DAY 27. Week Eight. What has to be done by the end of this week?
Publishing. Check on Amazon that the book’s Pre-Order page is okay. Manually add the book to ‘My Books’ on Goodreads, linked to the Pre-Order pages.
Publishing. Amazon Author Central. Create an Author Profile for Sophie Brent on Amazon Author Central. New biography and author photo.
Publishing. The back of the book should include the links to the Pre-Order pages on Amazon and Goodreads.
Website and Social Media. Update the Sophie Brent website with links to the pre-order book pages on Amazon.
Why Use Amazon Author Central? Audience Building
This is your home page on Amazon and you should use it to promote your book launch tour and any videos you have made about this book or your subject.
I already have an Author Central account on Amazon for my current books as Nina Harrington, so in theory I should be able to claim my new book written as Sophie Brent and tell Amazon that this is a new pen name.
It’s not so simple! I somehow managed to create THREE Nina Harrington author profiles in the system.
‘Author Central can currently support up to three pen names per customer account.’
So, before I could add a new pen name, I had to contact Amazon and ask them to merge these three accounts into one. The alternative would be to create a new account with a different email address, which would just add more work. Then, I had to edit the biography and links to make them the same.
It works – I now have a new Sophie Brent author profile, linked to the two new books I have just loaded onto Pre-Order.
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0792W56GN
You have to create a profile on separate Amazon online stores – there is no facility for the information to be automatically copied across to the Amazon stores worldwide.
So, to make the most of the inbuilt marketing that Amazon carries out for you, make sure that you have used your Amazon log in details to create a profile for your author brand on Amazon Author Central for both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk as a minimum, plus any local Amazon stores where you live, such as; Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de.
Note – you can only use Amazon Author Central when you have at least one book live in the system, so if this is your first book, you will have to wait until the book is loaded before you can use this feature.
Go to the Amazon Author Central page and claim your book or books, and update your details with your biography, links to your site and all of your social media profiles, and add your author picture or video.
Your author photo should be the same one you are using on your website, but you might want to write a shorter version of your biography in the form of a single paragraph and link to your website for more information.
The emphasis is that any reader who clicks on your name under a book title should be taken to link which gives them an instant impression of who you are as a person and as a writer.
The goal is always to be connecting with your audience so that you can build a real relationship with them, one individual online browser at a time.
Email List Building
You can even use it to link to your newsletter subscription if you have one and direct your ideal reader from Amazon back to your website.
This is how many authors have consolidated their connections to a ‘tribe’ of fans who have given them permission to contact them with useful content and information before sharing the news of their latest book.
Amazon makes this easy by providing a ‘Follow’ button under your author profile and will send readers an email when you have a new release.
Tracking
Plus you can track the ranking of your eBook and reviews.
Editorial Reviews and Endorsements
Your Amazon Author Central pages are very easy to update with extra reviews and quotations pre-launch, so think of these sections as working documents rather than static book data.
Asking for Advance Review Quotes
When the book goes live it is great to have some endorsements and advance reviews which you can add to the book description as Editorial Reviews inside Amazon Author Central.
These Editorial reviews will be listed on the book page, separately from reader reviews, and help to reassure readers that they will not be wasting their time and money investing in your book.
Social approval really does help to encourage browsers to click on the book cover, read the book description and take a look inside.
When Book 1 is live for Pre-Order, I plan to ask a select group of my contacts if I could send them an ARC for testimonials ahead of the book launch. I need a one sentence review comment that I can quote in the editorial reviews.
This is a different group from the much wider Book Launch team.
The editorial review changes will be shown on the book sales page within 3 to 5 business days, so don’t forget to factor that time gap in.
Now back to the writing!
Have a good one. Nina