HEY Y’ALL! Recently, you may have noticed some of your favorite authors complaining about a variety of issues with Amazon. In my case: I submitted a listing for my next book, Catgirls from Outer Space, roughly a week ago and … nothing has appeared yet. 😐
That’s because my pre-order submission – which usually takes a few hours to go through – has been stuck in Amazon limbo since October 26th. 😮
This is in relation to several wider Amazon problems that have been plaguing authors for weeks. There’s a lot to it, but the TL;DR is that Amazon’s in the process of rolling out updates to thwart its recent influx of AI-generated content. Many of these changes are ultimately good in concept, even if they’re requiring authors to make some significant pivots in how they launch books …
… But something about the execution has screwed up the whole site. 😐
Not only are pre-orders stuck in limbo, but reviews are disappearing, new reviews are not actually making it to books’ sales pages, books that are showing as newly released in one place are giving error messages in another, rankings are being excruciatingly slow to update …
It’s a whole damn mess. 😭
Anyway, the reason I mention it at all is to say:
1) I got no idea when this pre-order’s gonna be up on Amazon. 😭
2) To thwart one of the changes that’s gonna stick, I’m re-opening applications to my … er, my cat’s street team!
Members of our street team are sent free review copies of our eBooks AS SOON AS I HAVE THE eBOOK READY (which, in some rare instances – like with Catgirls from Outer Space – means you’ll get to read it before it even finishes posting on Patreon).
All I ask in return is that you post a review on release day.
Pretty much all you have to do to be accepted is show evidence that you’ve reviewed books recently. We’re low-key and low-maintenance over here.
If you want to join, fill out this form and I’ll add you to the list!
Why am I doing this at all? Long story short, early good reviews are now WAYYYYY more important now. One of the ways Amazon’s thwarting AI is to make rankings and reviews update every 1-2 days rather than hourly. This is to make it harder to manipulate bestseller lists with specifically-timed sales blasts, amongst other things.
BUT if a book’s first and only review is a drive-by 1-star, and the author doesn’t know that for a day or two, that could be the beginning of the end for a release because of how Amazon gathers the data that helps it decide whether to push books to readers. 😬
It ain’t gonna show a 1-star book, and if you lose that early algorithm push, your book’s basically dead in the water. 😬😬😬
Having a bunch of readers ready to review on launch day, however, is a good way to curb that. 😊
Which is to say, thanks in advance for reading and reviewing! 😁