James Desborough’s GamerGate book was released a few days ago. I was checking out the Amazon page today, and there’s something interesting I noticed. There are only three books in the “Customers who also bought” section, two of which are other GamerGate books. I also find it strange that it says “viewed” instead of “bought.”
Milo was the first journalist to draw mainstream attention to GamerGate with his articles on BreitBart, so it’s safe to say that his book would have appeal with GamerGate supporters. Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie has a more direct link to GamerGate in its dedication page, where he dedicates the book the thousands of sealions who took part in the movement. “This book is for #GamerGate.”
Of those three, the only book to show Inside GamerGate in its “Customers who also bought” section is Milo’s book, Dangerous.
So from what I can observe, the customers who bought Inside GamerGate have bought very few, if any, other books on Amazon. Compare that with Dangerous Gamers by Xavier Lastra. (Full disclosure: I have purchased Dangerous Gamers the other day. I also recommended the author, Xavier Lastra, for the Best Fan Writer category of the Hugo Awards.)
Dangerous Gamers has ten full pages of books his customers also bought within a wide variety of genres. There’s Sci Fi/Fantasy books, True Crime, Western, Classics, Literary Criticism, Thrillers, Historical Fiction, and Satires. That’s because the customers who bought Dangerous Gamers have a wide variety of reading tastes, which their shopping trends reflect. Sure, Amazon’s recommendation algorithm is a bit of a black box system, but what we can observe still shows a common trend.
But like I said earlier, I’ve bought the book, so my purchases are factored into Amazon’s recommendation algorithm. However, other books about similar topics tend to show a broad range of suggestions, as these examples show.
Having customers who buy a wide variety of other titles on the Kindle store helps promote your book to other readers. This is important if you want to grow your audience beyond your core base of followers and influence people outside your social circle.
Sure, every book has its target audience, but you need to reach out beyond that if you want to grow that audience. Notice how Xavier Lastra never referred to his book as a GamerGate book. He framed the book around a phenomenon in gaming that a lot of people care about, not a social club that’s appealing only to those part of it.
