An excellent guide to Amazon, I think this book would be useful to both new and establish authors possibly slightly more useful to new authors as it starts with the basics like how Amazon really works. I particularly like the useful lists that are included in the book. Such as lists of useful reviewers, hashtags to use and many many more other handy tools for authors. I will be recommending this book to a lot of my indie author friends. Fab and more importantly practically useful read.

Penny knows her stuff! This book was a quick read, but packed full of great information and tips.

If you're a self published author this book is a must have. I also highly recommend it to other authors and publishers... and basically anyone who deals with listing books on Amazon.

I liked the clear layout and clutter free explanations and how to's. There are also plenty of screenshots to help make each step even easier to follow.

I'll definitely be referring back to this book often as it's full of great resources and links.

Outdated and Not Very Useful

This author has a blog post about Amazon keywords that ended sort of abruptly, but since it had a solid start and suggested reading this book to learn more, I gave it a shot.

I’m definitely glad I have a free/trial Kindle Unlimited membership right now because I would’ve felt swindled had I spent real money on this book.

Within the first couple pages, it became glaringly obvious that the information in this book was outdated. It made reference to Shelfari.com (which has merged with Goodreads), as well as a few other minor things.

Mostly though, none of the information in this book went deep enough to be helpful. Every time I thought I was finally reading a meaningful section, it would end and we’d move on to the next thing...

I also got the sneaking suspicion that everything said in this book can easily be found online. So do yourself a favor and just Google “how to sell books on Amazon” or something.

I have always been an avid reader. From the moment I read my first book in kindergarten, all the way up until this day, I’ve devoured them. I’ve been told I devour books instead of merely reading them. For someone like me who does look at the reviews on books on Amazon as well as other sites, this was an interesting read. So many authors are coming forward with new and exciting reads each day. Some are published through large publishers, some through smaller ones and some even self-published. Because you can receive books in so many different formats today, it’s important to remember that you have to cross promote. You can’t just add a title to your blog or site; you have to get it out there to the masses. There are endless possibilities for advertisement of course. But in the end, Amazon is one of, if not the biggest retailers for books. As an author of course you’re going to want to get your work to the tops of the lists. As a customer, you want to see what the best from the author is at the moment. You want to be able to look through their page and see the reviews, availability and descriptions of current as well as upcoming books.

I think Ms. Sansevieri does a pretty good job of pointing out the key points. One key point is in using keywords. Amazon is like just about any search engine out there. You type in something you are looking for and it brings back a list of items that fit into that. Using a good description with keywords is a must. If you give a good summary of what your book is about, then you are going to get more hits. You can’t just put something like, “this is a book about a man and his dog”, when in actuality it’s a complex story about a man who learns how to accept the terms of his life after war. It’s through the devotion and love of his dog that pushes him to strive for understanding.

She explains things in an easy fashion that doesn't bore you into frustration. The example pictures given in the book can be hard to read depending on what type of format you’re reading it on. I read it both on my kindle and my laptop and portions were difficult to see. My two concerns would be the images not being formatted to the book very well and the fact it’s short. I see there is a sequel to the book and would be more of an asset if they are read together. I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

An excellent guide to Amazon, I think this book would be useful to both new and establish authors possibly slightly more useful to new authors as it starts with the basics like how Amazon really works. I particularly like the useful lists that are included in the book. Such as lists of useful reviewers, hashtags to use and many many more other handy tools for authors. I will be recommending this book to a lot of my indie author friends. Fab and more importantly practically useful read.

I requested this book for review out of curiosity, because a lot of books claim to have the magic secret to book sales and most of them have similar advice, so I wanted to see if the grand claims in the title had anything different to offer.

A lot of the familiar advice about building an author platform was there, but what was different about this book was that instead of just advising authors about tagging their books, it gave some good advice about HOW to tag their books effectively. I got an author friend to test some of the theory and at first, it worked. Her books came up within the first few pages of chosen search terms.

Of course the real trick to that is determining what words people are likely to search on to find your kind of book, but advice for that is given too.

Accompanying the book is a companion book about getting reviews. This was mostly familiar techniques; asking appropriate Amazon reviewers, joining review sites on reader sites, etc. My one niggle was the emphasis on Goodreads, which I would personally tell any author to tread very carefully on.

Overall a good choice if you're going to buy just one book on indie book marketing. It has all the advice the others do plus results of the author's own experiments, and a link to her blog where you can keep up on changes in algorithms.