3 Amazon Tips for New Authors (and maybe old ones too)

A Twitter conversation prompted me to share a few basic Amazon tips for those who e-publish directly through their KDP dashboard and may not have realized there’s such a thing as “Author Central.”

1. Use Author Central to improve blurb formatting

The KDP dashboard lets you upload your ebook, choose categories, and write descriptions, but the description field is on the anemic side. You can fill in your basic blurb here, but then head over to Author Central, add your book, and edit the book description there if you want to use italics, bold text, or bullet-point lists.

You can also add reviews and “from the author” messages. These descriptions tend to be updated quickly and will override the ones you entered via the self-publishing dashboard.

2. Link editions of your books/ebooks/audiobooks

Sometimes Amazon figures out how to link an ebook and a CreateSpace paperback on its own, but sometimes you have to tell them. If you don’t, the different formats get listed separately and the reviews don’t carry over.

This can also be done through Author Central by contacting the support team. Here’s the information on how to do it.

3. Make an Amazon author page

When you click on your name on your book’s sales page, you will either go to an author page or a list of search results using your name. The latter isn’t particularly user friendly and might not show all your books (or might show some of other people’s books in the results). Again by using Author Central, you can create an author page that includes all of your titles, a bio, pictures, and your blog and Twitter feeds (I get quite a bit of traffic to my site from people who click on the blog post titles on my Amazon page).

Head to the profile section in Author Central to fill in your information.

Are there any other tips you would like to add? Please share them in the comments section below. Thanks!

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