Hi Alvin:
Excellent idea to write reviews for yoga and self-help books on Amazon, referring to the AYP book(s). Of course, such reviews should be sincere, knowledgeable and informative. In most cases, AYP can be presented as a complement to a good book or teaching. Being seen as a useful addition rather than a replacement is a good way to win hearts.
Amazon searches on any of the terms you mentioned above will turn up books, which can then be ranked from best selling on down. Best selling is where the viewers are, so that is where the reviews mentioning AYP will do the most good.
For example, Iyengar's "
Light on Yoga" has been the best selling yoga book on Amazon for as long as I have been looking. It so happens that AYP can be an excellent complement to Iyengar training. Jim, Victor and others can verify that. AYP can be a real benefit there, and we should not be shy to communicate it to all people in Iyengar, or considering Iyengar -- it is at the heart of the yoga market, which is where we need to be. The same goes for other popular teachings, as you mentioned.
Can anyone list the most popular yoga and self help books? You are off to a good start, Alvin, but how about we take aim at best sellers? There are many nipping at Iyengar's heels. We'd like to put AYP square in the middle of that pack as a co-training tool -- an open resource to all.
Another approach is, if anyone has read a good book, regardless of popularity/sales rank, and want's to review it on Amazon, then do so, pointing out the relationship it might have to the role of the AYP books in your life. The more places AYP can be mentioned the better.
Also, keep in mind that probably 75% of the Amazon yoga traffic flows through the
Amazon USA site (AYP website traffic mirrors this too) with the rest of the Amazon yoga traffic through Canada, UK, France, Germany/Austria and Japan. Not that I would not like to see AYP mentioned in reviews on all the Amazon sites. But if it is numbers we are seeking, Amazon USA is the place to start.
Now, great suggestions like this for promoting AYP are wonderful, but who is actually going to go out and do something? As we say in America, it is in
the doing where the rubber meets the road ... or did that one come from China too?
So far about half of the suggestions to promote AYP have been for me to do something (thanks, I needed something else to do), and the other half have been great ideas that very few have acted on. The ones who have stepped up are making a difference (thank you!), but we are still way short on having the many hands that make light work...
The guru is in you.