With Amazon being one of the most popular places for readers to buy books, just having your book available on Amazon doesn’t mean readers will find it or make a decision to buy.
Here are some simple ways to get more eyes on your book in the jungle of Amazon—most of which you can perform from the comfort of your couch or computer chair—to ultimately help you sell more copies!
1. Start with an Author Central account. Amazon gives authors a lot of control and exposure by allowing you to create a free Author Central account. Once you create your account and claim your book(s), you can build out your author profile by including your photo, bio, blog feed, videos, event announcements, and Twitter feed. Your author profile link will be featured on your book’s sales page with the bio fed directly onto to the page, allowing visitors to learn more about you. As an added bonus, you can also view your sales history here.
2. Add more content to your sales page. Often times the description submitted with a book to Amazon gets squished up on the page and just doesn’t look good. From your Author Central account, you can format the description and add additional detail. You can also share a note from the author, reviews, and other details. For my latest book, I chose to publish the entire Table of Contents in the “From the Author” section, adding more keywords to my book page to improve search and giving page visitors a clear view of the contents. Whatever you do here, take full advantage of the opportunity to expand the details on your book page to better capture the interest of potential readers.
3. Participate in the “Search Inside This Book” program. Amazon allows shoppers to preview the contents of a book by serving up pages within the book, which recreates the experience of browsers in a bookstore thumbing through the pages of a book. This feature can make or break a purchase decision and if your book is done well, it should enhance sales. Also, legend has it that participation in this program improves the chances of your book being found based on keyword searches from the text. To participate, create a Seller Central account and follow the instructions to submit your book. It should take just a few days for approval.
4. Get more reviews. The fact is that positive reviews help to sell books on Amazon, and the more reviews you have, the better. While you should never manufacture reviews, you can certainly go out and simply ASK your readers to take action. In fact, make a habit of periodically reminding your readers via social media or your email newsletter. This should be an ongoing effort.
5. Link your print and Kindle editions together. If your book is available in print and ebook formats, you can alert Amazon to link up your respective sales pages so that potential readers can see that multiple editions are available. Here’s how:
- Go to http://kdp.amazon.com.
- At the footer of the page click on Contact Us.
- Click on Product Page, then Linking Print and Kindle Editions.
- Fill in the requested information: ASIN for the Kindle version and ISBN for the print edition. Once submitted, you should see your pages linked together within a few days.
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