[gregoryblackman]

Hey guys, my first question is about the power of word of mouth on the kindle.  I've noticed there are a fair number of books with very little tag support that are selling very well.  Is this all word of mouth and reviews?  How does do the kindle readers find them so easily?

Also, one last question, but I've been looking around the tag cloud on amazon, and under recently popular childrens books I was number 23, yet even at 0.99 cents, not one download.  The same goes for most everyone else, including the number 1 viewed in recently popular, which was ranked much worse than mine.  Is the search just picking up all the tag support I've been receiving from all you good folks?

I know it takes time, and my novel has only been up for a week, it's just that the numbers are a little confusing to a newbie.

 

[marshacanham]

Trust me, the numbers are confusing to an oldie too.

 

[Laura Lond]

I don't understand the numbers either, but I think word of mouth has a lot to do with it. A good way to get word of mouth going is through blogs and reviews. Have you offered your book to bloggers/reviewers? Another thing is doing a giveaway at LibraryThing, asking for reviews in return. It does not always work 100% since people are not obligated to leave a review, but some of them do, and it's still good exposure.

 

[philvan]

Definitely confusing. My novelette is ranked #67,940 paid in Kindle; in the listings for ebooks-last 90 days-mystery-British detectives it is #36.
It has a 5 star & a 4 star review, 3 'likes' and some tags. Several books in the same list are ranked higher, with no likes, no tags, no reviews, and going by their overall rank (ie in kindle paid) have sold less; a couple are at numbers greater than #100,000, and are priced the same.
So total earnings, likes, tags, total sales, and reviews apparently are not the criteria which determine rank in a genre listing.
Any clues?

 

[gregoryblackman]

Bumping once to see if anyone else has any ideas.

It seems like word of mouth is 100% of it, until you reach high enough numbers to make it onto the main couple pages per genre?

 

[swolf]

I believe word of mouth has an effect, but the largest factor is Amazon's internal algorithms, which, depending on several (not quite understood) factors, cause your books to appear in the various lists they present to potential customers.