You worked hard to finish your manuscript. The day has arrived and you receive “Your Book is Now Published” email from Amazon. WooHoo!
But beyond that, many authors don’t read the email nor take advantage of the offerings held within it. Even more amazing is many are not even aware that Amazon provides a free author page, not just on their .com site, but all International sites as well.
For most books, it is in the author’s best interest to be the ‘face’ or ‘brand’ behind the book. The more a reader identifies with you, the more invested they become, and the more likely they will become a customer or a fan.
This is not a definite rule, or course. You have to be somewhat likable for readers to identify with you, but for the most part, it is true.
Benefits
There are numerous benefits to having an Author Central page.
You are in control. You are in control of your own personal author page: managing what buyers see including description, editorial, inside the book features and more.
Improves Amazon searches. If you want to compete in the Amazon book marketplace, then you NEED an author page. With an active Amazon page, this helps with keyword searches on Amazon.
Sales tracking. AC allows you to track your sales rankings, sales as well as see what part of the country your sales are coming from. This is a great feature.
Easily add and maintain your books and sales page. As you launch your title through KDP, you can quickly add them to your Author page and start tracking sales.
Set up your Author Central
Sign in with your Amazon account.
Add your photo and an error-free biography. You are the face of your book. This will help readers identify with you, and ultimately start building you as a brand.
Link your account to your blog and other social media. Every author should have some form of Internet presence – a blog is the easiest to set up and maintain. AC allows you to easily link your blog posts to your author page through the RSS feed.
You can also link to your twitter feed If you wish, as well as upload a video trailer. These links will help direct potential customers to your blog or other PR efforts.
Edit your product description and about the author section. AC allows you to easily modify the description of your book, and unlike KDP, you can highlight areas in bold or italic and even add bullet lists.
The description area is where customers decide to finalize or abort their purchase decision. Therefore your copy really needs to grab their attention. If you don’t excite the reader, you’ll probably lose the sale. Put in a couple hours to get your product description just right.
Add up to three professional quotes (not Amazon reviews), putting the most glowing quotes our front. Then write a concise, dynamic and compelling description of your book.
This area is, essentially, your sales pitch and it needs to focus on the benefits to the customer. Tell them what your book will do for them – how it will make their life easier, more productive, fulfilling, etc. Makes your ‘pitch’ count.
Track your Sales. With the geographic location function you can find out where your sales are coming from and what your Amazon ranking.
In Summary
If you already have a blog, videos, twitter, etc, then all you need to do is sync it all together in one place – your Author Central page. You’ll soon realize Author Central is an effective book marketing tool.
