Category Archives: Writing

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.

My first four poems have just been published with Unpublishable Zine. These are my first poetry publications, which is exciting. You can read them all here, or read one below. I have a forthcoming podcast reading with the same journal.

Swirls of Blues and Yellows

The clouds swirl
with blues and
yellows, the stars
mingling with the
night sky, rolling like
balls of fire over the
hills of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
The scene is a dizzy

fusion of lines
and Catherine
Wheels of colour. The
houses sit quietly,

waiting for sunrise. The
streets, empty, the homes
quiet. The bustle of
the day is behind and

it is impossible to
know what lies
ahead. For now,
the homes are at rest,

while the sky scrambles
over the hills, sweeping
its balls of fire, into
another galaxy.

I’ll a link to the podcast when it is released. I hope everybody is well and has been able to find solace in reading, writing, or something creative….gardening or painting. Let me know what you’ve been up to or what you think of the poetry.

A Happy New Year to you all, despite circumstances and the year that we have been through. It’s been challenging and very different. I thought I would begin by sharing some photos that I took on a walk yesterday, and by sharing some musings on writing and bring some hope for 2021.

Winter can look bleak when everything seems to die back and colours fade,

even though the shape and form of things can look striking,

but we know that spring is around the corner, and that colour will return and new growth will burst into life.

We know this because we know the seasons.

Not everything regrows and it will look different, but there will be beauty.

2020 was unknown and so much felt as though it had been lost and the colours faded.

There was so much change and it was all unknown, but 2021 will bring new life, just like the seasons.

The colours will return and there will be new growth. It won’t look the same, but all the new shoots will have overcome the challenges of winter.

In November of 2020 I began writing with a friend online twice a week, and I took up the challenge of Flash Nano (a branch of National Novel Writing Month).

It was incredibly motivating to have both the support and discipline of meeting with my writing buddy, and the focus of writing a piece of flash each day, often with the use of a writing prompt.

I wrote some of the shortest and longest pieces I have ever written and pushed myself to write around new topics in new styles. It was liberating and inspiring. Had it not been for the pandemic, and subsequently less meetings, I may not have started writing with my friend, and I might not have had the same focus to achieve a month of targeted writing.

I look forward to sharing some of these with you in my next collection. For now, I want to wish you health and happiness for 2021. Stay strong and keep going.