What Do You Have Friends For?

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How friends and family can help to improve your Amazon Ranking will be a reminder today, short before the holiday season starts.  They indeed can help you so much – they even don’t need to buy the book (again). Amazon can give a great book a big boost to “be discovered”.  These little features take only a few seconds, but can make a big difference in your Amazon ranking – and subsequently in the success of your book.
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Ask all your acquaintances, friends, family to:.

• Write a REVIEW of your book.
  Even if the book already has lots of reviews already. As more reviews as better for the author and as more potential buyers can see the popularity of the work. Amazon rules are against family members’ reviews.  So ask only the ones with a different name/address for a review. They need an Amazon account and at least made previously one purchase of a physical or digital item.
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• LISTMANIA:
  Amazon allows all account holders to create a “list” of their favorite things…such as books and it is called, Listmania!  So if you have written a book, your friends and even you can create a Listmania! list, and certainly include your own book
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• “HIGHLIGHTS” in your book
  Just another item in Amazon’s algorithm list for book popularity: If you friends have a Kindle, let them highlight some wise or fun quotations from the book. If enough people share their highlights, they’ll show up in your e-book. Amazon will display these “Popular Highlights” by combining the highlights of all Kindle customers and identifying the passages with the most highlights.
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• Good old-fashioned word of mouth.
  Let your friends and family brag about your books, or mention it in their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+ sites or in their emails with a link to your site or your Amazon page. To help them send regularly images and info about you or your books that they can copy/paste into their social media sites.
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• Help with “blurbs”.
  Your friends or family members might have websites and blogs. Ask them to consider sending out a short note about your book, which can help you sell more books. If they allow you to use their words in your “praise” section on your author website.
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• Rate useful reviews: This is an important one!  
  Amazon asks readers “Was this review helpful to you? YES or NO?Rating the existing reviews as “helpful” or “unhelpful” makes a significant impact. Reviews with the most “helpful” votes appear on the BUY page “Most Helpful Customer Reviews”.
  By voting for the most informative and helpful reviews, your friends have the power to get them moved to the head of the line. Raising the position of the most descriptive reviews is especially helpful if the publisher missed to give the book an impressive blurb.
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How many reviews did YOU write?  It’s a give and take…
Compare two books with identical sales numbers: the one which has been promoted with these features is much higher in the (intern) ranks, which means it will be more featured on Amazon and subsequently will sell better in the future.  However, don’t be too worried about your books’ rank: Just like being popular in high school, it may not mean all that much in the real world.
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