Authors: Use the Tools Available on Amazon

This may be one of my more interesting blogs. Not because of the subject matter particularly, but because I’m dreadfully high on pain meds at the moment. Twisted something during aerobics this morning. My sweet, solicitous husband offered me of his prized prescription post surgery pills – Vicodin, I think it’s called. Since I rarely take anything stronger than aspirin, and rarely take even that, I’m having quite a reaction. I mean, I even feel disconnected from my tongue.

But this is NOT what you tuned in to hear.

Last week I talked about Search Inside the Book. Or, as those of us already Inside call it: SITB This time I want to tell you about another neat way Amazon offers to enhance your listing: the Author’s Page. It’s announced (with your photo) just ahead of your first book.

Begin with Amazon’s home page, and enter “Author Central” in the search window. No, no, don’t type in the quote marks! Geeez. That was just for illustrative purposes. Follow the instructions for entering your books, bio, photo and whatever. After you submit the info, they’ll reply that they’re building your page and will get back with you within 7 days. Parts of it may appear before others. Don’t panic. Be patient. Seven days, remember?

I’ve barely scratched the surface with mine so far. You can link it to your blog and website, add a string of photos, etc. There’s just lots of cool things you can do there to entertain and tantalize your fan base.

Take advantage of every tool you can find. Remember, the more readers can learn about your book, the more apt they are to buy it.

New Authors: Learn to use the tools on Amazon!

A great new kiddie book hit the market last week: NEW ATLANTIS: Kingdom of Youth. The author, R. W. Garrett, wrestled a compelling cover from the publisher, but I can’t show it to you because the Amazon listing doesn’t have it! This I discovered when I went to the site to post a review.

Horrified, I rushed her the link to Amazon’s Seller Central, the one I use to add “Search Inside the Book” to my own listings. They have instructions for submitting your files: front cover, back cover, and text block.

But when SHE clicked the link, it went to a whole different world of advertisements and pricey packages – no resemblance to anything I was seeing. At my suggestion, she typed SITB in the Amazon search window. No luck.

I was stunned. It’s so easy. I’ve done it with the 3 books I now have in print. Finally it hit me. When I click the Amazon link on my faves list, it “knows” me and displays accordingly. It knows what I mean by Seller Central even though it’s called something else now. Sigh.

So next time I went in from scratch – typed “amazon.com” into my ISP’s search window and went in as a stranger. After a bit of scrounging, I finally found it. You may want to take notes here.

First off, here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=14061791&ld=AZSearchMakeM but it may be temporary. They tend to change things between books. So…in case the link sends you hurtling into parts unknown…here’s a likely path to follow:

1. Amazon.com home page
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom. You’ll see 3 columns of lists.
3. On the middle one, Make Money with Us, click: › See all
4. Now you should be looking at another list of choices. Choose: I want Author and Publisher Tools
5. Another display magically appears. The obvious choice here is: >> Search Inside!
6. Click that and follow the instructions.

The NEW ATLANTIS author emailed back in short order: “It worked!” Whew.

Next week: Creating an author page on Amazon.