A few days ago I did a random search for a short story of mine on Amazon’s web page under Kindle books. The story was Tin Star, a Space Western about an android who takes over as a small town’s sheriff. The search placed it three or four down and surrounded by gay western novels. Clearly not the intended audience.
So the question becomes, how do I get it where it belongs, surrounded by Sci-Fi novels instead of gay westerns? I played around with different titles and checked where they wound up in searches. Since this short story is one of many that take place in the same universe as all of my SF novels, it makes sense to brand it with those novels.
Currently I’m referring to the universe as the Starstrikers Universe. This was to play up on the popularity of my first novel, Starstrikers. But since that time I’ve written a prequel and the sequel will be out this year. I rebranded the books as a trilogy so it makes sense now to use that trilogy as the universe name. The trilogy is called Star Trilogy and it includes, Starforgers, Starstrikers and Starveyors.
If I rebrand the short stories set in that universe as being a “Star Trilogy Story”, it will tie them all together. So that is my plan going forward. It means changing the covers of all the short stories, as they are currently branded Starstrikers Universe. It also means changing their titles to include the Star Trilogy name. This would mean that the short story would be labeled: Star Trilogy Story – Tin Star. So when you search for Star Trilogy, you should get all the short stories.
This is trial by error marketing and it takes patience and luck and a whole bunch of work. But if it all comes together, it should result in more sales and a greater readership.