Amazon bestseller campaigns not worth it

I’m sick to death of the parade of authors who hit me with sales pitches to buy their books on Amazon.com on such-and-such a day.

And I absolutely refuse to pester the 30,000 people on my email list and let them know about these Amazon campaigns.

Full disclosure: When these campaigns were all the rage a few years ago, I donated some of my own publicity products as “bonuses” if I knew the authors and respected their work, even though I refused to do a special mailing to my list. But I’ve distanced myself from these campaigns recently because they’ve lost their luster and many of them just don’t work.

Steve Weber, author of the new book “Plug Your Book!–Online book marketing for authors” (Weber Books, $24.99 paperback) agrees. He presents one of the best explanations I’ve read on why most of these Amazon bestseller campaigns fall flat. And he concludes:

“If it’s important to have a stellar Amazon Sales Rank for a day, you can do it much faster and cheaper by simply buying a few hundred copies of your book from Amazon yourself. Have a copy shipped to each member of your high-school class, your neighbors and in-laws, and every newspaper and magazine editor in your region. That would spark some real word of mouth for your book.”     

If you’ve written a book, or you’re thinking of writing one, buy this book. Steve shows you how to get massive online exposure with no special computer skills. He explains why authors fail with paid advertising, pay-per-click, fee-based reviews and the Amazon campaigns. And he explains how to boost your visibility with blogs, Google, MySpace and other social netowrking sites, and how to capitalize on peer content and “amateur” book reviews.

Check out Steve’s Plug Your Book! blog.