Still Waiting for Sales to Pick Up

Things were somewhat slow today with the Panasonic Lumix LX5 book. A few PDF copies have sold, to readers in Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, and the United States. The book's sales rank on Amazon has been dropping pretty steadily. I wish it would start selling on Amazon.co.uk; there is still just one third-party seller listing the book for more than 1,000 pounds. Soon Amazon should start selling it directly, and that should help.

Today I took several copies of the Lumix LX5 book to the Post Office and sent them to the readers who commented on a draft, and to a few potential book reviewers. I have been tinkering with my Google AdWords account; I don't have good analytic tools for figuring out whether those search ads are helping or not; someday I need to dig into the details and see how many times a click on an ad actually leads to a sale.

I'm also waiting for Amazon in the U.S. to get the "Search Inside the Book" feature operating for the LX5 book. I submitted the necessary PDF files for the text, front and back covers, and spine back on November 7, and the feature has not yet been activated. I think that feature is important, because it lets potential buyers of the book do some searches and check out the inside of the book before deciding whether to buy it. I know some publishers don't use it because they're afraid people will just do searches using that feature and never buy the book, but I think, for this kind of book, if someone has the camera they are probably going to want to have the actual book for reference. Anyway, I'll have to follow up with Amazon if that feature isn't active within a few more days.