Wish list for Amazon... 2013

975 Views 15 Replies 15 Participants Last post by maritafowler, Dec 25, 2012

EC Sheedy

Discussion Starter · Dec 25, 2012

Dear Amazon, Please tell me how many readers sample my book/books and don't buy.

I know there's more and better wishes to be made, but I'd love it if Amazon would share this little bit of data.

(Back to wrapping presents and stuffing stockings... )

Happy Holidays, everyone.

1 - 16 of 16 Posts

Mike McIntyre

· #2 · Dec 25, 2012

Dear Aunt Amazon,

Please tell me which countries are buying my books at the lower 35% royalty. You keep opening more and more international 70% stores, yet my cheap foreign sales keep going up, up, up.

EC Sheedy

Discussion Starter · #3 · Dec 25, 2012

Mike McIntyre said:
Dear Aunt Amazon,

Please tell me which countries are buying my books at the lower 35% royalty. You keep opening more and more international 70% stores, yet my cheap foreign sales keep going up, up, up.

OMG! Yes.

Jerri Kay Lincoln

· #4 · Dec 25, 2012

A silly request . . . I would like CreateSpace and Kindle to be combined so I don't have to look in two different places to see how many books I've sold!

Patty Jansen

· #5 · Dec 25, 2012

Oooohh!

How come no one has mentioned EFT for non-US authors yet?

Is is because all our sales have gone to Kobo?

(I rest my case)

Remington Kane

· #6 · Dec 25, 2012

I have a simple wish. A totals column on the reports page. I'm tired of adding it all up on a calculator.

Avis Black

· #7 · Dec 25, 2012

Dear Santazon,

I wish for more subcategories. It's no help when you load and your category has 40,000 books in it, and even by filtering with a tag you're left with 2,000 books to wade through. The archive needs more ways to slice and dice it. How about attaching Dewey or Library of Congress category filtering? All those trad published books already have the catalogue numbers inside them. You can arrange all of them with a bot. If you require indie authors to pick from a more detailed menu of categories when unloading, you'll make your inventory much more manageable.

If you try to do it 20 years from now when indie authors are retired from publishing or dead, you'll never have a prayer of getting the bulk of your books in searchable order. Remember, librarians worked out the two above-named systems before computers ever existed, and they're still the best way to search very large archives. If you think your massive stock is going to be searchable with what you've already got in place, you're kidding yourself.

Sincerely,

Avis Black

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Rykymus

· #8 · Dec 25, 2012

Display the volume/episode/book (whatever you want to call it) number in a series. You ask us for it when we publish, but you never do anything with it. That way I wouldn't have to include it in my title. (I think it looks stupid, but it's better than having people buy them out of order.)

Caddy

· #9 · Dec 25, 2012

Dear Santa Amazon,

Please allow us to have as many genres as trads get. I need 3 for my series.

David Adams

· #10 · Dec 25, 2012

I'd love for Amazon to do more with their forums and author pages. How about the ability to "follow" authors and get notified on their new releases automatically?

You own Shelfari, Amazon, you could do this!

Lisa J. Yarde

· #11 · Dec 25, 2012

Dear Amazon, please allow our readers to pre-order indie books just like you do for trad folks. Also, if you could back to figuring out that authors are readers too or will beta read books for other authors and review them without bias, that would be great.

Lexi Revellian

· #12 · Dec 25, 2012

Some good ones here - three genre categories, totals on the reports and the ability for readers to 'follow' authors especially.

I'd also like to be able to choose different royalties in the US and the UK, as those markets can be very different - and maybe choose to go free in just one country instead of all of them.

Lexi

56139

· #13 · Dec 25, 2012

I get that Amazon reporting is loads better than the traditional publishers - but come on...when an online homeschool store can give me better data than Amazon in what I'm selling, who I'm selling it to, and exactly how many units of each title I've sold (not in a bazillion different columns) they should be embarrassed.

And, I get to send direct e-mails to my personal customers any time I want - and run joint ventures with authors who sell to the same people - AND see what other products my customers are buying from my competition - AND run banner ads on their site - AND get a place in their newsletter if I have a new product because every month they give me "Publisher Pints" that I earn from sales and I can spend on promotions.

Oh, and let's not forget a running total of my current months royalty total - gasp - already added up for me.

I get it - the homeschool folks only have a few thousand publishers and Amazon probably has millions...but Amazon could do SOME of that stuff.

I never realized how well they treated us until I saw Amazon's reports. And from what I hear - Amazon is far better than anyone else.

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Cherise

· #14 · Dec 25, 2012

Avis Black said:
Dear Santa Zon,

I wish for more subcategories. It's no help when you load and your category has 40,000 books in it, and even by filtering with a tag you're left with 2,000 books to wade through. The archive needs more ways to slice and dice it. How about attaching Dewey or Library of Congress category filtering? All those trad published books already have the catalogue numbers inside them. You can arrange all of them with a bot. If you require indie authors to pick from a more detailed menu of categories when unloading, you'll make your inventory much more manageable.

THIS! THIS! THIS!

(Merry Christmas!)

the quiet one

· #15 · Dec 25, 2012

Everything listed already, plus:

Some means of testing which promotional campaigns actually work. Did someone get to my book page due to a blog post? Facebook message? Tweet? And did they just click to the page, or just sample, or actually buy? I don't need names, just raw data, which could be done with some type of promotional code tag.

This was indirectly hinted at above, but the ability to specify how much of my book is available for sampling.

maritafowler

· #16 · Dec 25, 2012

Great ideas! I really like the pre-order and author follow options....

My addition to the wish list... the ability to see if you have repeat customers (not names, just statistics). For example, if I went free with book 1 - how many of those same customers bought book 2 and 3. Or if there was a drop is 'repeat customers' after book 3.

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