Tutorial: Make Your Very Own Book Store

K. S. Brooks' Book Store

K. S. Brooks' Book StorePeople ask me how to sell books from their web site. It’s easy, actually – there’s no stocking, shipping, or coding involved. All it takes is a one-time set-up using the aStore tools provided by Amazon.com. You can embed the store directly into your own web site, or if you don’t have your own web site, you can make the store a stand-alone and send people there. No matter which way you do it, it’s one more venue where you can sell your books – and you make a commission on top of it.

The picture above actually depicts the store I have on my own personal web site. The pretty colored lines illustrate how much flexibility you have with aStore customization – the fuschia circle shows the URL is MY web site. The red arrow points to my rotating gif in the store masthead. Yellow – Links to different categories of books (since I currently write 3 different genres – this is super handy). Green shows my links to Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and even my publisher’s site. And lastly, the aqua arrow denotes my international stores in the UK, France, Germany, and more. Pretty cool, eh?

So how can you do this? First you need to set up your Amazon Associates account. That is free and easy. Just go to the Associates home page. You’ll be asked to provide details about your web sites, bank information (so they can issue commission payments), and other pertinent data. Once you’re set up, you’ll arrive at the Amazon Associates Central page. Select aStore from the blue header across the top.

aStore ArchitectureFrom here, Amazon will walk you through it, pretty much step-by-step. I’m not certain why they start by having you add products to your store. You don’t have to do that first, since you can theoretically add products from anywhere in Amazon.com once you’re set up. Yes, I did say from anywhere. But we can cover that later. Instead of jumping ahead to the “pretty” part, I recommend taking a look at the architecture of your store. If you’re not embedding your store directly into your website, you should make an “about” page (red arrow). The aqua arrow shows you that you can make different headings within your aStore, and the fuschia arrow points out that these don’t have to be all YOUR books. You can showcase your friends’ books, or honestly – anything else that is sold on Amazon.com. You can even sell pillow cases or Kindles…or, duct tape and ether; whatever makes you happy.

Building your own aStore
Designing your own aStore is easy!

The really neat thing about the aStore is how you can use the design tools to make it transparent with your own site – as in colors, fonts, etc. You can use your own masthead, image or other graphic in the header. I have a rotating gif on my site’s home page, and it was super easy to provide the link so that it would work in the aStore header.

Adding products is extremely easy, and you can do it from pretty much anywhere in Amazon.com as long as you’re logged in to your Associates account.

Hopefully, this tutorial will get you well on your way to setting up your own book store. If you’d like to see an example of stores which are already complete, you can take a look at my embedded store at KSBrooks.com. If you’re interested in seeing a stand-alone store, check out the Indies Unlimited book store here.

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K.S. Brooks is an award-winning author and photographer, and Co-Administrator of Indies Unlimited. For more information, please see the IU Bio page and her web site: http://www.ksbrooks.com/[subscribe2]

Author: K.S. Brooks

K.S. Brooks is an award-winning novelist, photographer, and photo-journalist, author of over 30 titles, and executive director and administrator of Indies Unlimited. Brooks is currently a photo-journalist and chief copy editor for two NE Washington newspapers.  She teaches self-publishing and writing topics for the Community Colleges of Spokane, and served on the Indie Author Day advisory board. For more about K.S. Brooks, visit her website and her Amazon author page.

32 thoughts on “Tutorial: Make Your Very Own Book Store”

    1. Thea, you can make a stand-alone store and put the widget that goes to the store into your blog. The aStore is extremely flexible. There's lots you can do with it.

  4. You are an amazing resource! I tried to embed a widget from Amazon on my web page (hosted by Yahoo) and it demands that I get into the actual code of te website – which Yahoo will not allow. Do I need to changes hosts? I can go through SFWA and even keep my domain name. It has to be obvious that I don't know s**t about this stuff.

    Thanks!

    1. That does sound like a Yahoo issue, Stoney. If you want to email me the link to the web page, I can take a look, but it sounds like you know what you're talking about. Thanks for stopping by!

    2. Stoney, I was thinking about your issue. You can put a photo with a link to a website on it, right? Instead of doing a widget, I'd put a photo and use the monetized Amazon code as the link. Heh. 🙂

      1. The photo link might be the easiest solution but if you are using Yahoo SiteBuilder (which I am exporting a site from for a client because it's so useless) there should be an option for Insert/Code Elements/HTML even though you don't have access to the page source itself.

    1. R.J., you can set the store up as a stand-alone site and then put the widget into your WP blog. You don't have to embed the store. 🙂

  8. Many thanks! I will save all your good information and work on this!

    If you want a freebee, I have some extra copies of IN HASTE I WRITE YOU THIS NOTE: STORIES & HALF-STORIES,and extras of a chapbook of poems REAL TOADS, my bitchy book ELEGY FOR THE OTHER WOMAN (poems(, and a few others. Some are too recent at the moment.

    Let me know where to send them, though I won't get to it until next week.

    All good wishes and thanks

    1. Hi Elisavietta, thanks for stopping by. Freebie Fridays are when we run our freebie promos – but people need to be able to download the ebooks for free. I'm sure there are lots of reviewers out there who would be interested in your hard copies. Our Jim Devitt recently ran a post about getting reviews. You can read that here – https://indiesunlimited.com/2012/03/03/have-ot…

  9. Thanks so much for this! I've been playing around with the e-store creation "stuff" (read nasty code) that I have access to, but this is so much easier.

    1. It's very easy, Yvonne. Nothing to learn, really. You just do it once and you're done. And yeah, I'm sneaky that way. I've always said, my middle initial stands for "Stealth." 😉

  11. You are such a kind person. I'll pas this information on to my daughter in London, who handles my website. Must mention that her photograph is is currently all over Heathrow's terminal 5, as the BA face for its Sport's Relief fund-raising campaigh.

    God bless,

    Martin.

    1. Hi Susanna, not sure what you mean about "shared" authors – I have an "Indie Authors" sub page in my store – I was just at yours at it's pretty comprehensive! I don't think you needed any advice. 🙂

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