Friday, October 2, 2009

OMG say it ain't so!

I totally, seriously, truly got this email from
Amazon this morning.
Please, no one ever let me know if Jack of All
Trades is as bad as Vampirates.
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We've noticed that customers who have purchased or
rated "Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean" by Justin
Somper have also purchased "Jack of all Trades" by
K. C. Shaw. For this reason, you might like to know
that "Jack of all Trades" is now available. You can
order yours for just $13.22 ($3.73 off the list
price) by following the link below.
Jack of all Trades

K. C. Shaw

List Price: $16.95
Price: $13.22
You Save: $3.73
(22%)
To learn more about Jack of all Trades, please visit
the following page at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982135289/ref=snp_dp
Sincerely,

Amazon.com

14 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

OMG! But that is awesome (ignoring the crappy Vampirates bit) because it means lots of people might buy your book.

K.C. Shaw said...

And hopefully they'll be pleasantly surprised. I mean, if they thought Vampirates was good enough to buy, they'll love Jack. I hope.

I don't know if those messages get sent out to everyone or if they're tailored for individuals, though. No one else may have received it. But I did buy Vampirates through Amazon.

Cate Gardner said...

I think they get sent out to everyone who bought Vampirates, and you'll possibly be on the Vampirates Amazon page too. God, I hope so.

Jamie Eyberg said...

My wife is just about done reading your book (she should finish over her lunch hour). She likes Pepper but she is afraid she wouldn't mesh well with our dog who is a bit snarky in his old age.

Aaron Polson said...

Great Googly-Moogly! That's awesome.

Awesome in a totally ironic way, of course.

K.C. Shaw said...

Cate--That would be awesome to be shown on the Vampirates page. People who don't know me might order my book. :)

Jamie--Pepper would work patiently at befriending your dog, and when she was rebuffed, she'd lie down in a corner and look sad.

Aaron--Maybe someone at Amazon has a weird sense of humor. Or one of their 'bots does.

Unknown said...

maybe the computers have started getting lives of their own, and they read your blog and thought this would be fun.

or you know, maybe not :^)

K.C. Shaw said...

I'd like to think it was true. Bots read my blog all the time, so it would be nice to think they like it. :)

Anonymous said...

I bet it's somebody who read your review of Vampirates and wants to compare the two. Delicious deviousness afoot! >:)

-Mercedes

Fox Lee said...

Yay, publicity! That said, what the balls is a Vampirate??

K.C. Shaw said...

Mercedes--I hope so. :)

Natalie--A Vampirate is the most boring construction I've ever read in a professionally published book. Basically vampires who float around on a boat and do nothing. It's a terrible book.

Richard said...

Okay, let's start with the premise that Vampirates sucked, and there actually is no correlation on Amazon's sales spreadsheets between people who've bought that crap and people who've bought your objet d'art.

That leaves us wondering, where is the link? And as far as I know, the only plausible connector is this very blog. An Amazon research spider hit your blog (since it's flagged as both an author's site and a book-related site), saw lots of activity talking about both books, and assumed (since it can't actually comprehend the text, just the titles) that anything mentioning both books together must mean there's a link. And poof, instant publicity.

Which means you're going about this all wrong. You need to find whatever the Oprah Book Of The Month is, and reliably--every month--post a review where you mention its title at least 20 times in conjunction with Jack Of All Trades. We'll all help, supplying lots of comments to your post just as if we actually read the post itself.

The result: next thing you know, everyone who buys the Oprah-backed book will get an email saying, "you should buy Jack Of All Trades too" from Amazon. Poof: KC wins!

Jamie Eyberg said...

I like that idea. I'm game.

K.C. Shaw said...

Lertulo--Sheer genius! And it was the bots after all, I knew it.

Jamie--Word! (I've always wanted to respond to someone by just saying "Word!" It's so 90s.)