Friday, August 05, 2005

Amazon.com Bestseller List - Again

A few posts ago I mentioned an article from WritersWeekly.com that exposes a scam. The scam - people buy into a program that teaches them how put their book in the Amazon.com bestseller list, and it works. Well, that article stirred up quite a controversy.

Here is the full article from WritersWeekly.com:
Amazon.com Best Seller? Ha! - Part II

Here is the original post in John Kremer's blog (read some of the comments too):
Amazon.com Bestseller Campaigns: Why They Work and Why They Fail

And here are his comments on the comments plus more comments:
Amazon Bestsellers: Comments on Comments

Personally, I think that there is much too much talk about this subject. There have been far worse scams in the writing industry and I'm sure there will still be far worse scams in the future. The bottom line is, as Angela writes in her article:
SELLING 100 COPIES DOES NOT MAKE YOUR BOOK A TRUE BESTSELLER
Real bestselling author MJ Rose emailed me last week, stating, "Four publishing companies were asked if being an Amazon bestseller qualified the words 'bestseller' to appear in an ad for a book, or on a book cover, and they said definitely not. You can become a bestseller at Amazon for selling as few as 100 copies in a specific concentrated period of time. And those are not bestseller numbers."


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2 comments:

Book Marketing Bestsellers said...

I agree that 100 copies sold at Amazon.com does not make one able to append "bestseller" to your book. But it does allow you to append "Amazon bestseller" next to your book. Because the truth is that your book was an Amazon bestseller.

And, while 100 copies sold isn't much, it's still a lot for an unknown author or a small self-publisher. And that's worthy of recognition.

Melly said...

John, I wrote another post in response to your comment.
I just had no space here to answer properly.
Thanks for visiting my blog and commenting on this most interesting subject.