Tags
Amazon, Fatal Forgery, Kindle, marketing, paperback, promotion, selling, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat
I do like to keep you up to date with my marketing efforts and frustrations. One of the brainstorming ideas was to do some research into the profile of the buyers of my novels, in order to learn more about them so that I can target others like them. Now, most of my books sell as paperbacks or Kindle books through Amazon, so that had to be my starting point. I Googled myself cross-eyed but could find nothing on how to get a buyer profile from Amazon, so I emailed them. And here is their reply:
Thank you for contacting us about the query you have had regarding contacting buyers of your books.
I looked into this for you and need to advise that Amazon is unable to provide buyer information to sellers, the reasons for this is due to identity protection of buyers much like we closely guard seller information. You may have noticed that buyer email addresses are always encrypted when submitted via the Seller Central system, this serves for the purpose of protecting buyer information.
I am sorry that I was not able to come back to you with some better news, however I do not truthfully advise on Amazon policy.
Sadly, I think this last sentence contains a typo, and the writer does in fact truthfully advise on Amazon policy, which means that I can whistle for any buyer profiling. I am certain that Amazon has this information – not least, they use it to generate their “Others who bought this, also bought…” recommendations – but they’re not sharing it. Back to the drawing board (or, in my case, the bathmat and the drawing pins).
Susan Grossey 
Dear Susan
Well, it was definitely worth a try, even if Amazon weren’t able to help.
You could try an alternative route, as revealed by the Daily Mail ……
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2984542/Be-careful-Wish-List-click-buy-later-Amazon-service-exposing-shopping-secrets-celebrity-browsers-you.html
A little bit of selective searching and you might hopefully find a few people with your book on their wish lists. Even if you don’t, it might be fun seeing what else is listed.
As a person who is slightly cautious of the amount of information available on the internet, I already knew about this feature and had set my listing to be “private”.
Best Wishes
Graham
Top tip, Graham – thank you! I haven’t really had much exposure to Wish Lists, as I don’t use them – my grandma always advised to be careful what you wish for, so perhaps these slebs unmasked by the “Daily Bile” should have remembered that!
Best wishes from Susan
Dear Susan
Well, I always hate to ignore very good advice from your grandma but I do find the wish list quite useful for keeping a track of the books I haven’t read yet. With some of my favourite authors now having 20 or more books out (e.g. Lee Child is up to 41), I’ve occasionally ended up buying the same book twice, especially when there seems to be a trend to reissue an old book as if it is a new bestseller (unintentional I’m sure!).
Best wishes
Graham