Black Friday Christmas Shopping on Amazon

Did you know that when you decide to shop on Amazon for the holiday season, you can support NovelRank by simply clicking one link before you start searching and shopping on Amazon.com. It’s really simple, and it costs you nothing.

Simple use this link to go to Amazon.com: http://bit.ly/novelrank

Once there, search and add to your cart as normal. When you checkout with your purchase, nothing will be different for you, however Amazon will pay a small percentage to NovelRank for the affiliate link. It’s really simple and helps keep the articles coming and the servers running, supporting this free service.

So remember, before shopping this holiday season, click this link first: http://bit.ly/novelrank

Note: If you are based in Canada, the UK or Germany and will be using Amazon for your shopping, here are your links:
Amazon.ca
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.de

Region Specific Books on NovelRank

I just thought this was really interesting, so I’m sharing it. In an effort to continue to make NovelRank not only an efficient tool, but also allow it to continue to grow, I had to look at some interesting statistics.

Below is a list of Amazon domains that NovelRank tracks, followed by the number of books that are listed EXCLUSIVELY on that domain (for instance, if the book is on Amazon.com AND Amazon.co.uk it is not counted).

17824 unique books on Amazon.com
3234 unique books on Amazon.de
1317 unique books on Amazon.co.uk
186 unique books on Amazon.fr
74 unique books on Amazon.ca
18 unique books on Amazon.co.jp

Now, with Kindle books being exclusive to Amazon.com for so long, and Amazon.com being the biggest of all the domains, the biggest number is no surprise. However, Amazon.de is a fantastic surprise. I’ve known there to be many visitors recently, but this really put the point on it. If you have any feedback about how NovelRank can better serve a German audience, please let me know in the comments below.

November Giveaway: Wrong Number & Torture at the Back Forty

The November giveaway contains two signed books ready for the suspenseful reader:

“Torture at the Back Forty” by Mike Dauplaise
“Wrong Number” by Rachelle J. Christensen

Wrong Number

This is a signed copy of Wrong Number by Rachelle J. Christensen, a chase thriller that keeps you engaged from the very beginning.

When Aubree Stewart receives a mysterious phone call on her way to work, she doesn’t know what to think when the caller mentions a dead body. At first she assumes it s some kind of prank. But the call isn’t a practical joke, and Aubree soon finds herself swept up in a world of danger, intrigue, and murder. With help from the FBI, Aubree races to protect herself and what s left of her family, but the one thing she forgets to protect is her own heart.

If you would like your chance of winning this book, add your email address to the form below. You’ll be notified by email if you are the winner, and you will also be opting into a follow-up email to let you know when the next book in the giveaway becomes available.

This giveaway is closed. Check out the current giveaway.

Share the Book Giveaway with Others:
Share or or http://www.novelrank.com/book-giveaway (will always be current)

Torture at the Back Forty

This signed book, Torture at the Back Forty: The Gang Rape and Slaying of margaret Anderson by Mike Dauplaise, is the true story of this America’s Most Wanted featured murder.

The true story of the pool table rape and murder of Margaret Anderson. Left for dead, practically beheaded in a manure pile, Margaret fights for life. But in the end, the single mother leaves behind a son. Author Dauplaise practically makes Margaret blow a breath at readers as he recreates the night she was killed. He then takes readers to the place she was trying to escape back to, her home state of Montana and finally, on the investigative hunt of a lifetime as this America’s Most Wanted drama ends with the capture of her killer five years later.

This giveaway is closed. Check out the current giveaway.

Share the Book Giveaway with Others:
Share or or http://www.novelrank.com/book-giveaway (will always be current)

The Rules
Any email address that is not valid will not be accepted. Any email to a temporary mailbox service (e.g. mailinator.com) will be disqualified and may be publicly mocked. Unless otherwise stated, only one book can be won by any single email address. Multiple entries for a single book will not be accepted (you can enter to win each book if different books are offered in a given month). The winner will be randomly drawn no later than the 3rd of the following month and contacted via email to receive shipping information. Winners who fail to respond to the email within 72 hours will forfeit their win to another random winner.

RSS Feeds Posted to your Facebook Pages Automatically

I recently discovered one of the best facebook apps: RSS Graffiti. Why? RSS Graffiti will automatically check an RSS feed and post any new articles to either your facebook wall or the wall of a page you control. Reread that last bit one more time: “Wall of a page you control.”

Like most authors, you should be maintaining an author or book blog as well as have a presence on Facebook or Twitter, so you can engage your fans and keep them abreast of future releases, special offers, sneak peaks, ARC offers, etc. Here is the annoying part: That’s a lot of updating! Much like NovelRank offers an easy way to track your sales rank and reduce your time commitment (so you can, you know, write), RSS Graffiti will take a post you make within your blog and link to it automatically. Every blog offers an RSS feed of your recent posts, and that feed is the key to this entire thing.

A Few Easy Steps

First, install the RSS Graffiti app inside of Facebook. Second, find the RSS feed for your blog’s recent posts. If using WordPress, you will find the link usually at the bottom. Now it’s time for the magic!

Inside the Facebook app, select the Fan page on the left side you wish to configure (it will have a gray circle next to it when it is not installed on that page):

Follow the prompts to get RSS Graffiti added to the Fan Page. After it is enabled, you will have the ability to add a new feed (the below image is with a feed already added):

When you click to add a feed, you will be presented with the configuration options. This is where you paste in your RSS Feed URL from your blog:

While there are multiple tabs with other options, the Basics tab contains the highest priority items. The only other recommendation I will make is to, under the Schedule tab, set the Update Frequency to ‘Four Times A Day’ if you update your blog only once a day or less frequently. Like with anything, play with the app a bit to make sure it does everything you want. It’s very well documented, so since you probably are not afraid of words, read about all the options. In the end, the goal is to simply post to your blog and let RSS Graffiti do the rest of the work for you!

Bonus Tip

If you have an installed version of WordPress for your blog, then there is a WordPress plugin that you should already have installed: Tweetable. It will automatically post your new blog posts to your twitter account. That means software is doing all your social media marketing for you after you write a new blog post!

How to Annoy your Friends

You know that NovelRank offers a sales RSS feed for every book, right? You could post those with RSS Graffiti to your facebook wall to announce your sales, but frankly… if you sell more than 5 books a month, you may annoy everyone. You’ve been warned.