No doubt about it: Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla of publishing today.
If you’re not on Amazon, you’re losing money. Yes I know they want a very steep cut. But you still get a percentage of something instead of 100% of nothing!
Whether you list your books on Amazon or your publisher does, you should know that Amazon creates an “Authors Page” for you that you can customize. Find your book listing somewhere on Amazon and then click on your name. Voila! There’s your author page.
If you posted your own books on Amazon, you can just log in and start editing this page. Otherwise you will need to click on the link that asks “Are you this author?” In either case, you can get to Author Central at http://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/home.
Here’s my Author page:
http://www.amazon.com/Karl-W.-Palachuk/e/B002V6UP56/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1303907234&sr=8-1
Wow! That’s a long URL, especially if you’re posting on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Yikes. But here’s a cool trick. Go to www.tinyurl.com and you can create a custom link that is a lot easier to understand. Tinyurl shortens links and lets you request a specific link. For example, I asked for “kpatamazon” (KP at Amazon) and now I can post my author link this way:
Here’s the minimum you should do at Amazon:
- Put up a big picture. Smile.
- Add a nice long bio. Don’t be shy. You have lots of real estate here.
- Add your Twitter feed. Amazon will automatically link to your feed and put it below your bio.
- Add your blog feed. Yee Gads! You want to improve blog traffic? point to it from the largest bookstore in the world!
- You might also add Kindle versions of your books
- Make sure all your books are listed
- List your upcoming events
- Begin discussion of your books – - but you gotta follow up!
- And more
Amazon wants people to spend time learning about YOU so they can sell more books. As a general rule, Amazon is also a great place to get ideas about the kinds of things you should be doing on your own web site.
