: Re: Is it true that good novels will automatically sell themselves on Amazon (and so on) and there is no need for one to waste time promoting? This is what Dean Wesley Smith teaches in his articles

@Ann1701686

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To be honest, I think what he says is fairly ignorant. He has a big audience already, mainly due to putting in a LOT of effort and dedication for years to grow his online image and brand. When you've already got an audience, you've already got quite a network of potential customers. Without an existing audience and without marketing (i.e. letting other people know how amazing your new product is) in any form, you've got a very low, near-to-zero chance of magically popping up in the algorithms.

You could write the BEST book of all time, literally life-changing in all aspects, but if no one knows it exists, it's useless. From a business perspective, of course.

Services like these made many markets much more accessible than ever before. Literally anyone can write and publish their own books with almost no costs or risk involved (other than the time lost producing it, perhaps). That made the markets of media like books, music and video games explode. Thousands of books are published on Amazon every year and the algorithms are (most likely*) designed to take into account the possible successes of that product, which are a LOT of factors. But they (algorithms) thrive on hype, which is consisted of traffic, leads and awareness of its existence. In my honest opinion, coming from someone who's had MANY failures in trying to market my products and services, the worst you could do is to not do marketing in any form.

*) I've got no literal proof or numbers to actually back this claim up with, but this is my experience as a software engineer with an interest in cloud computing, big data and data analytics talking. So please take this claim with a grain of salt

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