What Happens When Kindle Changes All the Rules?

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Amazon could be making big changes to search results for Kindle books.

Those currently selling books on Kindle are probably familiar with also-boughts. This is the list of products often purchased by people looking at the same product you are currently viewing.

For example, if someone is looking at a Stephen King book, a list will show other books (or products) purchased by people who bought that same King book.

So, it's quite a feat if you can get your book listed in the also-boughts of a very popular book.

Of course, that doesn't happen for a lot of people, but getting listed in the also-boughts of several books that have a decent popularity could get you as many eyeballs as being in the also-boughts of a more well-known author.

Currently, most of Amazon's lists are dominated by sales. You don't get listed in the also-boughts because someone gave your book a five star rating; you get listed because someone BOUGHT your book and also bought the book on the current page.

As you well know, Amazon is constantly trying to improve upon themselves and want to give their customers the best experience possible. They do let you search for items based on how highly reviewed they are, but reviews are not always the best source for unbiased information.

As has been well-publicized in recent months, reviews can be manipulated. Some authors have bought reviews or otherwise faked them. You don't know when reviews might be from friends or family. It's gotten so bad that, even when authors get a legitimate five star review, others question whether they paid for it!

Amazon has tried to do what they can to clean up reviews but it's largely an insurmountable task.

Instead, what they might begin to look at is how products are used. Now, they can't do this with physical books (or physical products of any kind), but they can do this with Kindle books.

They could track how Kindle books are used to determine how to rank those books.

That is, the Kindle device can provide anonymous details that show how books are used. Do people read them? How many chapters do they read? Do they finish the book? Do they read a little bit and never touch it again? Do they delete it from their device?

Refunds don't tell the whole story. Not everyone that is unhappy with a book will ask for a refund. Most don't. So, Amazon can't rely on refunds to measure customer satisfaction.

They can, however, glean a lot from the usage of the book.

If you opened the book but never finished it, you probably didn't like it. Some may argue, well, maybe you didn't find the time. But Amazon could tell whether the device was used to read other books or if it just sat their unused. If you're reading other books while never finishing this one you started, it's probably a safe bet that you didn't like it. If other people are doing the same, it's likely a safe bet that lots of people didn't like it.

So, Amazon could factor that in.

If you delete it while keeping other books, you probably didn't like it, or at least didn't like it as much. When Amazon looks at cumulative actions of their Kindle users, they can make a lot of safe bets as to how well people are enjoying particular books.

And they could factor that in.

What Amazon could have is a system that, as best as possible, gives them a real world view of how people view certain books. It won't be based solely on purchases or on reviews, but on real activity.

As we all know, sometimes people say certain things, but it really isn't true. They'll write glowing reviews of things they've barely read, simply because they like the author or the concept or whatever. Sometimes they'll write positive reviews because they're getting paid. They may also write negative reviews to take down competitors or authors seen as competitors to their favorite authors.

But the one thing that cannot lie is action. If you never finish reading a book, you probably didn't like it.

And don't think you can fool Amazon by having your friends download the books and skip ahead to the last page! The device would know you skipped the whole middle. If you think you can game the system by having your friends be sure to flip through every page, that won't work either. The device would have a benchmark for your typical reading rates, so if you go too fast, the device would recognize that. In turn, Amazon would know something wasn't right with that data and either reject it or count it against the book.

This is good news for people that produce quality stuff. If you produce non-fiction that gets referenced again and again, this system could be a good thing for you. If you produce fiction that people love to read, this could be a good thing for you.

Because recommended books will be based on user experience rather than purely sales, quality books will rise to the top and get noticed whereas the crummy books will lose visibility.

And lost visibility means obscurity which means far fewer (or no) sales!

Now, is this something Amazon is really considering? There's no word that they are, but it certainly is not farfetched. It is certainly not out of the question. It is certainly not unreasonable. It is something they likely could do. It is something that is likely very possible to do. But whether they will do it is anyone's guess.

But, you can see that Amazon is already watching how people use their books. You can look at the "Shared Notes & Highlights" section to see what other readers have highlighted in the book. So, the technology to do all this is possibly already there.

The bottom line is that Amazon is all about improving the user experience and should they decide this is both doable for them and also something that will improve user experience, odds are good they would certainly give it a go.

In either event, to stay ahead in the game, you should make sure that what you are putting out is quality. Non-fiction books should be useful and informative. Fiction books should be entertaining. Meet those qualifications and you'll stay ahead of the game regardless of what Amazon does.

Fail to meet those qualifications and you and your Kindle book business are skating on thin ice.
#kindle #rules
  • Profile picture of the author colinph970
    Interesting points and as you say, the beauty of Kindle is that Amazon could derive all sorts of information from Kindle owners. How about visibility of number of times the book is opened or even if people add notes or bookmarks?
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  • Profile picture of the author onSubie
    So you are saying Amazon will dumb-down their book market to the lowest common denominator and punish books that are challenging or appeal to a select few?

    They are going to say that because 90% of the (highschool) kids who downloaded Catcher in the Rye did not finish it or deleted it that it will be rated as an inferior product?

    War and Peace is rubbish because few readers finished it?

    Next thing you are going to tell us is that Google can tell a good web site from a bad one....

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    • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
      Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

      So you are saying Amazon will dumb-down their book market to the lowest common denominator and punish books that are challenging or appeal to a select few?

      They are going to say that because 90% of the (highschool) kids who downloaded Catcher in the Rye did not finish it or deleted it that it will be rated as an inferior product?

      War and Peace is rubbish because few readers finished it?

      Next thing you are going to tell us is that Google can tell a good web site from a bad one....

      Go to the supermarket.

      In the UK at least, they sell the best selling books, the non-fiction category being dominated by celebrity autobiographies.

      Given that Jordan has written several best-selling autobiographies, do you really that sales is likely to be strongly correlated with sales, or simply getting to the end (how many people bought as impulse but never finished all 3 Jordan autobiographies?) ?

      Additionally, the value as a customer of Amazon is their niche coverage. If I can buy in Tesco, I am less likely to buy it in Amazon. All those niches are very tiny in terms of volume, but they add up to a lot, and they probably have higher margin that the top 10 or 20 books.

      Finally I think Amazon isn't likely to be your English teacher checking if you've done your homework. They don't care if you read the book. All they care is (a) whether you paid, (b) you don't refund, (c) how much profit they made on the sale, and (d) whether they acquired you as a repeat future customer.

      Also Amazon have a much better measure
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      • Profile picture of the author cashcow
        Originally Posted by SunilTanna View Post

        Finally I think Amazon isn't likely to be your English teacher checking if you've done your homework. They don't care if you read the book. All they care is (a) whether you paid, (b) you don't refund, (c) how much profit they made on the sale, and (d) whether they acquired you as a repeat future customer.
        I don't know whether they would or wouldn't do this, but I'm sure they do want to present books that people enjoy reading at the top of the list.

        There's a lot of crappy books on Amazon and readers are unhappy with that. Those readers are Amazon's customers. I'm pretty sure Amazon wants to keep them happy.

        Therefore, if a high percentage of people that read your book stop after the first chapter, it could be a way to gauge whether it is crappy or not.

        Now, of course, not every book is liked by every reader - especially when it comes to fiction. I have people that love my books and buy every single one of them and people that hate them. A lot of it has to do with personal taste.

        I'm sure Amazon knows this, so they would have to take that into consideration.

        Who knows if they use this data (or plan to use it) in rankings? No one does. But one thing is for sure.. they CAN use it if the choose to.
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      • Profile picture of the author KenJ
        I agree with most of the OP with one addition.

        Amazon has a vested interest in making money from self published authors. So they are not going to lose all these books in favour of those published by traditional publishing houses. Surely they want our books which is "Their" content to make sales.

        KenJ
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      • Profile picture of the author onSubie
        Originally Posted by SunilTanna View Post

        Finally I think Amazon isn't likely to be your English teacher checking if you've done your homework. They don't care if you read the book. All they care is (a) whether you paid, (b) you don't refund, (c) how much profit they made on the sale, and (d) whether they acquired you as a repeat future customer.

        Well, my first post was deliberately facetious but yours seems to indicate that you didn't read the OP.

        What he is saying is that Amazon (maybe or is) using other metrics besides the obvious reviews, downloads, likes, etc. by spying in Kindle users by monitoring their usage patterns to rate Kindle books.

        So if a book has many 5 star reviews but nobody has actually read it on the Kindle then Amazon would not weigh those reviews as much when evaluating the books ranking and where it will be shown in the Amazon shop.

        That has little to do with the cost of acquisition and lifetiome customer value that you are talking about.
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
    Interesting points Dan. I think Amazon will definitely do some of what you are suggesting but not all.

    For example, it's been said that very few people read past the 1st chapter of a book so I don't think they would tie an algo to that type of thing but you never know. They certainly have an amazing amount of data to draw from.

    It's an even more important reason for authors to build the brand and create a base of fans versus only relying on Amazon or SEO rankings etc.
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    • Profile picture of the author onSubie
      Originally Posted by Paul Gram View Post

      It's an even more important reason for authors to build the brand and create a base of fans versus only relying on Amazon or SEO rankings etc.
      Actually, I think he is saying the opposite.

      You can build a brand and fans and traffic but if your book sucks and people don't read it, or delete it, then your brand, the number of fans and glowing reviews don't matter.

      The behaviour of the reader with the Kindle will be evaluated.

      Much as Google tries to use web site usage stats like time on page, other pages visited, how quickly the user hits the back button, etc. to try and infer the quality of the content (which Goggle can't actually read) based on user activity.

      This is to undermine gaming the system with lots of (paid) fans and a slick branding campaign to cover an inferior product.

      Also, this is a speculative theory, but not an unreasonable one.
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      • Profile picture of the author Paul Gram
        Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

        Actually, I think he is saying the opposite.

        You can build a brand and fans and traffic but if your book sucks and people don't read it, or delete it, then your brand, the number of fans and glowing reviews don't matter.

        The behaviour of the reader with the Kindle will be evaluated.

        Much as Google tries to use web site usage stats like time on page, other pages visited, how quickly the user hits the back button, etc. to try and infer the quality of the content (which Goggle can't actually read) based on user activity.

        This is to undermine gaming the system with lots of (paid) fans and a slick branding campaign to cover an inferior product.

        Also, this is a speculative theory, but not an unreasonable one.
        I must have mis-read it! Oops. In that case, I disagree. Building a brand and raving fans is the #1 best thing you can do to sell books whether Amazon puts you on recommended/also buy lists or not.

        Also, if you build your brand right, they'll put you on those types of lists anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author LarryC
    << Amazon has tried to do what they can to clean up reviews but it's largely an insurmountable task.

    Instead, what they might begin to look at is how products are used. Now, they can't do this with physical books (or physical products of any kind), but they can do this with Kindle books.

    They could track how Kindle books are used to determine how to rank those books. >>

    Have you heard any rumors or evidence that Amazon will do this, or is this just speculation? I can imagine that people will complain that their privacy has been violated if Amazon starts spying on their reading habits this way.

    I realize that they have the ability to do this, and might be doing it already, but if it becomes part of their actual algorithm for listing books it could be problematic. Personally, I like the idea as it would give them a more accurate way to determine if people are really reading the books. I've often thought that YouTube should do something similar -make people watch the whole video before voting on it.
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    • Profile picture of the author cashcow
      Originally Posted by LarryC View Post

      Have you heard any rumors or evidence that Amazon will do this, or is this just speculation? I can imagine that people will complain that their privacy has been violated if Amazon starts spying on their reading habits this way.
      They are already doing this. Look at the page for any popular book and you will see a section titled "Shared Notes and Highlights" (It's towards the bottom under the About the Author and Other Products Customers Buy).

      That section includes notes and highlights that people have done while reading their books on their Kindles.

      I haven't heard of anyone complain about it, but they've been sharing this info for a while.
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  • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
    I know what you're saying, your saying a metric Amazon could use is whether you read the book, to evaluate the book, and/or feedback.

    It is not impossible, but I am doubtful it is a very useful metric for the reason I already outlined.

    In many cases, customer satisfaction has little to do with the quality of the content, or even whether they have read it.

    Consider A Brief History of Time. An international best-seller. Very many people who own it. How many of them truly have an interest in theoretical physics, and read it? On the other hand, how many would give it negative feedback?
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    • Profile picture of the author cashcow
      Originally Posted by SunilTanna View Post

      In many cases, customer satisfaction has little to do with the quality of the content, or even whether they have read it.
      Really? I'd have to beg to differ here. While quality is subjective, I would venture to say that it has everything to do with customer satisfaction.
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      • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
        Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

        Really? I'd have to beg to differ here. While quality is subjective, I would venture to say that it has everything to do with customer satisfaction.
        I said "In many cases" it isn't. I didn't say it always isn't. I accept that there are many cases where it is important.

        But my point is:

        The best sellers aren't necessarily the best books. Jordan's 3 autobiographies surely aren't better than War and Peace, despite selling a lot more copies? Jeffrey Archer surely isn't better than Fyodor Dostoyevsky?

        Neither the best sellers aren't either necessarily the most read books. As for Brief History of Time, it may indeed be a very good book, my point was that I believe that a lot of people bought it because of how it made them feel about themselves, or how they could present themselves to others by having it on their coffee table. They didn't necessarily suddenly acquire a deep interest in theoretical physics. They didn't nececssarily even read the book all the way through, or even part way through - although they may have an intention to do so one day. And any such people who bought the book are highly satisfied with their purchase, because it made them feel good, even if they didn't read all or much of the book.
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Originally Posted by onSubie View Post

          What he is saying is that Amazon (maybe or is) using other metrics besides the obvious reviews, downloads, likes, etc. by spying in Kindle users by monitoring their usage patterns to rate Kindle books.

          So if a book has many 5 star reviews but nobody has actually read it on the Kindle then Amazon would not weigh those reviews as much when evaluating the books ranking and where it will be shown in the Amazon shop.
          I do think Dan's on to something here. (Even a blind pig finds the trough occasionally. )

          While the scale of calculations makes this unlikely to ever be a primary rating method, it could be used to help explain some of the anomalies. Like the book with dozens of raving 5-star reviews but low sales or perhaps higher than expected refunds compared to similarly rated books. If the person submitting the review never opened the book on their device, they still might have acquired it some other way. But the pattens would show that such people taking the trouble to leave reviews on the Kindle platform are miniscule. The odds would favor such a review being phony.

          I think the highest utility for something like this will be for comparative purposes.
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          • Profile picture of the author writeaway
            Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

            I do think Dan's on to something here. (Even a blind pig finds the trough occasionally. )

            While the scale of calculations makes this unlikely to ever be a primary rating method, it could be used to help explain some of the anomalies. Like the book with dozens of raving 5-star reviews but low sales or perhaps higher than expected refunds compared to similarly rated books. If the person submitting the review never opened the book on their device, they still might have acquired it some other way. But the pattens would show that such people taking the trouble to leave reviews on the Kindle platform are miniscule. The odds would favor such a review being phony.

            I think the highest utility for something like this will be for comparative purposes.
            Which, again, brings up the whole point of QUALITY. Too many people think that Kindle is some sort of magical goldmine they can milk. The day Amazon cracks down on quality would be a very welcome day for... end users.
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            • Profile picture of the author bobsilber
              Originally Posted by writeaway View Post

              Which, again, brings up the whole point of QUALITY. Too many people think that Kindle is some sort of magical goldmine they can milk. The day Amazon cracks down on quality would be a very welcome day for... end users.
              True and they have cracked down on quality, and gaming their system and continue to do so. Recipe books with recipes taken from Internet sites removed, PLR books removed, other book author reviews removed, and the list goes on.
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  • Profile picture of the author SandraLarkin
    Banned
    Adapt as always in this constant changing, ever evolving internet marketing eco-system.
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    • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
      I enjoyed that, Dan. It's speculation, but it's the kind of speculation savvy marketers toss around from time to time.

      However, as you said, it's really easy. So for those who're wringing their hands and worried about what's coming down the pike, let me summarize:

      1. Stop writing "Kindle books."

      Instead, write books for a specific target market. Then sell these books on Kindle... as well as SmashWords, Kobo, iBooks, your own website, etc. In other words, generate your own leads AND publish on multiple platforms. Don't put all your electronic eggs in one basket.

      Sell hard copies on the platform of your choice. Hell, sell them out of the trunk of your car or at trade shows. Get them into your local bookstores. Get them on an endcap at your local drugstore.

      Sell tBooks (telepathy books). Hint: Do a joint venture with Sylvia Browne.


      2. Focus on quality.

      Dan said this. Others in this thread said this. Because no matter what changes Kindle or any other platform makes, it won't matter if you're creating quality books. You won't have to worry about "gaming" anything or staying a step ahead or lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling cause your income is drying up.

      Write for your READERS, not for the platform.


      3. Market the hell out of your books.

      See #1 above. Also build your author brand, build your fan base, use multiple marketing/advertising channels, pay attention to the details (copywriting, graphics, etc)... and so on. Cause no one will know you're producing kick-ass books if no one has heard of you.

      Well, unless you're using tMarketing (telepathy marketing), in which case it's much easier. But that's really only for the enlightened old souls among you.

      Becky
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      • Profile picture of the author cashcow
        Originally Posted by R Hagel View Post

        1. Stop writing "Kindle books."

        Instead, write books for a specific target market. Then sell these books on Kindle... as well as SmashWords, Kobo, iBooks, your own website, etc. In other words, generate your own leads AND publish on multiple platforms. Don't put all your electronic eggs in one basket.

        Sell hard copies on the platform of your choice. Hell, sell them out of the trunk of your car or at trade shows. Get them into your local bookstores. Get them on an endcap at your local drugstore.
        That's probably the smartest thing I've heard anyone say about "Kindle" ever. Kindle isn't a "make money" scheme, just a platform to sell books and you should never build your business on just one platform.

        Originally Posted by R Hagel View Post

        Sell tBooks (telepathy books). Hint: Do a joint venture with Sylvia Browne.
        That would be for the new "Tindle" platform, right?
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        • Profile picture of the author R Hagel
          Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

          That would be for the new "Tindle" platform, right?
          Exactly. I knew you were one of the Enlightened.

          Becky
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