I’ve recently updated my Amazon Author Central page. It’s important to keep websites, bios and pages like Amazon Author Central up to date, but why create an Amazon Author Central page at all? Is it worth it?
In a word, yes. It pulls all of your work together in to one place, if you link your work to your author page. It’s especially helpful if, like me, you have work in collections, alongside other authors, that new readers might not be aware of. I know people have mixed feelings about Amazon, and some authors prefer to focus on other places like Book Hive, Bookshop and Wordery, but if you want to market your work well, this is a tool that shouldn’t be ignored.
Amazon Author Central gives you the opportunity to add your author profile to Amazon, Audible and Kindle books. It also gives valuable insights into data on your books, such as sales by country, rankings and customer reviews. Readers can find links to your website and social media channels from your author bio, as well as sign up to your author newsletter, which means that they can follow you both on and off Amazon.
It links your work and sends readers to other titles that you have written. If you have a stand alone story or a story in an anthology, it’s easy for a reader who likes your work to find more. A reader who has read your novel and wants to read more can search for other work that you have written.
On Amazon.com, the US page, you can link your blog to your author page through the RSS feed, and readers can see updates within 24 hours of them being posted.
Adding photos and videos gives readers an idea of who you are and what you do. I’ve added photos and a video of book readings, to give readers an insight into who I am as an author.
Your Amazon Author page will give you information on sales rankings and customer reviews in individual countries. The Amazon Best Sellers Rank shows how well a particular book is selling compared to other books. Each format of your book has its own Ranking. Amazon updates these hourly and your historical Sales Rank is updated daily. These are relative and can change even if your book’s sales and borrows stay the same.
You can share information about up coming releases and find out which of your titles are most popular in different countries. You can also rank your work by average customer reviews and number of reviews. If you have a lot of titles, this is a useful tool.
If you want to write your author bio in other languages, or ask somebody to do this for you, these can be added to country pages individually.
So, if you don’t have an Amazon Author Central account, you can start by setting one up here and adding a recent head shot, along with an up to date bio, then link any work that you have authored, either solely, or in a collection, as well as edited works. Search for your book by title or ISBN number. Amazon will check it and add it to your page. You can then upload photos and videos. I’ve also added a book trailer for my novel.
Do you have an Amazon Author Central page? have you found it helpful? Let me know if you have any questions. It’s a really useful tool, which will help to market your work and give you a platform to share who you are and what you write.
F.C. MALBY 