Who wouldn’t like his/her name in the author section of a book? Anyone would, right?
I published my first ever eBook back in 2014. It was an outcome of countless sleepless nights and a lot of self-motivation to publish my first book.
How did it go?
Well, not great. The sale was decent, but it took me a lot of time to sell my 500th copy.
Was the book bad?
Not at all! It is still one of the best books on Affiliate marketing in the industry and also one of my best works.
So what went wrong?
Well, promoting a book is not the same as blogging. It’s a different ball game and what I didn’t do is make a proper plan and strategy for promotion.
All of that resulted in a slow take-off.
However, I don’t want you to make similar mistakes, and that’s why I recommend you to have a detailed strategy and plan for promotion and marketing for your next book.
Now, this is a post that should be part of your book promotion strategy.
This is one of the lesser known features of the most popular online book selling store “Amazon” called Amazon Author Central.
What is Amazon Author central?
Is it a free service provided by Amazon to allow authors to reach out to more readers, promote books, and help build a better Amazon bookstore. If you’re an author with a book listed on Amazon, you are eligible to join Author Central. You can use your Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk customer account to get started (or create a new one if needed).
Here is how the author page looks like:
Here is how to get started.
- Head over to Amazon Author Central (U.S.A. here, UK here) and log in.
- If you can’t log in with your existing account details, you can create a new account here.
- The system will automatically search for authors matching the name on your customer account and will suggest books that could be yours. Below is a screenshot for your reference:
Amazon will send an email to your Amazon account to complete the account creation process. Once done, move on to the next steps.
Start customizing your Amazon author central profile:
Go to Author profile customization page, and the very first thing you should do is to claim your Author page URL.
Here is what I have created: http://amazon.com/author/harsh.agrawal
Similarly, fill up all other sections like Biography, Blogs, Events, Photos, and videos.
It could take 45-60 minutes to complete the whole steps, and you should do it to make your author profile look complete. Try to fill up as many details as you can for visitors learn more about you and also help you get more book sales.
Add your existing books to your Amazon Author page:
If you have more than one book which wasn’t listed at the time of signup, read on.
Using this feature, you can link all your books to Amazon author profile.
Head over to Amazon author central books page and click on Add more books.
Now search for books you’ve written by title, author, or ISBN and add them to your bibliography.
Once you have added your books, t it may take up to 24 hours for the book to appear in your bibliography.
BookScan data:
This is another reason for every Amazon author to claim their profile and find more sales data about their books. These features are intended to show trends over time, and also where in the US your books are selling. I have not explored this feature a lot, but it is going to be highly useful for professional authors.
Over to you
If you have a published a book or an eBook, go ahead and claim your Amazon author profile. This is one feature that will help you get more visibility online. Author pages also rank well in Google search.
What other techniques do you follow to improve sales of your books on the Amazon store? Let me know in the comments below.
For now, here are a few hand-picked guides for book authors to read next:
- 4 Reasons Why Every Blogger Needs To Write A Book
- An Easy Guide to Naming your E-book For More Sales
- Blinkist: Ever Read 4 Books in One Day? Now you Can!
- How To Start Selling Books on Google Play Store; Guide
Hi
Thanks for the article. However, I’m having trouble with the Japan site, it doesn’t recognize my amazon account. Do I need to sign up for an account on Amazon Japan first? Thanks for your help in advance.
hey Ahmed,
You need to sign up for Amazon Japan separately. Your India login will not work.
Cool guide Harsh. Selling ebooks on Amazon can be very profitable if you can write interesting books. You don’t need to have the best writing skills but an interesting story to sell.
Thanks for sharing the guide 🙂
This is an absolute epic Harsh. I have been looking for a way to get sales, and you showed me the way without a penny. Thumbs up!!
I have published an ebook on Amazon a few months ago and not yet received a good amount of sales. Even my ebook wroth a lot to read and contain very useful information about marketing. But I think claiming Amazon author profile name may help me to get some decent sales and as you said it will rank better in search engines. So I may receive some organic sales directly from Google.
Thanks for sharing this comprehensive guide.
Cheers,
Mary
Thanks, Harsh for sharing this info
I am much avid reader than writing However if I ever get a chance to publish any book I would give Amazon author central a try.
Hi
Harsh Agrawal
I haven’t heard about it first thanks for sharing the info with us i will also make my on profile.