A beautiful cover is a great way to attract my attention and a wonderful blurb will have me wanting to read an excerpt but if you’ve ever worked in a bookstore or library you know the importance of having to categorize a book so that customers or patrons will be able to find their favorite romance, mystery, thriller or horror story.
But what if a book contains multiple elements? Libraries and brick and mortar stores have the problem of deciding where to physically shelve a book that might contain more than one genre but with online sites the use of tags provides yet another clue that allows the reader to see whether the paranormal romance they’re looking at includes comedy, mystery, horror or suspense elements.
All of my published books are erotic romances but a couple of them could also be described as action/adventure, mystery and/or suspense. I have no doubt all of them would be shelved in the erotic section of a physical book store but online, the tags that readers give them allow a broader description and I believe a much better idea of what to expect.
As a reader, have you checked the tags on Amazon or ARe or any of the other sites that encourage tags to see if a book might interest you? Have you ever tagged a book that you liked? What about authors? Do you think having readers tag your books helps potential readers become future fans?
As an author who hasn’t been promoting as much as I probably should, I’m grateful for the expanded coverage. You can find the tags for “Assassin’s Kiss”, my first paranormal shape/shifter novel at several places these days and if they make your dress fly up, you’ll be happy to know that they’re on sale at Ellora’s Cave ($.99), Amazon and All Romance e-books (ARe) ($1.49).
And for a little something extra, I’ll leave you with the video that I made for “Assassin’s Kiss”. Once again, many thanks to Les Byerly for the beautiful cover that I continue to ogle:). Until next month,
Happy Reading,
Paris Brandon
Ellora’s Cave: http://www.jasminejade.com/p-7641-assassins-kiss.aspx
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Assassins-Kiss-ebook/dp/B003ATPPQM/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
ARe: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-assassin039skiss-443467-144.html
15 comments:
Love the trailer. I've attempted to tag some books, but I'm not sure if it does anything for me. Like you I'm terrible about self-promo.
Very helpful post, Paris - never thought about tags before, but I certainly will now. Great trailer!
Thanks, Amber:) Like you, I'm not really sure how helpful they are but I don't think they hurt!
Thanks, Tina!
I think authors sometimes underestimate the importance of tags. The more tags for a category, the higher the book is in the relevence list when searched by a reader.
But this falls into the same category as reviews. Even people who love a book don't think about leaving a review on sites, though many of us check them out before a purchase.
Great topic Paris. Love the cover!
Good point Nina, and thanks! I love the cover too. Les is amazing:)
Thanks for sharing this, Paris. Im not good at self promoting and have been looking at various ways to get my books to the attention of readers. This post helps alot.
hugs, Kari Thomas, www.authorkari.com
And never forget "multicultural" or "interracial" which seem to attract a great deal of readership nowadays.
A lot of "tags like on Amazon come from the books readers are buying. That's where you get all those other books in that line below your purchase that says "Others who bought this book also bought"...
If you buy a book that has been tagged "interracial", there will be several more shown on the purchase page.
Thanks, Kari!
Good to know. Thanks for sharing Fran!
My book falls under several categories--time travel, historical, romance, romantic suspense and futuristic. Quite a mouthful for me, and as I've discovered, the same for Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well. They're not sure where to put me, so I'm under just romance. I've tried to tag, but don't seem very good at it! I will try some of your suggestions, and thanks for the post!
I started out adding as many tags as possible to my books in Amazon--the only problem is that the customer has to get to "products tagged with" in the search box & I'm not sure how to do that. You can add tags on allRomanceEbooks too. With all the thousands of romances out there it's helpful to the reader to narrow the search.
Melissa, I could be wrong about this but perhaps with enough supporting "tags" you could be listed in several places. People who agree with your tags can also "tag" your book. Good luck and thanks for stopping by.
mssellsworth, I'm not quite sure how that works either but if I find out I'll post it at RBRU:) Thanks for stopping by!
Great post Paris, as usual I always learn something new and important from you. Thank you!
XXOO Kat
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