More Changes on Amazon for Authors — and More Confusion

While on my Amazon Author Page backend I noticed in the top right-hand corner an announcement that I could now get a customized Amazon Author Page URL. I immediately did this and shared this new opportunity on various social media sites.

(If you have an Amazon Author Page already, go to http://authorcentral.amazon.com — sign in to your Amazon account — under "Update your profile and bibliography" you'll see "Add a photo and biography to an Author Central Profile" and click on "Author Central Profile." Then in the top right-hand corner of your screen you are offered this option.)

The sticky issue here, though, is that you must first have an Amazon Author Page. And someone in an ebook LinkedIn group to which I belong reported:

Amazon won't let you complete the process until they can find a book you've written. Smashwords books don't count (until they're accepted in the premium catalog, presumably), but anything published through their Kindle publishing services does.

Then I got this email from Amazon, which is surprising because Amazon Author Central has not, in my experience, been the easiest support staff with whom to work:

Hi Phyllis Zimbler Miller,

Your Author Page URL is live on Amazon.com. Your Author Page can now be found at: https://www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller

Because a short link is clean and simple, it's an easy way to increase traffic to the place readers are learning about you and shopping for your books.

You can promote your link on Twitter, make it your e-mail signature, include it in the template of your blog or website, and use it any other place your readers are active.

Thanks,

The Author Central Team

https://authorcentral.amazon.com

It is clear from this email that Amazon sees this new URL opportunity as an opportunity for Amazon to sell more books (especially in relation to its online book-selling rivals.)

At the same time that I got this email from Amazon, I got an email from a friend asking about an email her friend got from Amazon after writing a book review. The email began:

Your latest review has just gone live on Amazon. We and millions of shoppers on Amazon appreciate the time you took to write about your experience with this item.

My friend asked if the email her friend got was "normal." I scrolled down on this email and found what I think is the main point: "Share this review with friends" followed by the Facebook and Twitter icons.

Obviously Facebook is encouraging more book sales by having someone who wrote a book review send the review to his/her friends.

And now for another interesting quirk about Amazon:

I changed the URL on my Amazon public profile (this public profile is available to everyone who has an Amazon account — this is NOT only for authors) to that of my new website www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com

I then went to amazon.co.uk to check how this URL change affected my public profile on the U.K. Amazon site. The new link was there instead of the old link, but I had no photo on my profile as I did on my U.S. Amazon public profile.

I had to upload the photo separately on the U.K., French and German sites even though the link was automatically changed on all these sites. (I knew just enough words in French and German to figure out, based on the U.S. site, where to find the option to upload my photo on the French and German sites.)

Book reviews now on some other Amazon sites:

In the past the only way to get reviews of your books from, say the U.S. site, is to have the reviewer re-post on each individual other Amazon site.

News: As a result of sharing info about Amazon on the LinkedIn Group I manage — "Book Marketing" — I learned that the Amazon Canadian site (amazon.ca) is now carrying some book reviews from the U.S. site. (But this site doesn't have Kindle; only an author's physical books have reviews.)

I then checked the U.K. site (amazon.co.uk), which does carry Kindle, and found that some of the reviews were there for both the physical and Kindle versions of my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT and for the Kindle version of my ebook technothriller MOLLIE SANDERS.

To be more specific, there are three reviews of MRS. LIEUTENANT on the Canadian site, under the heading "Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon U.S." with the word "beta" next to the heading. At the end of the three reviews appears the link "Go to Amazon U.S. to see all [number] reviews" followed by the overall star rating.

(I also checked the French and German Amazon sites and so far this opportunity for U.S. reviews to appear is not available. But hang on, the situation could change before you finish reading this post.)

Announcing a new service for books authors: Your Amazon Assistant

Contact us now to find out how we can help you — be sure to include your book title(s) and website URL in the contact form below:

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© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com that helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies.

Check out Phyllis' books and other projects at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com