Amazon's New Update

How many times has your book been downloaded/read this month?

I’ve been asked about 2 dozen times in the last 6ish hours what I think of this new update from Amazon - so I figured I’d hop on here and try to get my thoughts coherent and sharable.

Usual disclaimer: I am a B2B marketing strategist by day. My marketing brain takes problems like this and chews them up and measures that cud against what I know to be marketing and advertisement standards. This means two things.

1. My perspective is from a business perspective - AKA, I believe I can “reverse-engineer” to a certain extent why Amazon would do this and how it benefits them/sales

2. I am ONLY thinking about this aspect, and it’s all I can speak to and explain.

To be really clear with why I point out number 2 - this is an emotional situation for a lot of authors right now and I get that. I don’t want to, for a single second, downplay whatever completely valid reaction you’re having to KDP having done something, AGAIN, that feels like it doesn’t have your best interest at heart. I’m sorry that you all continue to be victimized by a system you’re more or less trapped in, in order to reach audiences that are overwhelmingly facing the direct repercussions of a pseudo-recession & rely on KU to read all the books that they do.

Now, onto my thoughts! (For those who want them!!)

THE UPDATE

If you look at the quick screenshot I took above, you’ll see that Amazon has integrated new stats for your books.

• The number of “want to read” on Goodreads is new.

• Most concerning from what I’ve heard from authors is how many books were bought or read in the last month - the new stat on the bottom.

Why did they do this?

This is 10000% a sales tactic - this is meant to HELP. Please read my pre-thoughts before we get into the marketing choice Amazon made below.

There’s a a few basic premises here that I think are coming together to create some indie panic online right now.

1. That we readers only support indie authors because we think we’re helping a tiny small business that doesn’t make any money

2. That readers have no idea when a book is selling thousands and thousands of copies a month

3. That IF readers find out how many books are actually being sold, either way more than we thought or way less, we will in some way “turn” on those authors or our choices to read those books.

Here are the facts as I see them.

1. We readers support indie authors based on that, sure. But we also read and support indie authors because you are writing the books we want to read. We all know that trad pub has a massive gaping hole in new adult and fantasy, sci-fi, and monster romance. Half the time they say they’re giving us that, it ends up being false marketing, and we are disappointed. Trad pub simply does not have the same breadth of titles that indie can offer us, and even if people start with those trad titles, we need more books to read.

   1. I would point out too that the indie space has a much, MUCH higher percentage of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC authors and characters, not to mention the neurodivergence, mental illness, and body-positivity representation in the stories themselves. That’s another huge reason people read indie.

2. We can tell when your book is everywhere, haha. We KNOW when you’re doing well!! There are a ton of signs, not the least of which being when we see your book everywhere online, when we meet people IRL who aren’t on booksta/booktok who’ve read it, when it’s being featured in magazine round-ups.

   1. You yourself will share when you’re ranking in the kindle store - we obviously understand that means you're selling a lot of copies. We’re happy for you!! Get that bag!!

3. I cannot speak for everyone. Booktok and Bookstagram are not monoliths, nor am I their spokesperson. But I am one of the most dedicated indie-author-focused creators I know of & have lots of friends in that same space and we truly, truly do not look at indie as “not making any money.” We look at it as - doing it yourself. Marketing yourself, publishing yourself, merchandizing and advertising by yourself. Indie is not inherently a pity party vote. We read your books because they're good.

   1. Conversely, if I personally see LOW download stats/want to read numbers, I wouldn’t be swayed at all. We can already tell when that’s the case when there aren’t a huge number of reviews on amazon or Goodreads anyway. It won’t BEGIN to stop people that that wouldn’t have stopped before.

I hope all of this goes some way to calm you if you’re experiencing some kind of panic around some sort of “truth” being revealed. I think for the most part, readers understand what’s going on. If you’re posting a bunch of art, creating special editions, your book is everywhere, it’s ranking highly…we assume you’re selling a ton of copies. That doesn’t make you non-indie or take away our support.

Amazon’s Choice to Include

As human beings, our brains develop cognitive biases. These biases allow us to group like experiences and expected outcomes together to make split second decisions in the future when faces with similar circumstances. While sometimes this is negative in outcome (assumptions) it’s often a net positive.

Marketing, and advertising specifically, rely on certain cognitive biases to create structures through which we can influence customers to purchase the product in question. There are hundreds, but the one I want to focus on with you right now is called the bandwagon effect. I think that’s part of what drives Amazon’s decision.

Have you ever needed a simple product? Let’s say your lips are dry AF and you’re like okay, I need new lipbalm. Instead of googling and researching lip balm ingredients or delivery mechanisms via beeswax or synthetic fat, you just hop onto amazon and look for something around 4 stars with as many reviews as possible. If enough people have co-signed it, you feel comfortable making that decision much more quickly than you otherwise would have.

Now, this isn’t a perfect application of the bandwagon effect - but it’s important to remember that review aggregates, like Amazon showing the in-app and Goodreads averages and the number of reviews, prompts users to trust the book’s quality more than they otherwise would have.

Think about the differences in the info that they now have.

BEFORE:

• Lifetime amazon star rating average

• Lifetime amazon # of reviews

• Lifetime Goodreads review average

• Lifetime Goodreads # of reviews

• IF they are really unsure, they may go to both places and actually read some reviews to ascertain if they want to read it. This is more likely for folks who are not a part of online book communities, and who do this research with less word-of-mouth input.

• If they’re part of bookstagram or booktok (or similar) they probably already made up their mind before they even got to this page, based on a recommendation from a friend or trusted influencer.

NOW:

• All of the above

• A number ported over from Goodreads, showing them how many people plan to read the book

• A RECENT number - how many people have clicked the purchase or download button in the last month.

This is a net positive in information we’re providing to readers trying to make a decision. The more information they have about how many people have read it, and I will go out on a limb here and say also the higher the number, the better - the more likely they are to purchase. This is 200% amazon’s thinking here - it will increase sales.

They also very likely tested this quite directly on focus groups to ensure it would do this - Amazon has tons of research and development cash, and they made this decision confidently that it would positively effect the decision of the majority of readers.

Which means we also need to remember - the majority of readers are not on bookstagram or booktok. There’s a HUGE number of your readers who don’t know what ApollyCon is, don’t know who you are, and don’t care. They don’t know or care how many books you have or haven’t sold. They’re interested in your premise, your blurb, your cover - and they’re going to buy or download your book and check it out themselves.

TLDR?

1. Readers are not (if I may be so bold as to even make this statement) under the impression that every indie author lives in poverty and scrapes these books together out of some kind of herculean attack on trad pub capitalism. We know you sell books and that when you sell books, you make money.

2. If you’ve already been posting hitting lists, making it into online publication lists, hitting kindle rankings, getting “Best of Booktok” flags, etc - we know that you’re selling books. We’re happy for you!

3. We still won’t think you’re millionaires or trad pub by selling implication. It’s not going to change how we conceive of independent publishing.

4. For those of you who will see lower numbers - it’s probably not going to change anyone’s mind, because it’s not going to read all that differently from the number of reviews that you had. Some of us love to find a hidden gem, after all.

5. It will probably be a net positive for many as it gives readers looking for more info another metric by which to measure how likely it is that they’ll like the book.

6. If you’re still really unhappy with it, and you have a KDP rep, reach out and let them know that - it’s all we can really do, outside of accepting the change for what it is and moving forward.

I have a final parting thought for those who are specifically worried that this is going to be a moment where people suddenly realize the extend of your success as an indie author.

If a single bookstagrammer or booktoker takes it upon themselves to make some kind of content where they “call out” an indie author in particular for having sold more books than they expected… the drama will drama. That kind of negativity focused, inflammatory content will always move, because it’s motivated by a miserable person trying to find miserable company. It doesn’t change the quality of the books or your success, and I find it very hard to believe it’ll turn people away from your books unless you’ve been literally and loudly lying about your sales numbers lol.

If you have any follow up questions on this, please feel free to comment here or reach out to me directly. I am always trying to help you all, and I want to ease your fears with what facts I have access to, and the opinions I’m confident enough in to share publicly. I hope this went a little way toward making you feel better about this change.