Amazon & Foreign Rights Sales

Amazon & Foreign Rights

Throughout several of my blog posts I have mentioned the benefits of having a “tricked” out Amazon page. However one of the biggest is that Amazon has now become a go-to site to by foreign rights consultants when looking to acquire new rights. This is huge.

Amazon’s popularity is not only felt within the U.S. but countries around the world have realized its relevance and are using it on a daily basis.  However what is unique is that Amazon has not just become a site to purchase products but a go to hub of information when researching new titles, in foreign rights terms, for purchase.

Over the past couple years I have been traveling to various international book fairs to both buy and sell foreign rights. The one change from 2010 to 2011 that I have noticed the most has been the increased mention of “Amazon” in our meetings.  Amazon has established international credibility. For example, when pitching a book to a Taiwanese foreign rights agent, he immediately pulled out his Ipad and (as we like to call it) Amazoned it.  By this I mean he checked to see how many reviews the book had, its current sales ranking, and how many features the book’s Amazon page was displaying.  His response “ Well the reviews look good on Amazon, send me a sample of the book for further consideration”. That quick and that simple. The foreign rights agent, based of Amazon, gave the book a green light to go to the next level in foreign rights acquisition.

The purpose of this post is to point out to you that having a dominant presence on Amazon is essential to your book’s success. Not only are general consumers using Amazon for purchasing but industry personnel are visiting Amazon to judge content when making foreign rights decisions.

So what does this mean?

1.       You need to make sure you have both an Author’s Page and Amazon Profile setup and filled out completely ( bare minimum).

2.       Your book has numerous quality reviews

3.       There are “added features” being displayed on your book’s Amazon page

4.       You use the site daily, and treat it just as you would any other social media site

If you can control the material foreign rights agents view when deciding whether or not to buy your rights, why would you not take advantage of this?

Hope this helps and if you have any questions please let me know!