Thursday, June 2, 2011

You want to boycott Amazon??

Lots of fun things going on right now that you should be checking out. So let's talk about them before I go all ranting and serious on you:


First, YAY to Angeline Kace. Her trailer reveal for Descended By Blood is happening NOW. Click here to find out which bloggers are participating so you can go watch it! It rocks! Also, she is giving away some ARC's of the book AND a Kindle skin with her cover art on it. THAT is a cool prize!

So make sure you watch the trailer and enter the contests.

Also, speaking of contests, only three days left to enter my Goodreads giveaway for a signed paperback of Dirty Blood and Across The Galaxy. Contest ends June 5th for each of them so GO NOW!



Also, June is Indie Author Month! Ramona over at the The YA Fairy is sponsoring a blog hop this month and each blog will be featuring a new author each week for the month of June. There will be reviews and author interviews and giveaways, so check it out. The books/authors being showcased are:

 Dirty Blood by.... ME!  (I'm sure you already figured that out, though)

Sleight by Jennifer Sommersby

Six Moon Summer by SM Reine

Silky by Lazette Gifford

This week, it's SM Reine being featured, along with a giveaway of Six Moon Summer. I loved that book, so you should enter to win if you haven't already!


In other news, aka news that affects more people than just me and my books...

I read today that Amazon has removed the tagging feature from their site. Angeline sent me this blog link about it, which I found interesting, regarding the writer's view of things regarding boycotting Amazon. That's a little extreme to me, but hey, some people like to think of this e-publishing thing as a "revolution" because it makes them feel a part of something. I guess I get that. To be honest, sometimes I get those same stirrings when I read JA Konrath's blog, because his posts always make me feel so united in a business that is mostly solitary. But I also know that I am in business by myself, for myself, regardless of how many friends I make. And I am here to make money, not fight a war.

Anyway, I went straight to Amazon and checked and sure enough, the search tags are gone. And As far as I can tell, Amazon hasn't said why.

Maybe it was because of indies manipulating the search engines and rating systems, and if that's true, I'm just as guilty as the next guy since my Race to Reviews contest involved getting entries for 'tagging' my books. Whatev. I do see the point in removing them, though, since I could just get all my aunts, uncles, cousins, and pets to go tag me and then voila! I show up higher in the search results when someone types in Para Romance or something. So I get it, I do.

Doesn't mean I like it. I mean, us indies don't have all the advantages of the legacy publishers when it comes to marketing and advertising and brand recognition, etc, so if manipulating search tags was what we could do, then I wasn''t going to feel bad about doing it. Sort of evens the playing field in my opinion. Okay, well, no, it doesn't. It doesn't even come close to evening the playing field, but it was step in the right direction.

Bottom line: it sucks, but I don't feel like boycotting Amazon. They are trying to run a business, same as me. And one thing I know for sure: you can't please ALL the people ALL the time.

What do you think?

3 comments:

  1. I'm a bit glad they removed the tags. It was a never ending race to find people to tag a book when other books in the same genre already had a head start and those authors were working just as hard to get more tags...and on and on and on. It was crazy, as much of this promotion game has seemed to be thus far.

    Yay and congrats to Angeline. Love the trailer. :)

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  2. As a reader and not an author - I do not even know what tagging is. I have used Amazon for a long time and love the indie authors because they provide me with wonderful books at a price I can afford and that is appreciated more than my words could express. I stalk Amazon daily checking out what is new and a bargain and have never tagged anything - so I will still buy your books and enjoy them because they are good books!

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  3. @Angela - I do agree with you about the never ending marketing hoopla to find ppl to tag your stuff. Even without the tags, its a bunch of hoopla but one less thing I guess. =)

    @Denise - thanks for stopping by and to be fair, I didn't know what tagging was either, until I became an author. No worries. I love that you support indies. Stop by anytime!

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