If you’re a self-published author, chances are you have heard about Author Marketing Club and its premium and as well free membership. Author Marketing Club was founded by Jim Kukral and helps authors with book description and founding Amazon top reviewers for your book(s). The description enchantment tool is a feature that enables you orange fonts, bold and italics also numbered lists. The Amazon reviewer grabber tool is an algorithm, updated directly by Amazon, so that one can see all the latest emails addresses, blogs, reviewers’ names etc.
Author Marketing Club review grabber tool
Excel sheet
The review tool by itself is very cool – when you grab all the Amazon reviewers you can save the file as an excel sheet. There are five columns in that document – the reviewer’s name, email address, website or bog, the reviewers’ ranking, number of reviews left, the particular ranking for the selected book and the book’s sales page. It is cool because you note those reviewers that tend to leave higher reviews. As Jim Kukral said “you always approach people who leave good reviews”. There are different opinions about the review rankings but I think 3 is not a bad number though by applying to various book advertisers like BookBub, ENT (eReaders News Today) or Kindle Books and Tips, they want the average number to be at least above 4 stars.
I am one of those reviewers myself that don’t give writers 5 stars so easily. Of course, I never left one star review but I choose carefully the books I read. For example – Hugh Howey’s Wool. I gave it 2 stars. Are you shocked? I didn’t like the ending and felt a bitter taste in my mouth. Luckily, the whole first book was short so I didn’t lose time.
Now back on ACM. Other good thing is the ACM academy. I watched Sell Your First 100 copies with Bryan Cohen and it was a nice course. I learned some things, other already knew but I feel it was worth the time. In AMC there are also webinars with various guest on different topics. For example, Michelle Campbell talks about Goodreads – the platform responsible partly for the success of 50 Shades of Gray; Gary Vaynerchuk about using social media to sell books. etc. Be alert that those videos have been shot a few years ago and in publishing, especially self-publishing things change sometimes overnight. Gary is a unique character and my humble opinion, what he suggests about social media is in the sphere of 20/80 (in your 80 % of efforts, you’ll get only 20% turn back or even less). My advice is don’t lose more than half an hour during the day in social media and spend that time in your non-productive time. In my experience, social media doesn’t sell books, what really sells is email marketing when done correctly. That’s the reason why BookBub and Buck Books are the best places for book marketing. They both have huge mailing lists with highly engaged subscribers who are anticipating the next email with book recommendations.
A good thing is that Author Marketing Club is not a place only for authors to hang out – readers also benefit from authors who submit their links with free books. You must be a member but not necessarily a premium one to submit your free book. The free submission widget enables you to send your free book to 10-20 free or bargain book sites. If you are a prime member, you can submit your 99 cents book on Friday and promote your book every Sunday but for the latter option it must have at least 10 reviews. Now, when I write this post, my novella has already 9 and if you can help me gain one more review, I’ll be very grateful to you.
In Author Marketing Club there is also the Friday AMC buzz but it didn’t work for me and honestly, I doubt it works for anyone. A group of people shares retweets including the link for the retailer’s page, catchy phrases, hashtags etc. I had several retweets for my own book but that was all, no sales of course from that tactic. Lesson? Stick to the 80/20 activities or I will phrase Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant – use 90% strategies and only 10% tactics.
[bctt tweet=”Strategies outlive tactics. Period. “]
In AMC there is also a video called “7 tactics to try when nothing helps you to sell your book(s).
You can also get a nice widget with your books’ sales page on the different platforms – Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Apple iBooks, etc.
Conclusion: though AMC is nice, an author can skip its services without hesitation. Pitching Amazon reviewers takes time and the reality is that only 5-10% in the best case, will respond to your call. I found a better strategy or rather I should say a tactic to get engaged reviewers. The book enhancement tool is also unnecessary when one can get the html code even by using wordpress. It’s very easy – you type the description, make the bold fonts, italics, the orange color and click on text – and it displays the html code.
Thankfully, I subscribed only for one month membership and saved some bucks. Of course, you may love AMC especially when you’re not short on money. I am glad I tried AMC but for now I won’t use it further in the (future).
Note! If you are not satisfied with its services, there si a money back guarantee. For the monthly subscription, it’s till the seventh day, for the monthly – 30 days.
Update – though my premium membership has expired, I am still able to use the paid services which is cool (so far).
Have you tried Author Marketing Club if you are an author?
For readers, how do you learn about books from new authors?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
