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Mur Lafferty
Mur

Mur Lafferty

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9 months ago

in Rushing Amazon is *so* Early-2008 on Unquiet Desperation

I find it interesting that no one who has actually done a rush on amazon has commented here, and that everyone is arguing on why any of us did it, or how we feel our results were. [edit, when I wrote this, MWS had not yet commented]

Here is what I wanted with the Amazon rush: I will be completely honest here, no ego, no humbleness.

1) I wanted to be able to say I hit a certain number. Bestseller on Amazon is a good thing.
2) The Amazon rush is *not* for the "Twitterati" despite what people may think - or at least in my case. I am not trying to get Established Listener/Twitter Follower A to buy the book so Established Listener/Twitter Follower B will buy it; I wanted the book to move up the charts so it would get more attention from NON-established listeners. Perhaps then people who would not have seen it on podcasts, blogs or Twitter would be interested in it. I'm not on bookstore shelves, the only way I have to grab 'browsing' types is to get my book cover on as many Amazon pages as possible.
3) More attention brings with it more sustained sales. My book peaked at #16 but it has stayed within the top 20,000 nearly consistently since the launch 1 month ago. That is the top .8% of Amazon books. If I can keep that consistently high, then it will be considered a success.

What did it lead to besides the spike? Continued steady sales; I signed with an agent two weeks ago; I got contacted for the sale of foreign rights to the book; There's talk of a sequel with my publisher; interest from another publisher about my next property; interest regarding other rights that I'm not talking about until something is solidified.

Is it a sustainable marketing plan? Unknown. I think we won't know until it fails - and the last time someone used it it worked quite well. I had fears that since I was doing it last of the authors this summer, my rush would suffer for it, but that didn't happen. I don't pretend to be able to predict how trends will go in the future; it's not one of my strengths.

If anyone has any questions or further speculations, all you need to do is ask.