This article describes my recent experience of publishing a book (now in two versions) and selling it via Amazon. I also look at how self-published books are ranked and listed on that website, so whether you buy travel guidebooks (or any other kind of book) or are thinking of publishing a book, I hope the following will be of interest.
(Featured image published under a CC BY-SA 2.0 Licence https://www.flickr.com/photos/actualitte)

Discovering Málaga

I hadn’t planned to visit Málaga. As a child, my family had gone on holiday to Tenby or Bridlington rather than Torremolinos or Benidorm, so I didn’t discover Spain until I was an adult. In August 2002 I found myself in the (now long-since closed) Rincón de Jerez bar near the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid. Like pretty much everyone else in the bar I’d just watched the torero Joaquín Díaz Cuqui de Utrera being ‘confirmed’ (i.e. appearing for the first time in Madrid) at a rather lacklustre corrida. As was the tradition in El Rincón de Jerez, just before 11 o’clock, candles were distributed and, as the lights were turned off, we customers turned to face the statue of Our Lady of El Rocío to sing, ‘Dios te salve María, del Rocío Señora, ¡luna, sol, norte y guía!‘ — a version of the Salve Regina sung by the million or so people who make the annual pilgrimage to her shrine in Huelva at Pentecost.

Our Marian devotions done, cigarettes and cigars were relit (smoking indoors would remain legal for another 18 months) and conversation turned back to the bulls of the afternoon. My Spanish in those days wasn’t good enough to discuss taurine form with any fluency, but luckily I had got talking to a woman called Noa who spoke perfect English. I found her rather fascinating. Her knowledge of the bullfight would have put Hemingway to shame and yet she was far from a ‘typical’ aficionada. A twenty-something socialist lawyer, she had a purple streak in her hair, a pierced septum, several tattoos, and was a vegetarian.

If I wanted to enjoy a far more rewarding afternoon at the bullring, she said, I should go to her home town of Málaga, where the Feria de Agosto was just beginning. Málaga, for all I knew, was an ugly tourist resort of all-inclusive hotels, though Noa put me right on that score, insisting that it was the ‘best city in Spain’ despite parts of it being ‘a bit shit’. She proceeded to extol the virtues of her native city, at one point yanking down the shoulder of her top to reveal a rather baroque tattoo of Our Lady of Victory, the Patron of Málaga.

I can’t say whether I was more entranced by Noa herself, by her description of Málaga or by the prospect of a decent corrida, but a couple of days later I boarded a bus bound for the Costa del Sol, 330 miles and 7 hours to the south. And thus began an infatuation that has continued to this day.

I remember clearly the first corrida I saw there — Victor Puerto, José Tomás and Miguel Abellán facing Núñez del Cuvillo bulls. José Tomás was by then an almost mythical figura and he didn’t disappoint, cutting two ears and leaving by the ‘Great Door’ on shoulders. But the real revelation was the city, which was a delight. Noa was right. Parts of it were pretty grotty, especially near the port, which had a few tawdry sex shops and a handful of street-corner working girls. But overall, I was captivated. I encountered a city that was cultured, elegant and, after the famed insouciance of Madrid, palpably friendly. It helped, of course, that the feria was taking place, and a Spanish city en fête is always intoxicating, but I knew that Málaga was a city I wanted to return to. It wasn’t as beautiful as Salamanca, or as majestic as Madrid, or as cool as Barcelona, let alone as picturesque as Seville, but it was a city where I felt comfortable, with plenty to stimulate the senses.

‘You really must visit Málaga!’

Ever since that first visit, I have recommended Málaga as a destination to (largely incredulous) friends. But anyone hoping to buy a decent guidebook was going to be disappointed. The best one could hope for were brief sections in guides to the Costa del Sol. But back then, Málaga wasn’t really known as a ‘city break’ destination. In the last decade or so, however, Málaga has been transformed. Having long cast envious sidelong glances at Torremolinos a few miles to the west, it set out to attract tourists, albeit ‘high value’ ones. Churches that were burned and vandalised in the riots of 1931 and during the Civil War have been sensitively restored. Dozens of new museums and galleries have opened. The old port area has been transformed into a promenade with new shops and restaurants. The former red light district of El Ensanche is now one of the coolest barrios. The long tradition of public religious observance during Holy Week (‘Semana Santa‘) is healthier and more vibrant than it has been for decades. As well as the fair, the calendar now features an arts festival, a film festival, a fashion show and a jazz festival.

Still, most Brits assumed that Málaga had more in common with Benidorm than Barcelona. I decided it needed a decent guidebook in English. But I also thought that the days of the slim, pocket guide were probably over. Any visitor wanting only the basic information — a handful of museums, restaurants and bars with perhaps some advice about the bus network — would just consult Google. A contemporary guide would probably not need detailed maps, either. People nowadays walk around with a smartphone, not a guidebook, in hand, and while Google Maps isn’t perfect, its coverage of cities tends to keep up to date. The same goes for the ‘useful phrases’ section of the guides of yore. Google Translate is now at hand.

So I set out to write a guide that went into detail and painted a background picture, not least because I know that many of those who visit Málaga are repeat visitors (it’s the sort of place that gets under one’s skin). Any tourist website will tell you that Málaga has a rich Semana Santa tradition, but how do you find out which fraternities process on what day, or what their histories are? The Feria (Fair) is a huge annual event, but if you visit in August how should you make the most of it? Or let’s say that you fancy attending a corrida (also known by the English derogatory term ‘bullfight’) — how would you find out what to look for? Also, even seasoned visitors to Spain might be surprised to know that in Málaga ‘churros‘ are called tejeringos, ‘bocadillos‘ (sandwiches) are called pitufos (‘smurfs’), and a ‘café con leche‘ is a mitad (‘half’).

Writing somewhat sporadically in my spare time, I was finally ready to publish in the summer of this year (2023). The first book to press (Málaga: A Comprehensive Guide to Spain’s Most Hospitable City) is a 638-page encyclopaedia. A couple of months later I produced a 276-page concise version aimed at the first-time or short-stay visitor (Essential Málaga: A Concise Guide to Spain’s Most Hospitable City). But whereas there were no guidebooks about Málaga listed on Amazon in 2019, there are currently 2 or 3 being published every month. So here is what I’ve learned…

Publishing with Amazon

I’ve been involved in the publication of several books, both as a contributor and proofreader/editor, but they were for established publishers. My Málaga guide, however, was a hobby project, without a big publishing imprint behind it. Amazon makes publishing your book easy, but you’re unlikely to make any money from it. Self-publishing means ‘POD’ (Print On Demand). Your book essentially exists as an electronic proof until someone orders a copy. When an order comes in, it’s printed and dispatched. Thus, there is little risk but also no economies of scale. To reduce the cost price you would either need an established publisher behind you or your own funds to invest in stock.

Any printed book requires an ISBN, but Amazon will give you one for free if you publish with them. However, the ISBN belongs to them and not to you, so if you want to sell in another marketplace (like Kobo) you must purchase your own ISBN. In the UK, a single ISBN costs an eyewatering £91, though if you buy a block of ten the cost comes down to £17.40 each — quite a discount!

You probably think that buying from independent bookshops is better for authors compared to Amazon. That’s generally true, but not in the case of self-published books. But that’s fine. My book was a lockdown hobby project and it’s primarily a personal appreciation of Málaga. A good review or nice comment is genuinely worth far more to me than the couple of quid that might make its way into my bank account.

So, if you have a book in you, here’s my advice… If you want to sell your book outside Amazon (e.g. to bookshops), then submit it to a POD provider like Ingram Spark too. You’ll need to buy some ISBNs (at least two if you want to publish a paperback and ebook) and a much higher standard of manuscript will be required (using, for example, Adobe InDesign), so weigh up the costs and maybe consider getting someone else to create your base file for you (feel free to email me if you need help or advice). Create a ‘reflowable’ EPUB file to sell as a Kindle, Apple and Kobo ebook. Though written for US audiences, you can find useful guides here and here. Alternatively, if you just want to dip your toe into self-publishing, then publish just on Amazon. If your title sells well, then you might consider issuing a second edition (with a new ISBN purchased and owned by you) to be published on Amazon and via Ingram Spark. N.B. In the UK, you also need to deposit your book in (at least) the British Library. The good news is that this can be done electronically in most cases, and the process is pretty straightforward.

Getting Noticed

Amazon doesn’t explain what makes a particular book move up the search results, but I think I’ve worked it out, having kept an eye on my own titles.

Amazon doesn’t employ proofreaders, editors or fact-checkers to scrutinise self-published (‘KDP’) manuscripts, so quality can vary considerably. I recall looking at one guidebook available on Amazon that was copied word-for-word from Wikipedia (which is perfectly legal providing you attribute your source and don’t claim copyright). Some books seem to have an impressive page count, but if you ‘Look inside…’ (now renamed, ‘Read sample’) you’ll notice that the author has used a gigantic font, double spacing, and three-inch margins. My ‘big’ book has a word count of 339,000, or around 500 words per page, whereas the average word count per page for most other Málaga guide books for sale on Amazon tends to be 100-200 words. That doesn’t mean that my book is better, of course — it might be merely meandering and verbose — but it is worth considering whether two books apparently of the same page length actually offer the same ‘bang for your buck’.

Several factors affect where a book is listed in Amazon’s search results (and this should be of interest if you are a buyer of travel books). When you type in a search query (in this case ‘Málaga’ under the ‘Books’ category), the top results returned are ‘Featured’ titles, followed by ‘Other Results’. I had originally supposed that ‘featured’ books were those whose authors/publishers had paid Amazon to be promoted, but this seems not to be the case. I haven’t paid a penny, but right now, my books are ‘featured’ in positions 1 and 4, so here’s what seems to count:

Sales

Largely thanks to several friends buying copies of my first published book in the days following its publication, it moved from page 2 of results to page 1 within a few days, with the most recent big jump upwards taking place after surprisingly good sales in the last couple of weeks.

Reviews

These seem to make a huge difference. My big book jumped several places after its first review, then shot to number one position after its second rating, even though that was only 4 stars instead of 5! My abridged book began on page 5 of the results, although it only sold a couple of copies in the first two weeks, it shot up to page 2 once the first (5-star) review was posted. That helped sales, which pushed it higher to page 1. In the last week, it’s sold as many copies as it did in the first month and moved up to position 3 on page 1 (for a couple of days — it’s now at position 4). I suspect that some reviews of some books, however, are not actually from genuine readers, but more of that below!

Keywords and Titles

This is where I showed myself to be a newbie. My books are titled ‘Málaga‘ and ‘Essential Málaga‘ with 8-word subtitles. Another ‘page one’ guide to Málaga has the title ‘Unveiling Malaga – Spain: Your Travel Guide to Andalusia’s Coastal Crown: Delve into Sunlit Plazas, Historic Fortresses, and the Riveting Rhythms of … Mediterranean Retreat‘. It may be a bit of a word salad, but it’s likely to show up in searches for ‘Spain’, ‘Andalusia’, ‘Historic’, ‘Retreat’ and ‘Mediterranean’ too.

Guidebooks entitled ‘Granada‘ and ‘Morocco‘ also get into the first two pages of results for ‘Málaga’, so I assume these titles have been submitted with ‘Málaga’ added as a ‘keyword’. That’s good, if crafty, thinking. Málaga is the most convenient airport for UK travellers to Granada (there are only direct flights to Granada itself from London, and then only seasonally), and there is a regular ferry service between Málaga and Melilla, Spain’s North African exclave.

Your 2024 Guide!

Unless you are Michael Portillo clutching an Edwardian Bradshaw’s Guide, it makes sense to buy an up-to-date guidebook. My first guidebook was only published four months ago and yet I know that some information in it is already out of date. Most guidebooks for sale on Amazon reference the year ‘2023’ or ‘2023-2024’. This is easy to do. Using Amazon’s own ISBNs, it costs nothing to re-issue a title, so an author could remove their 2023 Complete Guide to Málaga from sale and upload it again, under a different ISBN as the 2024 Complete Guide to Málaga. A little research shows that having the current year mentioned in the title is no guarantee of accuracy. At least one ‘2023’ guide I looked at lists the Málaga Ferris Wheel (Noria Mirador Princess) as a ‘must-see’ attraction, despite its having closed in April 2019.

Clicks? Series?

This is just a hunch based on the fact that one book, in particular, seems to occupy a consistently high position in the search results. It may have sold thousands of copies, I suppose, but if that were the case it seems odd that it hasn’t received a single review or rating. So perhaps it gets ‘featured’ because it’s part of a series of guides by the same author, or it could be that the author regularly goes online to click on the link to the book’s page (rather as Amazon seems determined to keep sending you emails about thermal socks because you once searched for them in 2014).

Sizing-Up ‘the Competition’

When I first thought of writing a guidebook, nothing else was on the market, so almost anything would have been better than nothing. But now there are dozens of books available, so I took a good look at the competition — partly to determine whether my book really had anything to add, but also to help me set a fair price. The rankings will probably change in the next day or so, but let’s look at the top-listed books about Málaga on Amazon! (I should explain that I haven’t actually purchased any of these books and my comments are based on the Amazon listings and the ‘Read sample’ option.)

My ‘comprehensive’ guide is at number one, and my ‘concise’ guide is at number four (it was at three yesterday). In between is:

James Richardson’s Malaga in 2 days — 100 pages — £8.39 — 4 stars (a 5-star written review and a 3-star rating)

The author clearly knows Málaga well and he writes clearly and engagingly, avoiding the purple prose beloved of other authors. He’s also put a lot of effort into creating attractive and useful maps. Judging by the contents page, all of the main attractions in Málaga are covered and there is a lot of useful information for visitors. Had I not written my own concise guide to Málaga, I’d probably recommend this one.

Next comes:

Sonia Rowan’s MALAGA SPAIN TRAVEL GUIDE: Malaga’s Transportation tips, Top Attractions, Cuisine, Accomodations, Neighborhoods, Outdoor adventures and Safety tips (Around the world) —105 pages — £7.84 — no reviews/rating

This is the book that remains consistently near the top of the search results because the author has paid for it to be promoted. It has no reviews and while it might notch up 105 pages, the average page has less than 100 words (see the comparison with my book, below). Like most other books about Málaga, the prose is purple. Málaga ‘nestles’ and ‘features a rich tapestry’.

Most extraordinary of all, however, is that the title contains a typo (‘accomodations’) and the cover photo is of Barcelona (the guide to Bilbao has a photo of Seville on the cover). It’s part of a series of guidebooks by the same author, all of which rate highly in the search results even though none is ranked at more than one-star.

I can only admire the chutzpah of the next result:

F*CK THIS I’M GOING TO Malaga: Malaga Notebook — 111 pages — £6.68 — no written reviews, but a rating of 4.7 stars out of 5

What information about Málaga does this book contain? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a word. Literally. It has 111 blank pages. £6.68 for an exercise book with a sweary cover (you can also buy F*ck This I’m Going to Wigan, if you like). To give some context, this book is twice as expensive, per page, as my book, despite containing no information whatsoever, and yet has a higher rating (4.7 versus 4.5). One begins to wonder whether these ratings are all from satisfied customers!

Next come some big names. A Michelin street map (rather than a book) and the Lonely Planet Experience Andalucia: Get away from the everyday. The quality of both is clearly going to be excellent, but the latter book covers the city of Málaga in 14 pages and the rest of the province in another 14.

Then comes a book with a reference to the year:

Leonard P. Allen’s Essential Malaga Travel Guide 2023: Your Ultimate Adventure in the Coastal del Sol. Experience the Best of Southern Spain’s Jewel. (Hassle-Free InterContinental Voyage Travel Guide Books) — 129 pages — £9.32 — 2 star rating

The oddity here is that of 5 reviews, four gave 1 star while one rated it as 5 stars, which seems odd. I’d like to know who wrote the 5-star review when four times as many people (all verified purchasers) gave it only one star, the lowest possible rating. This review is my favourite:

A bit further down the list is:

Herman T. Thomas’s Malaga Travel Guide 2024: Discover the best beaches, restaurants, attractions, and more, with expert advice and insider tipsHow — 91 pages — £7.31 — 1 star rating.

The oddest thing about this book is the cover, which features a lighthouse on the Côte d’Azur. It’s odd because a lighthouse (the ‘Farola’) is one of the most recognisable symbols of Málaga. It’s like illustrating a guide to Stonehenge with a photo of Avebury, or the Pyramids.

Joanna Styles’ Malaga on a Short Break: Discover the city in 2, 3 or 5 days — Kindle Only — £4.99 — 3.6 stars

Most of the (verified) reviews are 4 and 5 stars, but the average is lowered because someone encountered technical issues and gave only 1 star. Despite being way down page 2 of the Amazon results, this is a very good guide. Joanna lives in Málaga and runs one of the most popular and best-respected blogs about the city. I suspect she sells most copies of her ebook on her own website (where she offers a discount code) so Amazon is just an extra marketplace. But like James Richardson’s guide, this is a book I would gladly recommend (though obviously, I’d urge you to consider my concise guide too!).

‘Tailored Travel Guides’ Unveiling Malaga – Spain: Your Travel Guide to Andalusia’s Coastal Crown: Delve into Sunlit Plazas, Historic Fortresses, and the Riveting Rhythms of … Mediterranean Retreat (Spain Unveiled) — 40 pages — £10.88 — 3 stars

This very pricey book is the most expensive book about Málaga for sale on Amazon. By way of comparison, my book costs 0.3p per page while this book costs 27p per page — that is, 90 times more expensive. Especially interesting, though, are the reviews:

We might note that the 1-star, excoriating review is from a ‘verified’ buyer, but the effusive 5-star review is not! Draw your own conclusions…

Lucas S Torres’s MALAGA TRAVEL GUIDE 2023 AND BEYOND: Discover the Thrilling Activities, Nightlife, Local Insights, Balancing Relaxation, Adventure, and Authentic Experiences — 109 pages — £9.42 — 1 star rating

Lots of purple prose in this one. Málaga ‘is a canvas upon which tradition and modernity dance in harmony’ while in the markets, the ‘aroma of fresh produce [and] the laughter of locals [create] a sensory symphony’. Strange, then, that such a bewitching city didn’t make it onto the cover, which features a photoshopped image of an Istanbul tram.

Another bold choice for a cover illustration, in this case, the Basilica of Notre Dame in Fourvière (a district of Lyon) in France.

The prose, however, is something else. It could have been written by a machine, except that AI is pretty good nowadays. Are you an ‘experiences fan’ or a ‘nature sweetheart’?!

Jan Hayes’s Málaga Mini Survival Guide — Paperback — 34 pages — £7.99 — 2.9 star rating

As the contents page (below) shows, although this book is short enough on content, running to 34 pages, those about the city of Málaga itself number a mere 9 (yes, nine) pages.

Although this book was published over 5 years ago, it’s still found on page two of the Amazon results. After all, the blurb claims that it’s ‘all you’ll ever need’. The reviews, however, say it all:

AI and Bot-Farm Book Clubs

I have been alerted to a possible issue that might explain the poor quality of many of the books available on Amazon (and explain how quickly new titles are being published). Publishing and technology websites have explored the phenomenon of books written using AI (Artificial Intelligence technology, like ChatGPT). This would certainly account for the ‘sameyness’ of many of the books available (when submitting a title for Amazon, one is supposed to declare whether AI has been used).

But surely these books are so bad that few people will buy them, at least not after the first couple of one-star reviews? Here’s where ‘Kindle Unlimited’ (KU) comes in. KU is a subscription service (currently £9.49 per month in the UK) allowing customers to ‘borrow’ Kindle titles with the author being paid for pages read. Ordinarily, if you sell a Kindle book you receive a royalty, even if the buyer never reads a word of it. With KU, you are paid per page. For a voracious reader, it’s good value and provides a good return for authors. Now, imagine that you engage the services of a Chinese ‘Bot Farm’ where thousands of computers ‘read’ thousands of Kindle books, and then you can rake it in. For example, if your 100-page AI-generated book is ‘borrowed’ and ‘read’ 1000 times, then you would earn $10,000.

As a self-published author told me, ‘Given time I think Amazon get rid of them. I’ve seen that happen to human-produced books that were equally bad a few years ago.’ We’ll see. But at the moment, it’s money for old rope.

Conclusion

There are many other guides to Málaga in a similar vein to those listed above. I would say this, but there are some really good self-published books for sale on Amazon. There are plenty of topics ignored by big publishers as too niche (try looking for a good guidebook for Extremadura, for example) where knowledgeable amateurs have stepped into the breach. There are also, mind you, huge numbers of absolute shockers.

So if you are buying a travel guidebook from Amazon, do some careful due diligence before ‘adding to basket’. When judging reviews, check whether the reviewers actually bought the book and treat ratings without supporting reviews with caution. Use the ‘Read sample’ option and study the contents pages — these, together with the number of pages devoted to each topic will give you a sense of what the book contains and the level of detail it goes into.

If you fancy visiting Málaga, then obviously I’d recommend you buy one of my books (either the concise version for a first or short visit, or the comprehensive version if you’d like to read up on the city’s history, culture and gastronomy, or are going for a longer holiday and would like to make a day trip or two). However, Joanna Styles’s Malaga on a Short Break: Discover the city in 2, 3 or 5 days and James Richardson’s Malaga in 2 days: An easy-read travel guide to get the most from your short break would both be reliable and concise choices.

If you really want to save your pennies, then check out my more comprehensive guidebook on Amazon, click on ‘Read sample’ and note down the links for the ‘Websites and Online Resources’ section (pp. 2-3). This will point you in the direction of some handy sources of information.