Review of ‘Let’s Get Visible: How To Get Noticed And Sell More Books (Let’s Get Publishing Book 2)’ by David Gaughran (July 2013):
Gaughran’s Let’s Get Visible offers a tour de force of the state of selling e-books as an indie publisher. He does a very good job explaining the various ins and outs of the much misunderstood Amazon algorithms and the essentials of genre selection. You may not be a left-brained engineer or quant jock, but with this well-written book at your disposal you’ll feel like one. The book not only describes how the algorithms work, it also provides solid examples of how to take advantage of them. In addition to the quirks of Amazon, Gaughran also brings light to the mysteries of e-book pricing. He covers the quantitative with a discussion about free vs. $.99 vs. $2.99+, as well as a more qualitative analysis. The latter is the better of the two describing strategies such as pulsing and covering the timing of price changes. Gaughran also offers a candid exploration of Amazon’s KDP select complete with recent changes to the program and what they mean for the indie publisher.
Lest you think Gaughran spends the entire book discussing optimizing Amazon’s algorithms, he does include brief sections covering several book launch strategies and a cursory review of advertising. Both are helpful, but fall short of the depth in the other sections. Other channels (Kobo, Apple, and B&N) also receive brief ink, but it’s hard to fault Gaughran’s explanation for doing so.
Let’s Get Visible is an excellent overview of the state of e-book marketing in general and Amazon in particular. Experienced indie publishers probably know a lot of what’s covered, but will still find a few nuggets. To be most effective most of the strategies rely on a deeper catalog than a new author is likely to have available, but again there’s plenty of value here. If you’re not an indie, you should probably make sure your publisher has a copy.
Amazon link for Let’s Get Visible