There is a flood of self-published e-books on Amazon, that tell you right there in the title what they’re about and how great they are. The Amazon Top 10 Book section is being flooded with indie authors optimising their titles to grab your attention, or in other words clickbait.
The big trend in 2016 have been indie authors implementing copylines into book titles on Amazon. They are taking advantage of the way book titles are displayed and how users search through book titles. This has resulted in thousands of books having the words “bestseller”, “bestselling” and “romantic” in their titles, ensuring that readers who search for these keywords will display their e-book.
The main culprit driving up these clickbait e-books are Kindle Unlimited and Kindle First. People who grab the e-books for free as part of their Prime membership are artificially inflating them to into the top 10 list. This has resulted in casual readers finding these books by browsing their favorite e-book genre or searching for the keyword “bestseller.” They see a price of $1.00 or $2.00 and often buy the book on an impulse.
I feel that indie authors are ruining the e-book discovery process on Amazon with their cringe worthy titles in their desperate attempt to get them sales. I am hoping that Amazon cracks down on specific keywords being entered into the title because it’s things like this that contribute to the publishing industry consistently losing money on developing and marketing e-books.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
