If you “Like” me…you can help me

I’m a Type-A personality and an Aries to boot so asking for help has never been an easy choice for me…but that’s what I’m going to do. 

I’m asking for some help and here’s why…

I have been busy with the edits involving my second book but I have also been researching and studying what I can to learn more about marketing and promotion.  Becoming an author is a passion but it is also a business and as much as I’d rather bury my head and just spend my time writing, there is no way around the fact that to become successful, my time must be divided between writing and promotion.

When it comes to marketing and promoting yourself, it is a difficult, sometimes overwhelming business.  As with most things in life, it takes planning, preparation, repeated attempts, lessons learned, failure or losses but eventually all the hard work will pay off and turn your sweat and tears into gains.  I am still learning, still preparing and planning but the future only holds what my hard work will achieve.

So for my first request, it’s really very simple…if you are a regular Amazon customer, can you take a moment or two, visit my book on their site and “like” my book?  That’s it…just hit the “like” button near the title, No Mother of Mine.

Even better, as my second request, if you have actually read my book, how about writing a review?  If you liked it, great; if you want to offer constructive criticism, I will take it as such (I haven’t denied the fact that I’m still learning) but either way, reviews are very helpful not only to me but to other readers as well.

So how will a “like” or a review help me?

These requests give me a way to test something with regard to my author ranking on Amazon.  Currently, my overall author ranking for ALL books is 92,624; we’re talking about competition between millions of books so I guess the number’s not too shabby.  However, I’d like to see if my numbers can be better based on marketing and promotion (the numbers aren’t just about sales when it comes to author ranking).  Over the past six months, my lowest ranking in competition with all books was 47,378 and the highest was 475,559 (lower is better).  Currently, when it comes to my specific genre, my ranking in competition with other mystery eBooks is at 2,564 and my ranking with other mystery paperbacks is 2,866.  Still not too bad considering the number of mystery books out there but I would like to beat my lowest author rankings (1,052 for my eBook and 2,061 for my paperback).  I’d also like to monitor what happens to my author ranking once some new action occurs with regard to “likes” or reviews about my book and this is where you can help me do that.

Which is why I’ve made this plea for help. 

I’m not asking you to buy the book (although if you have already, thank you!)…I’m just asking you to “like” or review my book.  Whether you take the time to hit the “like” button or spend more time writing a review, I appreciate anyone who follows through with my request for help and if your responses affect my author ranking as I hope it will, I will certainly follow up with a post to let you know the results.