Setting up Amazon Author pages

Your Amazon page should be an important part of your ‘author platform’, as readers like to find out more about the writer behind a book – yet many authors are so busy writing they don’t have time to keep their page up to date. The good news is this only takes a moment once you have an Amazon Author account and at least one book published on Amazon. All you need to do is visit https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/ 

or https://authorcentral.amazon.com/ (US) and follow the instructions. 

You probably have a short author ‘bio’ and a suitable picture somewhere already. (I’ve seen research suggesting that readers like to see a picture of the author, so try to resist using a book cover, as I have seen some people do.) Readers can click on any of your books and be directed to the Kindle store where they can download the book in less than a minute. Also, any time you update your biography or 'claim' a new book through Author Central, About the Author will update on Kindle giving your readers access to the most recent information.

Make sure all your books are linked to the page

Amazon leave this to you as they can’t always be sure which are your books. Simply click on the ‘Add More Books’ button and search for books you've written by title, author, or ISBN and add them. While you’re there you can also click on any of your books to check and add information about them.

Copy and paste your details to the other Amazon countries

Unfortunately, updates you make to any Amazon site don’t automatically find their way to the other twelve countries – but all you need to do is copy and paste the bio and update your list of books and add videos when you have the time. (I use Google translate to understand the prompts on the non-English sites.)

Add your promotional videos

Promotional videos can bring your author platform to life and your Amazon pages are a great place to showcase them. Unlike some sites, you need to upload the video, rather than just add the YouTube embed code or link. You can ‘manage’ the order they are displayed and easily update them. I've had feedback from readers that they made the decision to buy my book after seeing the video, so they definitely work!

Create your personal Author Page URL

Your Author Page URL is an easy to share link to your Author Page on Amazon.com. You can use your Author Page URL in blog posts tweets. On your Profile, click add link next to Author Page URL. You can add any text up to 30 characters but it’s good to secure your author name before anyone else does. Check out my author page at this easy to remember url: Amazon.com/author/tonyriches

See 'Customers Also Bought Items By...'

And finally… under your bio you can see a list of other authors your readers are interested in. I find it helpful to see who these are and what I can learn by looking at their books: