Amazon gives authors a fair amount of control and exposure by allowing you to create a free Author Central account: http://authorcentral.amazon.com/. As soon as your book is published and available on Amazon, you should create your account immediately.
Once you launch your account and claim your book(s), you can build out your author profile by including your photo, bio, a link to your blog feed (which will automatically display your recent blog posts), videos, event announcements, and Twitter feed. Your author profile link will be featured on your book’s sales page, allowing visitors to learn more about you.
Another important benefit of the Author Central account is that you can also view your sales history. Amazon aggregates sales data from Book Scan, and will show you the number of units sold each month, along with the geographic region where those sales occurred. Not all sales are reported here, for example sales in some brick and mortar stores will not appear here, but it will give you a good idea of your book’s sales history on Amazon.
Boost Content on Your Book 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 last 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.
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