Sunday, October 6, 2013

Life On the Amazon

When you have a book on Amazon, it needs to fit into a set category. If it is a mystery, it goes in fiction/mystery/whatever sub-category works best. If it is your personal memoir about your time spent in prison, it goes in non-fiction/memoirs/crime. If it is yet another zombie story, like we need more of those, it goes in fiction/horror/zombies.

Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, does not invent their own categories and sub-categories. They use standard BISAC codes and put every book into its coded category. Every physical store might not have a section for every possible category, but their online version should put every book in the right place.

When I wrote Hailey's Bali Diary, I never would have guessed it would be categorized as travel/Bali. It is not a travel book, yet is surrounded by Lonely Planet and Frommer's. On the other hand, I could never tell you which category suits it better.

Nudist Cruise was put in travel/cruises. That makes more sense since it is about what happens on a cruise. It seemed to be the right move because it sold very well in that category. It hovered around #5 for several months. Sometimes it would go higher or lower, but it stayed in the top 10 for a long time. I think that's pretty good, especially since almost everything else in the top 10 in that category is from travel publishers that sell millions of books.

Then Amazon moved it to literature & fiction/erotica and sales plummeted. I have no idea why they moved it. There is nothing erotic about the book. It is mostly about not being a nudist on a cruise ship full of nudists. Any nudist will tell you there is absolutely nothing erotic about nudism. Maybe Amazon considers nudism erotica, but I don't think so. There are other nudist books that are not in the erotica category.

The funniest part is that erotica is not even on their list of categories. If you write erotica on purpose, there is no way to let them know. Somewhere along the line, Amazon decides what is and is not erotica and puts it in. In the case of my book, they messed up. The worst part is, there is nothing I can do to fix it. Everything at Amazon is automated and it is exceptionally difficult to speak to an actual person. They respond to e-mails with computer-generated form letters that don't do anyone any good.

It all seems pretty stupid to me. Their unwarranted change benefits no one. Since it went from a bestseller to buried in the backroom, not only am I losing money from their mistake, but they are as well. They make money on every single thing they sell. While it was in the travel section, it was selling and they were making money. Now that they hid it away from impressionable eyes, it is dead and they are getting nothing. Their piece of the pie was never going to make them millions of dollars. Not from anything I write. But I don't see why they would want to throw away even a tiny crumb, especially in this economy.

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