11 ms·

I "participated" in a less nefarious strategy. In 2010, when the collection of short stories "Machine of Death" was about to be released, the editor Ryan North

by teach 6y ago

I "participated" in a less nefarious strategy. In 2010, when the collection of short stories "Machine of Death" was about to be released, the editor Ryan North asked us not to pre-order. Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day, which certainly led to increased sales over time. Probably didn't hurt that it's a superb book. (Ryan North is also the author of the popular webcomic "Dinosaur Comic".)

evan_ 6y ago
It beat a book by right-wing pundit Glenn Beck, who accused it of being an intentional attack on him and emblematic of the “liberal culture of death”
scubbo 6y ago
> Ryan North is also the author of the popular webcomic "Dinosaur Comic". And of "To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure" and "Romeo And/Or Juliet", CYA retellings of Hamlet and R&J; and of "How To Invent Everything", a handy-dandy guide to bootstrapping modern technology if your time machine malfunctions. AND he is the human of Noam Chompsky, a Very Good Boy.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  OK, that's the third time I've seen "How to Invent Everything" recommended in 3 very different places. Ordered.
  - jamiek88 6y ago
    Me too but fourth and ditto, bought.
- ycombinete 6y ago
  For anyone else confused by this last sentence. North’s dog is named after Noam Chomsky.
- dEnigma 6y ago
  Oh interesting. I recently ordered "How To Invent Everything" because it seemed interesting, but had no idea that the guy behind Dinosaur Comic wrote it. This makes me think that I made the right decision.
floren 6y ago
I was just listening to a podcast that included Steve Rinella lamenting that his recent wild game cookbook didn't make the NYT Best Seller list despite selling out on Amazon... If I remember correctly, it was precisely because of pre-orders. Thus, as he prepares to release his latest book, he's asking fans to buy the book, but to try and mix it up from just Amazon pre-ordering: pre-order at independent bookstores, order on release day, etc.
- netcan 6y ago
  SEO everywhere. This is all getting to be too much.
  - interestica 6y ago
    Seriously. I swear people are using it for baby name choice. Though I wonder if some version of optimization was done in the past? At the top of the attendance list, I always got called on first....
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Mike Duncan said that the minimum preorder volume to get on the NYT best seller’s list is somewhere near 5,000.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Amazon could easily improve their rankings by changing it from "most purchased" to "pages read" or a similar metric. "Time users spent reading per dollar cost" would be a good measure. You could add something in to get a novelty factor if you wanted. This would solve the pre-order problem as books wouldn't rank until people started reading them. It would also weed out books that people buy but don't actually read.
vmception 6y ago
> Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day. In my instagram marketing last decade thats what we did. While others were imagining that people "buy likes", or actually were dealing with bots, we were doing this for our clients. Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private, and all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. when you unprivate the account, only like 100 of them get approved to follow you at once, so it adds up like a currency you can spend whenever you want. to mass approve you have to toggle private and unprivate over and over again, or approve the requests yourself or via API. either way you can only pull a list of 100 or so at a time, but you can keep them in the "requested" pool forever until convenient. So you can grow an account with like a few hundred followers to a hundred thousand+ real followers very quickly. But engagement is more important for the utility value of the account, and so you can also post an image with all the hashtags and location tags while the account is private, and let your new followers begin engaging with it. And then unprivate the account and even more new followers begin engaging with it, and then it becomes the TOP image in the hashtag. In prior versions of instagram it would also be in the activity section in a large web of followers of followers. For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference. I don't even attempt to match with them on the dating app, I just message them on IG straight away from the popular account (30K+ followers). Real dates and intimacy off of that, even in San Francisco. Skips the queue.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  I just vomited a little in my mouth
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't do this here.

by teach 6y ago

evan_ 6y ago

It beat a book by right-wing pundit Glenn Beck, who accused it of being an intentional attack on him and emblematic of the “liberal culture of death”

scubbo 6y ago

> Ryan North is also the author of the popular webcomic "Dinosaur Comic". And of "To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure" and "Romeo And/Or Juliet", CYA retellings of Hamlet and R&J; and of "How To Invent Everything", a handy-dandy guide to bootstrapping modern technology if your time machine malfunctions. AND he is the human of Noam Chompsky, a Very Good Boy.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
OK, that's the third time I've seen "How to Invent Everything" recommended in 3 very different places. Ordered.
- jamiek88 6y ago
  Me too but fourth and ditto, bought.
ycombinete 6y ago
For anyone else confused by this last sentence. North’s dog is named after Noam Chomsky.
dEnigma 6y ago
Oh interesting. I recently ordered "How To Invent Everything" because it seemed interesting, but had no idea that the guy behind Dinosaur Comic wrote it. This makes me think that I made the right decision.

floren 6y ago

I was just listening to a podcast that included Steve Rinella lamenting that his recent wild game cookbook didn't make the NYT Best Seller list despite selling out on Amazon... If I remember correctly, it was precisely because of pre-orders. Thus, as he prepares to release his latest book, he's asking fans to buy the book, but to try and mix it up from just Amazon pre-ordering: pre-order at independent bookstores, order on release day, etc.

netcan 6y ago
SEO everywhere. This is all getting to be too much.
- interestica 6y ago
  Seriously. I swear people are using it for baby name choice. Though I wonder if some version of optimization was done in the past? At the top of the attendance list, I always got called on first....
ashtonkem 6y ago
Mike Duncan said that the minimum preorder volume to get on the NYT best seller’s list is somewhere near 5,000.
ALittleLight 6y ago
Amazon could easily improve their rankings by changing it from "most purchased" to "pages read" or a similar metric. "Time users spent reading per dollar cost" would be a good measure. You could add something in to get a novelty factor if you wanted. This would solve the pre-order problem as books wouldn't rank until people started reading them. It would also weed out books that people buy but don't actually read.

vmception 6y ago

> Instead, he suggested that we all wait and purchase the book on the same day from Amazon. The strategy worked -- the book was #1 in its category that day. In my instagram marketing last decade thats what we did. While others were imagining that people "buy likes", or actually were dealing with bots, we were doing this for our clients. Basically you get meme accounts to do a promotion of a profile that is currently private, and all the followers to a private profile get queued up, you can queue them up in the thousands or hundreds of thousands. when you unprivate the account, only like 100 of them get approved to follow you at once, so it adds up like a currency you can spend whenever you want. to mass approve you have to toggle private and unprivate over and over again, or approve the requests yourself or via API. either way you can only pull a list of 100 or so at a time, but you can keep them in the "requested" pool forever until convenient. So you can grow an account with like a few hundred followers to a hundred thousand+ real followers very quickly. But engagement is more important for the utility value of the account, and so you can also post an image with all the hashtags and location tags while the account is private, and let your new followers begin engaging with it. And then unprivate the account and even more new followers begin engaging with it, and then it becomes the TOP image in the hashtag. In prior versions of instagram it would also be in the activity section in a large web of followers of followers. For myself I have used one of the popular quickly and cheaply grown accounts to slide into the DMs of local women. In general on dating apps, women are funneling people to their instagram profile to ignore them. If you have a popular account its a night and day difference. I don't even attempt to match with them on the dating app, I just message them on IG straight away from the popular account (30K+ followers). Real dates and intimacy off of that, even in San Francisco. Skips the queue.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
I just vomited a little in my mouth
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't do this here.