Sales Game?

To get a Better Sales Ranking

The scheme May Work,
but is NOT Recommended!

Many authors' groups and sites are currently recommending that authors who want to upgrade their sales standing on Amazon.com, or other book sales sites, should get their friends to all buy a copy of their book on a certain date. Their sales ranking will then go UP. That is ABSOLUTELY TRUE!

The friends may then return the copies without charge the next day. (ALSO TRUE!) 

The author's book  rises in the sales standings (a little or a lot, depending on how many friends follow the procedure on the given day).

Of course, the author never gets royalties 

on copies that have been returned!

No matter what site was used, IF the sale wasn't permanent, it generated no income. Amazon.com and most other book sales sites have a liberal return policy for several reasons:

1. Book buyers may be first time customers and have little idea how to download the software needed to read the book they have purchased.

2. Some on receiving a file marked Kindle Edition, may believe that a Kindle Reader is necessary to read the file and if they don't have a Reader...they are lost.

3. They may not realize that free Kindle Reader Software can be downloaded and Many (I assure you) may not be technically skilled enough to download it and use it to read the book files they bought for the first time.

I doubt that I am.  And even if they can, they may not want to read a book on their computer and send it back. You just can't curl up for a good read on a computer...

Books are Usually Returnable within a week, at no charge to the book buyer. 

(Although The Publisher is charged for delivery of the text to the buyer electronically and charged again for the electronic return...not a lot, of course, all together it may have amounted to less than $5 dollars for the thirty or more authors who had books bought and then returned in August...)

The author may also get e-mail from friends, saying, "I bought your book on Aug. 7," or whatever date the Sales Ploy was scheduled for and, being quite unaware of the "sales game" and not realizing the books had been returned-- They then Believe they were Actual Sales and wonder why they haven't been paid and ask,

 "What happened to My Royalties?

Authors have no idea the sales were not genuine. Nor can they be expected to be aware that any of this is going on.

Certainly none of this is Their Fault.

Advice to do this has been all over Facebook, Good Reads, 

and passed around a number 

of other authors' groups and sites. 

Now I'm sure that many of our authors who had returns didn't advise people to do use this sales ploy, because if you had, you'd have sold a lot more than the 5 or 6 copies that most of you had returned.  But someone must have decided to do authors they liked a favor, because in August, many of us sold five or more copies of a book on one day, and had them returned on the next!

Several have contacted me, wondering why they haven't been PAID, when they knew from friends that their books had been purchased.

Otherwise I'd never bothered to explain all this.