Category: writing

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Does Amazon Have My eBook Shadow Banned???

Update:  Some people were confused when I say that the keywords on the page source show differently, depending on how you reach the page.  If you reach the page through the amazon search, the only keywords that will show on the page are the keywords that you entered in your search.  Those are the only keywords that will show in that case.  However, if you you go to the page from a general click from your website, you should see the keywords that might bring a person to your book if they use the search function on amazon.

Someone suggested that amazon might not fully show the keywords (though not suppressed within amazon search) for indie writers because they don’t want google to provide search to indie books but allow search from google to publishing house books because publishing houses might pitch a fit if they discovered their books were being suppressed from google.  In other words, maybe I am wrong and that is quite possible.  I looked over many indie books and saw their books also did not show keywords similar to the way a book from a publisher shows keywords.

Note that google does NOT necessarily care about keywords in the meta tag but searches the page for relevant words and how people link to the books also provides keywords to google.  Putting words on the page, including the title is important and I have not been doing that.  Amazon’s suppression of keywords from the pages created on the fly from their database may not mean a whole lot as far as google is concerned.

I think the suppression of keywords in the meta tag does point to the eBook is being suppressed within amazon’s system and is not about google or bing or other outside search.  But I could be wrong.  I often am.  And the truth is that I am frustrated that I can’t generate sales.

Many people say it is very difficult to generate any sales without advertising on amazon and that pushing advertisements is really what the keyword suppression is about.  Advertising on amazon is proving to be a mine field for many writers, but I am not going to go into that.  I will just say that you should use extreme caution if you decide to advertise on amazon and to watch your ad budget very carefully.

end of update

original post

 

This is what keywords look like on a regular book that I have listed in the store here on sayata.net. This is not my book. It is written by someone else.  I clicked the book from here.  Note that how keywords show up on amazon to some degree depends on how you reach the page.

<meta name="keywords" content="ebook,Edward Jay Watts,Mortal Republic: 
How Rome Fell into Tyranny,Basic Books,ANCIENT ROME - HISTORY,GENERAL,
General Adult,HISTORY / Ancient / Rome,HISTORY / Military / Ancient,HISTORY /
 World,History,History/World,Italy,Non-Fiction,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics &amp;
 Citizenship,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Constitutions,POLITICAL SCIENCE / History &amp;
 Theory,POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Democracy,Political Science/
History &amp; Theory - General,Rome - History - Republic, 265-30 B.C,Rome - 
Politics and government - 265-30 B.C,Rome;History.,Rome;History;Republic, 
265-30 B.C.,Rome;Politics and government;265-30 B.C.,United States,books 
about rome; books about roman republic; roman history books; 
what happened to rome; how did rome fall; roman senate; books on roman empire; 
reasons the roman republic fell; augustus; ancient civil war; mark antony; 
cleopatra; books on ancient government;,books about rome; roman history books;
 what happened to rome; how did rome fall; roman senate; books on roman empire;
 reasons the roman republic fell; augustus; ancient civil war; mark antony; 
cleopatra; books on ancient government; books about roman republic" />

 

Now this is how the keyword search tag looks on the book “No Condoms” that I recently published.

<meta name="keywords" content="ebook,Charles Peters,No Condoms 
(Hearthville Serial Book 2),Fiction / Thrillers / 
Suspense,Fiction / Literary" />

These are words that I entered in the seven boxes.

“racy, small town, contemporary, scary, organized crime, love, friendship”

My words were not that great but damn. Unless someone is actually searching for my book, there is no way that anyone is going to find it.  In a different test a few weeks ago I searched for my books with “Charles Peters” which you will see in the keyword list.  None of my books showed up when I searched using my name.

So am I going to publish anything again with amazon? If I do, with the next book I may stuff words in the title to risk getting banned, but otherwise what is the fucking point. I will publish on amazon again. I will publish the next Hearthville Serial book on amazon. I will not make it exclusive to amazon. And yeah, I will put keywords in the title but hopefully not be accused of stuffing the title.

I spend money with amazon. I promote amazon. And I am treated like shit by amazon. I am sick of being treated like shit by these internet companies. Hell, if someone from this site were to buy the book, I do not even have confidence that I would get credit for the sale. Do I get credit for affiliate sales where I promote products? I don’t know.  I do think sales are correctly reported.

I know my over all internet traffic is bad.  I understand that.  And I’ve tried to use that reality to explain why I am doing so badly. But I do have some traffic. I have some fans. I just don’t know.  I am so angry right now I could chew nails, even with my bad teeth.  Maybe I am overreacting.  I just don’t know.  Maybe I will calm down and think that maybe I stand a chance of ever selling anything with amazon again and keep trying, but I doubt it. I have changed my mind.

Note that I have sold eBooks and had page reads in the past.  But not now.

I will NEVER buy ads on amazon.  That crazy shit is not happening.

Rant is almost over. But I just wanted people to see this.  And don’t tell me the search words show up differently depending on how you reach the page. I know that. But I did test with different books to see what the view source looked like. I have a pretty good idea that when I say I have been being fucked by amazon that I am probably understating the situation because I know the full history.

I do realize that amazon employees have treated other people even worse. A lot worse! That does not comfort me.

What will I do with the Hearthville Serial?

I will NOT publish the rest of it on amazon unless there are sales or page reads on the first two books.  It is that simple.  There is no point in thinking the situation will change with more books added.   Change in thought, I may very well put it on amazon because why in the hell not.  I will not make it exclusive to amazon.  I will not put it in Kindle Select/ Unlimited.  I think if I make any sales there, the sales will be correctly recorded because arbitration will not protect them from fraud charges if they are caught defrauding creators.  I realize that borrows and page reads are not correctly recorded but their user agreement pretty much has them covered on that shit.  I don’t believe the same is true for sales.

 

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Of Horror and Redundant Sex

I talk about how Amazon is more difficult to study as far as trying to improve organic search results. A video I had planned on researching the horror genre totally went off the rails. Also in video I am being silly and entertaining.
Or not.

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Question: Do I plan to publish any of my books to be read as paperbacks?

Answer: No.

Although the paperbacks do tend to help writers as it mind fucks with the reader to create the bogus perception that the writer is more legitimate than if just writing to the digital market, the answer is still no. I don’t play that game.

It may also help by creating a secondary way the reader may find the book in search.  Still.  The answer is no.

But why not?

Because I am a stubborn ass and the professional perception aside created by the paperbacks, the paperbacks cost the readers too much money and offer too little potential profit for me beyond helping me to sell digital copies of my book.

Also, we indie writers already have a multitude of ways we don’t make money.  Providing a paperback that may be sold 10 times plus–or whatever the velocity of a given paperback might be–without me making a dime from from each sale, is not on my to do list.  On the other hand I love making money from other people’s used books.  Yes.  I do. 🙂

With my websites and my eBooks I am about creating digital content. I am not ashamed of that. It is part of what I do.  I just wish I could make more money doing it.

If I saw paperbacks as a way to increase that revenue stream, I would be doing it.  I certainly wouldn’t be ashamed of being a paperback writer any more than I am ashamed of being a digital writer.  I have considered it.  My ego has desired the thought in thinking it might mean more respect.  I just don’t see the profit potential.  If you do and are making money from it: cool.

 

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Regarding Kindle Unlimited & Changes I Am Making

People either have not been reading my books in Kindle Unlimited or Amazon has me on the Peon Server/Cloud where they feel those writers can be cheated without any consequence.  I have no idea.  I wouldn’t say with any confidence that I am being cheated since I have not had huge success with Amazon / Kindle to measure against.  Other writers who were having success and then found themselves without reads have gathered pretty clear evidence they are being cheated and that so far amazon has no intention of correcting the problems.

I have no intention of enrolling my e-books in Kindle Select / Unlimited in the future.  Whether the system can be trusted or not, I have not had any success with it and that is the bottom line.

I am still trying to use Amazon as the cash register for my e-books.  My current strategy is to publish chapters, stories here and hope that if any reader is interested in the e-book they will go to Amazon and buy the book.  So far, my current sales are few to non-existent.  Believe it or not,  in the past I have sold some books though right now it doesn’t feel that way.

There was a while that Chuck’s Erotic Stories: Monsters And Other Scary Lovers sold some.  Then that stopped.  Billy Bingo: Sexual Blackmail sold for a period and then it stopped.  Erotic Western: Saving The Town sold okay for a bit and then that stopped.  Right now, it has all pretty much stopped.

When I first started putting books in Kindle Select / Unlimited and following the rules, I took down pages where people could sample large parts of my e-books and I do believe that hurt.   So I do think again allowing people to sample a large part of the e-books may help.  I hope.

I never pushed the fake reviews that a lot of writers did.  So when someone has decided they want to trash a book, it has hurt more than when there are a bunch of fake or glowing reviews.  The truth is the people who do tend to like my writing are not the kind of people who will leave reviews. So when a reader doesn’t like the conflicted gay characters or my more conservative politics on twitter or whatever and have decided they want to hurt me with  a bad review,  they have had success.

I do have errors in my writing.  That is the truth.  I do try to edit them out but with self-editing I have to be careful that I don’t introduce even more errors when editing.  And also when editing, an even worse potential problem is destroying the flow or effect that was originally accomplished when while writing in the zone.  When editing, that zone is gone and it is easy to mess the flow up.

To be clear, however someone may judge my self-edits, I have NO intention of paying someone to edit my books.  That is not going to happen.  People attempting to peddle their editing services are notorious for being the source of some of the bad reviews you may see on some books by various writers.

So to what percent of my e-books I will publish here to try to gain sales, I am not sure.  It pretty much depends on the sales.  If sales do not again start happening soon I may drop writing all together and better spend more time building and on farm stuff.

I need to make money.