Amazon Bestseller Campaigns: Do They Work?

Last year, sales guru and author Jeffrey Gitomer put everyone at his publisher on notice: "On April 4, 2006, my new book, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, will hit #1 on Amazon.com." When I heard the news, I was shocked. How could he predict this so precisely? How could he presume to control how his book sold and ranked on Amazon on a particular day?

When that day rolled around, you can bet I was watching his rankings. And sure enough, as the day went on, the higher his book climbed, until finally, it did hit #1.

So how did he do it? Turns out, he notified all of his followers (apparently thousands and thousands of people on his mailing list) that if they bought the book on that day, he would give them some free bonus material.

And just a few months ago, Wiley did the same thing with a book called Career Distinction (a book on personal branding that I sorely wanted to acquire, but in the end Wiley's global reach and advance offer was more appealing to the authors). The authors called upon their career-industry colleagues to buy the book at Amazon on its release date. I watched that one, too, and it peaked at a very respectable #147. The book couldn't sustain such a ranking beyond that day, but it still does very well.

Not to look like copycats (because we did have the idea before Wiley did it), JIST is going to try a similar approach on a smaller scale. Career coach Susan Britton Whitcomb has asked all her colleagues to buy a copy of 30-Day Job Promotion from Amazon on Tuesday, September 18. So if you're feeling stuck in your position and want to develop a plan for getting a promotion, help us out and buy the book from Amazon on Tuesday!

Have a great weekend! I've got tons of great interviews lined up for next week.