Authors, Are You Using Your Amazon Author Central Page?

In today's guest post, Laura Pepper Wu shares some great tips about taking advantage of the Author Central feature on Amazon.com.

If you are selling a book or eBook through Amazon, you should absolutely be taking advantage of Author Central on Amazon.

I know, I know that you are thinking “GROAN!! Yet another social media site to keep up with.”

But actually it’s not all that much work at all, and once it is up and running (i.e. you have filled out your basic info, added a photo, imported your blog) you will rarely have to touch it again.

The benefits:

For most books and genres (there are exceptions), it is in the author’s best interests to be the ‘face’ or ‘brand’ behind the book. The more that your potential reader can identify with you, the more invested they will feel in your book, and the more likely they are to buy it.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule, and of course you must be somewhat likable in order for them to relate to, but in general it’s true! So get some pictures up, add some personable facts about yourself, and if you are already writing a blog whip that up there too.

Things to Do on Author Central:

Add your photo & biography. Be the ‘face’ of your book.

Link your blog - Import your blog using the RSS feed. You can also add your twitter feed if you wish and upload a book trailer if you have one. People who stumble upon your book on Amazon through a recommendation or through the ‘commonly bought with’ listing won’t see your personal blog or other online PR efforts. So use author central to put your best foot forward without redirecting them away from Amazon and their browsing/ shopping space.

View and edit the list of books you have written/ edited – because the Amazon system doesn’t always get it right. If you have written one or more books this is great because it will link your titles together, and allow your readers to find all of your work.

Edit your product description and about the author section, add any professional reviews you have had. I can’t emphasize how important – and often under looked – a good product description is. It’s essentially sales copy, so it should focus on benefits to the customer (not the features), and should be as compelling as possible. It’s the best advertising for the book you will get! See this fantastic article on how to write a good product description from Digitalbookworld.com. Here is an excerpt:

“You want to get your most glowing, punchy, exciting quotes out front.  Don’t hold back.  This is a MAJOR section where buyers abort the purchase funnel.  Therefore this is where you need to really grab their attention. If you don’t excite the reader here, you will quite possibly lose a sale.

After these initial 3 quotes, put a brief style description of your book. Do NOT go into specifics about the book.  You will lose the excitement you just built. Keep your energy up and driving towards a sale.  Remember this is ad copy not a by-the-numbers description or even your typical back cover copy.  This is a sales pitch.”

Track Your Sales – Find out where your sales are happening using the geographic location function and find out what your Amazon ranking.

Finally;

Cover image – If you have an Amazon page then you probably already have a cover image on your book’s page (if not, what are you doing here? Run over there NOW). However, don’t feel that you must use the exact image of your book – as long as it has a strong resemblance you are golden.

In my case I used a bolder version of the book cover by enhancing the color and cutting off the bottom part of the cover to make the title more visible. Remember that it’s important to utilize the thumbnail size as efficiently as possible.

In sum… if you already have a blog, twitter, book trailer and so on, then there is no extra work involved other than syncing it all together in one place on your Author Central page. Put in a couple of hours work doing so, get your product description up to scratch and you’ll have another great tool in your book marketing arsenal!

About the Author

Laura Pepper Wu is a writer and the co-founder of 30 Day Books: a book studio. She successfully marketed 30 Day GMAT Success to become the number 1 selling GMAT guide on the Amazon kindle, top 10 in print, as well as in the top 3 of all study guides on the Kindle. She blogs about her marketing experiences at laurapepperwu.wordpress.com. Laura is available for book marketing consultation and advice, and would love to hear from you! Connect with Laura on Twitter or at laura {at) 30daybooks {dot} com.

Learn More

To learn more about how to promote your books on Amazon, check out How to Sell More Books on Amazon.

 

Comments

[Dee]

Hi Dana and Laura! Fantastic guest post!
Thank you Laura for this great article. It served as a good checklist for me. It seems that I've done most of these things for our book page except I need to tweak my product description and add some review quotes. On my way to do that NOW! Thanks for the link to the great and helpful article by Carolyn McCray too!
Thanks so much to you both. Happy New Year! :)
Dee

[Laura]

H Dee, sorry I am JUST responding to this! Glad it was helpful and best of luck with it :)

[j.m. Sandler]

what should I do about a spiteful, shallow review with a one-star rating that has diminished my 5-star ratting?
J.M. Sandler
Caspian Diray

[Dana Lynn Smith]

J.M. I know it's frustrating to get a bad review, but it happens to most authors sooner or later. My advice for authors is to try not to take it personally and to remember that books (especially fiction) are subjective - some people will love your book and others won't.

If a review contains factual errors (for instance stating that a nonfiction book was missing important information) you can click the "comment" button on the review and leave a note. But be very careful not to sound defensive - just state the facts. (e.g. Perhaps you missed chapter 6 where I discussed that topic in detail.) If you think a review was really unjustified, you can also click the "no" button next to "Was this review helpful to you?"

If a review violates Amazon's terms (http://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-reviews-guidelines) you can ask Amazon to remove it. Amazon will not remove a review simply because it's unfavorable or you think it's unfair.

Finally, focus on getting more good reviews to offset the bad one. For advice on getting reviews and profiting from them, see http://www.GetBookReviews.net.