it from to get the next book or to leave a review. So if you've got a Kobo reader who likes your first book and your second is already available, they can just click the link to go right back to Kobo and get the next one.
> 
> Of course, it is also a pain to keep all those links straight across all the different editions, so YMMV.


This. I get a decent number of hits on my Kobo links. Also, Kobo won't prick anything for promos that's not uploaded direct.


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## bobbic

I don't know how all y'all keep up with your numerous books and platforms. I have a few on B&N direct, some through SW, all on Amazon, a few in CS, etc. and am already lost. LOL. That's one reason I went through SW last time. But now I want to try GooglePlay and see that SW doesn't do them. Guess I'll just have to make a huge chart for the wall.


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## 75814

bobbic said:


> I don't know how all y'all keep up with your numerous books and platforms. I have a few on B&N direct, some through SW, all on Amazon, a few in CS, etc. and am already lost. LOL. That's one reason I went through SW last time. But now I want to try GooglePlay and see that SW doesn't do them. Guess I'll just have to make a huge chart for the wall.


In my Scrivener file for each project, I have back-matter documents for each vendor. So there's one for Amazon, one for Kobo, iTunes, etc. When I compile for ebook, I check the appropriate document then save it as Book Title (Vendor).

When it comes time to upload them, I've sometimes confused myself. I'll have tabs open for all the vendors in my browser. Should probably get more organized with that step...


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons

I finally signed up with Smashwords this week. It's been great for getting free downloads of my novelette, although (as always) there's no indication that those _downloading_ are also _reading_. I still plan to go direct to the main channels (Kindle, NOOK (for non-free books), Kobo, Google Play, and maybe eventually Apple (not there yet)), but for some of the others that I don't see as being important, I can see using Smashwords.


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## bobbic

Hmm, never thought of using SW for just a freebie. But if you have a freebie on there, will readers go to Amazon to find your other books? I always put links in the back of my books, but I heard you can't put Amazon links in the back of SW books. So how do you get around that?


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## 75814

That's how I do it, too. I'm direct on iTunes, Kobo, Google, and DriveThru Fiction. Nook won't let me go direct because they don't seem to recognize that there are authors in more than five countries in the world and Japan is not one of those, so I use Smashwords for them and any other platforms.


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## 75814

bobbic said:


> Hmm, never thought of using SW for just a freebie. But if you have a freebie on there, will readers go to Amazon to find your other books? I always put links in the back of my books, but I heard you can't put Amazon links in the back of SW books. So how do you get around that?


As I understand it, Crenel wasn't saying that he only uses SW for freebies, but just that his freebie is doing well over there.


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## bobbic

Perry Constantine said:


> As I understand it, Crenel wasn't saying that he only uses SW for freebies, but just that his freebie is doing well over there.


Ah,thanks. That makes more sense.


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons

bobbic said:


> Hmm, never thought of using SW for just a freebie. But if you have a freebie on there, will readers go to Amazon to find your other books? I always put links in the back of my books, but I heard you can't put Amazon links in the back of SW books. So how do you get around that?


I got tired of trying to sort out which links to put in which files, so now all book links go to the book's page on my publishing-services site. However...



Perry Constantine said:


> In my Scrivener file for each project, I have back-matter documents for each vendor. So there's one for Amazon, one for Kobo, iTunes, etc. When I compile for ebook, I check the appropriate document then save it as Book Title (Vendor).


That's a pretty good way to go. I use a plain text editor and Markdown, with pandoc for generating different files, but I could see doing something like this and passing the vendor name to a script that calls pandoc. I use a separate text file for each chapter and each book has a chapter "0" and a chapter "99" for front and back matter, so it would be trivial to have different versions of chapter "99." Hmm... ideas! 

Also, to clarify, I do only have my one permafree title on Smashwords now, since I'm just getting acquainted with that platform, but can see adding more titles later. I've known about them for many months but only signed up this week. I resisted their Word orientation (I consider Word to be a _terrible_ tool for creating books), but the ePUB upload works nicely and I don't really care if I'm "missing out" on the other conversions they offer from a Word source.


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## bobbic

See, there's so much to remember and keep up with! LOL. I just now remembered I uploaded one of my previous books to Apple. Geez.
I can see at some point, though, where I have so many links that just putting one (my website or blog) in the back of all my stories/books would be the thing to do.


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## 75814

bobbic said:


> See, there's so much to remember and keep up with! LOL. I just now remembered I uploaded one of my previous books to Apple. Geez.
> I can see at some point, though, where I have so many links that just putting one (my website or blog) in the back of all my stories/books would be the thing to do.


I've got landing pages on my site for all my books. I use a plugin called MyBookTable-you generate a profile for your book with cover, description, series, series number, etc, and then you can display the books based on the different taxonomy. For example, yoursiteurl.com/books would display all your books, yoursiteurl.com/seriesname would display all books in that series in order, etc. I think I might use those landing pages in the future once I have too many books to justify updating all of the back matter.


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## kathrynoh

> Kobo pays when you reach $100 or six months . . . whichever is first. And it's forty-five days after sales, if I remember correctly.


Kobo says they do this. I have one book I've published direct with them and I've never hit the $100 threshold. After 2 years, I've never had a payment from them. I've contacted them about it and they told me it would be made in the next payment period. I think that was 6 months or so ago. It's a pitiful amount of money and not worth my while spending a lot of time following up over but I'd like to have it paid just to tidy up my own records.


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## jegarlick

Do these other sites have keyword lists like Amazon does...or do you find that matters?


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## jegarlick

I keep hearing about this thread... "Make sure you read TK's uber GP post for tips on pricing." Anyone have the link?


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## 75814

jegarlick said:


> Do these other sites have keyword lists like Amazon does...or do you find that matters?


Do you mean how you enter in certain keywords to get placed in certain browse categories on Amazon? As far as I know, the other sites don't use their keywords in this way, but keywords do seem to be very crucial in your book description.


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## Felix R. Savage

Perry Constantine said:


> That was a really helpful post, EmC. I go direct everywhere I can (the exception is B&N because they hate Japan), and I'll definitely be trying some of these things you mentioned. Thanks!


Hey Perry, how have you managed to go direct to Kobo? I am in Japan, too. I never had any trouble with B&N / Nook, but I can't get to Kobo. No matter what I try, I always land on the Japanese Rakuten page. It's mega annoying. I can't even see my own books there by clicking through from the D2D links, so just have to take it on trust that they are actually listed.


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## TheGapBetweenMerlons

Felix R. Savage said:


> I can't even see my own books there by clicking through from the D2D links, so just have to take it on trust that they are actually listed.


FWIW... Searching Kobo from the US I found several by searching for your name but not the two in your signature.


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## SB James

Since Google Play does index keywords in the blurb, that is most likely why my book seems listed quite well there when someone does a search in my category.
D2D actually has a feature called "Generate an Also By page" which I was told, when I emailed them about it, creates links to all the other books in each seller's store. You can choose to have one put in the back, the front, or both, when uploading your book to be published. And they'll also put a link to your website if you supply that link to them. You need to redo that every time you publish a new book, but it's just a matter of clicking a checkbox.
Which remind me that the only place I don't have those in my back matter is the Google Play editions of my books. Duh...
The more business I do, the more I really don't want Amazon to be the only game in town for this series. I just wish I could get more out of Kobo and B&N lately. It seems like I'm getting more Apple business now than anyone else, and Google Play has better days with my permafree than Amazon a lot of the time. With B&N and Kobo, I seem fairly dead in the water.
One other thing that's problematic with some of the other sellers is that they don't care if you have a subtitle for your book that has your category (or a nice keyword) in it, they won't list it. For instance, on Amazon, I have my book 1 listed as "The Inventor's Son: A Steampunk Adventure," and Google Play also has a place for subtitles, so I have it listed there like that as well. But apparently the other sellers don't take subtitles into consideration like that.


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## Felix R. Savage

Crenel said:


> FWIW... Searching Kobo from the US I found several by searching for your name but not the two in your signature.


Thank you, Crenel! I knew my listings were incomplete, but I can't see them for myself, much less upload books directly without going through D2D. It's very frustrating. If anyone from Kobo is reading this, please tell the good folks at Rakuten that they at least need to put a link to international Kobo stores on their Japanese homepage. Leaving aside the KWL access issue, it's just possible that someone with an IP address in Japan might want to purchase an English (or other) language book sometime!


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## 75814

Felix R. Savage said:


> Hey Perry, how have you managed to go direct to Kobo? I am in Japan, too. I never had any trouble with B&N / Nook, but I can't get to Kobo. No matter what I try, I always land on the Japanese Rakuten page. It's mega annoying. I can't even see my own books there by clicking through from the D2D links, so just have to take it on trust that they are actually listed.


It _is_ really annoying. The nice thing about Amazon is that each country's store has a unique URL you can access, but Kobo has this annoying habit of automatically relocating you to the country's store based on your location. The bad news is that there's no way to view the store in English from Japan without using a proxy or VPN to make the site think you're accessing it from an English-speaking country. The good news is that Kobo Writing Life, their self-publishing platform, _does_ have a unique URL. Go to http://writinglife.kobobooks.com/dashboard and you should be able to access it just fine.

I've contacted Kobo support numerous times about how inconvenient it is to access the site from Japan and each time, they've told me that nothing can be done about it. I expressed this annoyance to Mark Lefebvre in a thread here on KBoards and he told me to contact support and let them know that he told me to contact them. Still got the same response.

On an unrelated note, where in Japan are you?


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## RicardoFayet

I think the good old "be cheeky" advice can apply here also. Get in touch with Kobo or B&N representatives (easy to find them at conferences or authors' events), talk to them, and have a "nice story" ready on how you self-published, or how your books are special, etc. 
They all have blogs where they regularly feature indie authors. If you develop a personal relationship with these people, it then becomes possible to call in some favours for your next book launch or so


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## Felix R. Savage

Perry Constantine said:


> It _is_ really annoying. The nice thing about Amazon is that each country's store has a unique URL you can access, but Kobo has this annoying habit of automatically relocating you to the country's store based on your location. The bad news is that there's no way to view the store in English from Japan without using a proxy or VPN to make the site think you're accessing it from an English-speaking country. The good news is that Kobo Writing Life, their self-publishing platform, _does_ have a unique URL. Go to http://writinglife.kobobooks.com/dashboard and you should be able to access it just fine.
> 
> I've contacted Kobo support numerous times about how inconvenient it is to access the site from Japan and each time, they've told me that nothing can be done about it. I expressed this annoyance to Mark Lefebvre in a thread here on KBoards and he told me to contact support and let them know that he told me to contact them. Still got the same response.
> 
> On an unrelated note, where in Japan are you?


Thank you Perry, that was very helpful. I've set up a KWL account and will be using it! Not that I don't love D2D, but "they" say one should go direct when possible.

It sounds like you've done everything possible to prod them into changing their dumb customer-herding policy. I blame it on Rakuten management rather than the Kobo people. It makes a kind of sense that the great brains behind the "Rakuten English-Only Policy" would also believe that their customers should not be given any choice regarding which language they would rather shop in!

I'm in Tokyo so quite a ways from you! Must be nice in Kagoshima at this time of year.


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## jegarlick

MeganBryce said:


> http://www.kboards.com/index.php?topic=167655


Thank you SO SO MUCH!!!


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## jegarlick

SB James said:


> Since Google Play does index keywords in the blurb, that is most likely why my book seems listed quite well there when someone does a search in my category.
> D2D actually has a feature called "Generate an Also By page" which I was told, when I emailed them about it, creates links to all the other books in each seller's store. You can choose to have one put in the back, the front, or both, when uploading your book to be published. And they'll also put a link to your website if you supply that link to them. You need to redo that every time you publish a new book, but it's just a matter of clicking a checkbox.
> Which remind me that the only place I don't have those in my back matter is the Google Play editions of my books. Duh...
> The more business I do, the more I really don't want Amazon to be the only game in town for this series. I just wish I could get more out of Kobo and B&N lately. It seems like I'm getting more Apple business now than anyone else, and Google Play has better days with my permafree than Amazon a lot of the time. With B&N and Kobo, I seem fairly dead in the water.
> One other thing that's problematic with some of the other sellers is that they don't care if you have a subtitle for your book that has your category (or a nice keyword) in it, they won't list it. For instance, on Amazon, I have my book 1 listed as "The Inventor's Son: A Steampunk Adventure," and Google Play also has a place for subtitles, so I have it listed there like that as well. But apparently the other sellers don't take subtitles into consideration like that.


All good to know. Thank you. I am new to D2D...do you know how to activate the Sample feature? A look inside... or if there is such a feature? I can't seem to locate it...then again, I'm new to it as I said...a little overwhelmed...I must say...Thanks


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## jegarlick

RicardoFayet said:


> I think the good old "be cheeky" advice can apply here also. Get in touch with Kobo or B&N representatives (easy to find them at conferences or authors' events), talk to them, and have a "nice story" ready on how you self-published, or how your books are special, etc.
> They all have blogs where they regularly feature indie authors. If you develop a personal relationship with these people, it then becomes possible to call in some favours for your next book launch or so


Really? hmmmm... speaking from personal experience? Curious...


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## SB James

jegarlick said:


> All good to know. Thank you. I am new to D2D...do you know how to activate the Sample feature? A look inside... or if there is such a feature? I can't seem to locate it...then again, I'm new to it as I said...a little overwhelmed...I must say...Thanks


Each of the sellers have their own amount of the book that they set to be able to preview, so there's nothing in the D2D dashboard that I can see that you'd need to adjust for the preview. If you're doing Google Play, they have an option where the author can set that. I think GP is the only one who lets the author set how much of a preview they want to give a potential reader.


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## 75814

Felix R. Savage said:


> It sounds like you've done everything possible to prod them into changing their dumb customer-herding policy. I blame it on Rakuten management rather than the Kobo people. It makes a kind of sense that the great brains behind the "Rakuten English-Only Policy" would also believe that their customers should not be given any choice regarding which language they would rather shop in!


Gotta love the [total lack of] intelligence possessed by Japanese corporations. "No one in Japan reads books in English, so why should we provide an English website?"



> I'm in Tokyo so quite a ways from you! Must be nice in Kagoshima at this time of year.


Hah! I wish! It's actually been a pretty chilly winter so far. Although I'd imagine not as bad as what you have to deal with, though.


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