I've just encountered a tool (new to me) for checking the Amazon “also bought” lists that point back at your books: Yasiv.

Print

I typed in the name of the first book in my first series under Search Category = Books, and was fascinated to see how my readership broke down.

The series, The Hounds of Annwn, is a contemporary fantasy involving a Virginia foxhunter who ends up in the fae otherworld leading the Wild Hunt.  Now, as it happens, I spent several years as a semi-pro photographer following the Virginia hunting scene, so when I published To Carry the Horn, the first book in the series, I had a ready-made audience of foxhunting enthusiasts who already knew me from my photography.

Many of these people have never read fantasy (beyond, say Harry Potter) and bought the series out of horse-related interest.  The people who were already followers of Rita Mae Brown's foxhunting mysteries, with their fantasy elements of talking animals, were especially susceptible.  There weren't any other fantasy readers who bought print editions where I showed up in their “also-boughts.”

I'm a writer of Fantasy and Science Fiction, not a horse or hunting mystery writer, but I chose this first topic as a bit of a crossover to appeal to my built-in audience so that I wouldn't have to start from scratch to build a fantasy audience, figuring my next series would be a more conventional fantasy (which it is).

Ebook

I already knew that many of the first series readers didn't do ebooks and would be responsible for most of my print sales.  What I didn't fully realize until now was how little connection there was between my print and my ebook audience.

When I did the same search using Category = Kindle Store, the results were completely different:

• My short stories showed up (there are no print versions) but aren't linked to anything besides my own books.
• There were no links to the Rita Mae Brown foxhunting mysteries, or any horse books at all.
• There were lots of fantasy links, which was encouraging, though they were mostly in a couple of set social circles and not widespread.

Analysis

What can I learn from this?  Lots of things…

1. My print and ebook audiences have almost no overlap.  If I didn't have print editions, I'd lose an entire significant and coherent audience that I understand and can market to independently for these books.
2. My short stories are not driving discovery from external circles.
3. My penetration in the writing social circles I follow is gratifying, but I obviously need to get out more and find new circles in the SFF world.

In particular, I can see that my links are shallow.  In other words, people I interact with may follow up and buy books, but there seems to be little or no “friends of friends” effect.  I can tell because I recognize almost everything that links to me, and their links.

I need ways to penetrate to new audiences, perhaps via reviews.  I've recently started to cultivate a Twitter audience and perhaps that will help as it grows.  I'm a member of an excellent writers' association (ALLi) but few of them write SFF, so they're not really candidate buyers who can help spread discovery for me.

None of this is great news, but it's all actionable, and this tool is very helpful for analysis.  I'd be interested to hear from others about their results.