Tag: Amazon.com Author Central page

Amazon Author Central: A Primer

Author Central LikefestIf you’re an author publishing on Amazon.com, Author Central is an essential tool to help you easily make changes to book data and improve readers’ ability to learn more about you.

If you’ve never used it, Author Central is where you create your Amazon Author Page. This is a profile page that includes a picture, a biography, and lists all the books you’ve published on Amazon. Amazon Author Central AC1_ProfileHow can a reader see your profile page? Usually readers find it when they’re looking at a book you’ve written and they click your hyperlinked author name. If you don’t have an Amazon Author Page, Amazon will give the reader search results for your name. If you do have an Amazon Author Page, Amazon will take the reader to it. The Author Page is a great chance to connect with the reader by showing them all the books you’ve written and a little bit of personality in your biography. Continue reading “Amazon Author Central: A Primer”

How to Post Author Updates at Amazon Author Central if You Don’t Have a Blog

Author Sylvia EngdahlGuest Post
by Sylvia Engdahl

The Author Update area at Amazon Author Central makes provision only for blog feeds and events. This is unfortunate for authors who don’t have blogs, or who blog at their personal websites. I don’t often have news, but when I do I would like to post it at Author Central, and I’d like to announce when a book is going to be free or discounted.

Recently it occurred to me to investigate what a blog feed consists of. It doesn’t have to come from an established blogging site — its address can point to a file located anywhere on the Web. It turns out to be easy to create such a file and upload it to your own Web host. Then you merely have to update it whenever you have a brief message for your readers. You could, in fact, put articles of any length in it by continuing what wouldn’t fit on the Author Central page on a page at your website. Or, if you have an email newsletter that’s also posted online, you could use this method to get headlines from it and a subscribe link onto your Author Central page. Continue reading “How to Post Author Updates at Amazon Author Central if You Don’t Have a Blog”

Linking Books to Author Central

The last guy who told me I was wrong.

Oh my. I wish I had a dollar for each time I told someone their book wasn’t claimed to their author central page and they replied “Yes it is.”

Guess what? NO IT’S NOT.

Just because you have an Amazon.com Author Central page and your book is showing up on it does NOT mean it’s properly linked. Honestly, I don’t sit around making this stuff up because I’m bored.

A book which is properly claimed to an author central page will have a little drop-down arrow next to the author’s name. I’ve circled it in magenta and drawn an arrow to it in the photo below. Continue reading “Linking Books to Author Central”