"Hacking" your Amazon sales/5 things meme in short

- Stacy
You’ll get more of Dragonlance: The New Adventures tomorrow. The thing I must do today is let you know about an interesting thing I found out about from Fuse #8 about how to make Amazon work for you as an author. I’m just going to quote part of her post, because I’m lazy and it’s late. Go over there and find all the linky-links for details.

I review for Amazon which is nice and all. So it was with great interest then that I read the piece Crowdhacking: 10 Simple Ways Authors Can Help to Increase Sales at Amazon.com. All right. I’ll bite. I know enough authors that I’d lik
e to become rich that I can appreciate what this article has to say. By and large it’s information on making Amazon work for you. A lot of it is particularly useful (especially the don’t-start-a-bunch-of-accounts-and-review-your-own-book part). I was taken with the following bit as well:

If you receive an email or a comment on your blog from someone who enjoyed our book or see a review posted online elsewhere – ask them to post that on Amazon.com. I have also seen authors who have asked for permission to repost favorable online reviews (with attribution) at Amazon.com

Very interesting stuff, and I’d recommend it to authors out there looking to increase their Amazon presence. 

Speaking of stuff like this, I have plans for a review of Jane Yolen’s Take Joy, which I’ve been reading parts of since I got it for Christmas. While waiting for my CT scan this afternoon (no news, of course, till the dr. takes a look at it Monday), I had several thoughts that I have yet to put into coherent blog form.

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I was going to post pictures of the taste-testing, but I’m about to fall asleep. The reason I haven’t posted them all evening? Well, aside from talking to my sister for entirely too long for daytime minutes (I hate living on the West Coast for cell phone minutes; everyone I know lives at least 2 to 3 hours east of me and so I’m always using up my peak minutes!), I was playing with my new digital SLR.

 
Oh, yes.
 
Very nice.  
 
I’ve seen that five things you didn’t know about me meme going around, and I’m going to do an abbreviated version. Did you know that I’m a semi-professional photographer in my spare time? I have fun with it, do a few friends’ weddings, a few freelance articles a year for a trade magazine I used to work for (Electrical Apparatus, which I think I’ve mention
ed before). I love my regular old SLR—a Nikon N55 which has been a sturdy photojournalistic camera—but I wanted to both go digital and upgrade. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’ve had a little extra money come in, so today was the day I made the plunge.
 
Because I have a Nikon, the nice thing Nikon lets you do is use your old film SLR lenses on your new digital bodies. So I only had to get a camera body—I went with the D80 because it’s a relatively affordable (ha ha–but you’d see what I mean if you compare its price to a *real* professional’s camera) advanced amateur/semi-professional camera that I can eventually get better lenses for. But for now, my old lenses will stand me in good stead and I won’t have to worry about the time and expense of film processing. And it’s high enough print quality, at the high-res end, that I’ll be able to continue and even improve my freelance photography.
 
This inspired me to learn more about indoor lighting, because I really suck at it. I do really well at outdoor photography, but
give me a flash and I have a big, big problem. I’m always burning out people’s faces. So I got a DVD that explained a lot about indoor lighting with lamp stands and now I’m all excited about getting a set of lights for an upcoming shoot (I’m taking some pictures for our kickboxing teacher so he can advertise his new studio) because it’s in a warehouse-like dojo and the flash probably isn’t going to cut it. Probably not the best investment… but it’s something I’m thinking I might use my $50 gift card (yay for free gifts when buying things on sale!) and then it’s almost nothing out of my budget, right? Right?
 
….
 
I think I have too many hobbies.
 
But I love it! And it pretty much pays for itself in a few freelance assignments.

Now I have to figure out all the little bells and whistles. Of course, I’d settle for knowing which buttons control the aperture and shutter speed, because just playing with it I haven’t been able to figure it out and I’m not really up for searching the directions right now. That’s a project for the morning. Hopefully I’ll wake up with enough time to do that before my friend arrives to help me start to pack. Ack. Too much to do.

Have a great weekend!