Amazon Gives You a Free Storefront. Are You Using It?

I know an author who is successful and sophisticated, but she’s wasting her Amazon.com author page. It lists her books, but that’s it. She hasn’t bothered to go to Author Central and personalize it.

This is a missed opportunity. If you were offered a little alcove for your books in the biggest bookstore in the world, wouldn’t you jump at the chance?

Some of us don’t. Maybe we think it’ll be a lot of work to create and maintain. We tell ourselves we’ll do it one day. Someday.

Meanwhile, the opportunities fly away.

Every day your Amazon Author Page just sits there, looking generic, is a wasted opportunity to sell, sell, sell. Amazon.com is the biggest bookstore on the planet. People can find your product while surfing the net. Search engines will point potential buyers to it. Once there, they see not just one book, but your entire shelf. And they see you.

When you populate your Amazon Author page, you can

advertise your brand (i.e. your niche and author voice),
create a bond with fans, both actual and potential, and
add your Author Page URL to your business card and email signature, thereby directing people to your books, which are all in one place. For example, mine is http://www.Amazon.com/author/lynnespreen.

You not only feature your books all in one place; you also gussy up that place with the following window dressing:

Up to eight photos of you or your topics, and you can choose one to enlarge and serve as your headshot (and you can change it any time you like)
up to two videos (book trailer or just something you shot at home; maybe even a short vacation video of the place that inspired your latest novel.)
If you’re on Twitter, and you should be, you can set it up so your latest tweets appear automatically (although as of this writing, the Twitter interface is going through some reconfiguring, so you won’t see it.)
You can automatically publish your blog posts to your Author Page.

All of the above help readers feel they know you, which builds interest and loyalty. When I see an underutilized author page, it seems as if the author doesn’t care about that. Here’s an example.

Now here’s an example of an Author Page that’s fully utilized. Which one seems more interested in reaching out to readers?

My page updates every time I publish a blog post or tweet on Twitter. I can change out the photos as I choose. Now all I have to do is write more books! (I’m halfway through the sequel to Dakota Blues.)

If you are interested in claiming and updating your Amazon Author Page, start here: Where to Go to Create or Update Your Author Page. All you need is your User Name and Password on Amazon (if you don’t have one, create an account.) They’ll walk you through it, it’s free, and it’s simple. Then you can market your book while you sleep.

If you have any questions, ask me and I’ll do my best to help you with this.