Episode 42:
Boosting Book Sales:

Recap & Takeaways

• 03:03 Finding and sharing your Amazon Author Page
• 05:41 Anatomy of an Amazon Author Page
• 09:27 Your Amazon Author Central account
• 10:14 Customize your URL
• 10:39 Professional headshot
• 11:15 Author bio
• 11:27 Your library of books
• 12:42 Reports & Marketing section of your Author Central account
• 15:32 Benefits of optimizing your Amazon Author Page

Transcript for Episode 42: Boosting Book Sales: Unleashing the Power of Your Amazon Author Page

Hello and welcome to Episode 42 of The Author Switch Podcast. I’m your host, Carma Spence, and I am so excited about the information that I’m going to be sharing with you today. It’s going to be all about boosting book sales by optimizing your Amazon author page. Now, while I was doing the research for this to make sure that I had the most current and up-to-date information, I discovered that most people don’t have the most up-to-date and current information out there.

So I literally went to my Amazon page and made sure that I had all the pieces to share with you because Amazon has changed its author page and taken away things you used to be able to do and sort of rearranged things. So I’m going to be talking about how you find it, the anatomy of it, and then what you can do to optimize it so that when people find it, they are more compelled to follow you, and which will help them learn about your upcoming books and buy them.

Sound like a plan? Yay, let’s go.

So before I go into the meat of the episode, let me introduce myself, just in case you are new to my world. Now, I have been in PR and marketing for 30 years, mostly in the corporate world, but also entrepreneurially, if that’s a word. And. I started my publishing journey, now I’ve been a writer since I was a toddler, but I published my first book 16 years ago.

And since that time, I have published a total of five books with one of them having a second edition. So you could consider that six, I still count it as five. Two of my books have made it to bestseller and one won three awards. That’s Public Speaking Super Powers. I’m also certified in author marketing and the StoryWay methodology. So I know a little bit about marketing stuff and because I’ve applied it to my books, I know a little bit about marketing books as well. I’m also the founder of AuthorDiagnostics.com and Authorswitch.com as well as it’s associated sub website brands, Authoneering.com and BookMarketingClub.Com.

So let’s get to today’s topic. How does someone find your Amazon author page? Including you if you’ve never seen it. Well, the easiest way is to go find one of your books on Amazon, and then underneath you’ll see your name, and it’ll be a hyperlink. You click it. Ta da! There you are.

There is your Amazon author page. And that’s probably how most people will find it. But there’s another way people can find it. You can tell them. Now, what I recommend when you’re telling people your Amazon, number one, use your tailored bespoke URL that you can get through your Amazon Author Central page, and I will talk about that a little bit later.

Use that when you’re sharing it and share your Amazon Author page on social media. in your email signature, on your business card, if you still use one, or your virtual business card, if you use one of those. Include it on the bio in your Kindle books. And include it on your website. I recommend having it on your About Me page, your Contact page, and your My Books pages so that when anyone finds any of your books, they can easily find all of your books.

Now, if you only have one book, a lot of these tips will still work. But the magic, where the magic really happens is when you release more than one book. And they don’t have to be full books. They can be short books. In fact, starting in January, I was originally going to be this month in October. I’ve moved it up to January so that I can make sure to have really high-quality books.

I’m going to be launching a book a month. And part of the reason why I’m doing that is because I don’t know how it happened, but I started off, I looked one month, and I had 200 followers. I looked the next month and I had 2000. And why is that great for me? Whenever you release a book, Amazon emails all of your followers to let them know that you have a new book.

And if only 5 percent of those people buy your book, If you’ve got a high enough number of followers, that could get you to best seller without promoting it anywhere else. So optimizing your Amazon author page and encouraging people to follow you is a really good strategy for marketing your books.

So let’s take a look at the anatomy. of an Amazon author page because some of these things you have control over and can optimize and some of them you can’t, but it’s a good idea to understand what’s there so you have an idea of what happens whenever you add a book to your roster. So the first thing that’s important is the URL. Now when you click your name on a book, it’s going to take you to the ugly URL and that means it’s going to say amazon.com forward slash author forward slash b7z And it’s not very pretty, and that’s not the URL you want to share. Stay tuned a little bit later in this episode, I will tell you exactly how to get your own bespoke, tailored URL.

The next thing you’ll see is an image. This needs to be a professional image. Make it a good image, and because it’s going to be small in some places and large in others, make sure that you can see it when it’s small.

The next part is sort of in half. On the left side is an excerpt of your bio. So you want to make sure like the first three lines of your bio are really compelling so people will click the read more and learn more about you. And then on the right is they call it the most popular. So this is the book out of all the books that you’re attached to sells the most. If you go to my page, more than likely that book will be a book that is an anthology that I contributed to, so I don’t get any royalties if people buy it.

And that’s because multiple people are marketing that book, and so of course it’s going to be more popular than the book that only I’m marketing. But it’s okay because the more books you have, even if you aren’t the sole author, it helps establish your authority. So contributing to anthologies is also a good way to get your Amazon author page in front of more people.

The next part of your Amazon author page is going to be the top titles. And so what that, that’s usually about, I think it’s about seven. Let me like take a quick look. It is, yes, it’s seven. There are seven of these books that are your top sellers. I happen to have more than seven books on Amazon, so my seven are complete there. If you only have one, it’ll only be one. But these are the top books that you are a contributor or an author of in sort of order of sales rank.

The next thing is the list of your books, and there’s a little dropdown menu next to it so that people can look at all formats, only Kindle, only hardback, or only paperback.

It’s their choice, but it usually defaults to Kindle because, of course, Kindle is unique to Amazon. Only Amazon sells Kindle books, so they are going to be, by default, pushing their Kindle books.

And then finally, at the very bottom is a section called Recommendations. And what this does is you have the option in your Author Central account to recommend your books as well as other people’s books, and that’s what shows up at the bottom.

And then at the very bottom, it shows your picture and name again and indicates whether you’re following the page. So right now, mine says, I followed me. Because of course I did, because I want to see the emails that go out to my followers.

So now let’s go into what I’m sure you’re here to learn about, and that is how do you optimize your Amazon page so that when people see it, they’re more likely to buy your books.

Now, I have given you some  tips already, but I’m going to go into them bit by bit and go a little bit more deep. So, the first part is your Amazon Central account. You want to go there so that you can create your own unique URL. So, for example, mine is amazon.com/author/carmaspence.

Because I, the first part, Amazon, and author, that’s, that’s, everybody gets that. What you put afterwards should be your name, because then it helps the SEO of your name. Now, to get to your Amazon author account, go to author.amazon.com. And then if you already have an account, you just log in. If you don’t have an account, you can create one.

You only need one book to make that worth your while. So the first thing I recommend to do is in the profile section, There’s a, there’s a button that says edit profile. You click that and it gives you the option to customize your URL and like I said, use your name. If you have a pen name, use that name.

Use the name that people are going to search for on Amazon and the internet.

Then, you want to make sure that you have a professional  image that matches your brand. So use the headshot that you use on LinkedIn. Use the headshot that you use on Facebook, on Twitter,  on TikTok, wherever people see you, they should see the same image here on Amazon and make sure it’s professional.

Because, if you’re trying to use your books to build authority and thought leadership, you don’t want a picture of you with your pet ferret, unless, of course, you write books about pet ferrets, then do put a picture of you with your pet ferret. And then you want to have a compelling bio that includes keywords that people would use to search for you.

That’s in the profile section. Now, at the top of your Amazon Author Central account, there are several tabs and under the books tab is where you add books to your library and you want to make sure that every single book that you are an author of, whether you are a single author, a co-author, a contributing author, if your name is on that book, get it on your bookshelf so that it shows up in your Amazon Author page.

Now, it’s very possible that those books that you contribute to that have multiple authors are probably, like they do on my page, they’re going to show up before your books. And like I said, that’s okay because other people are marketing it. Of course, those are going to be more popular. But it also means that lots of other people are marketing you indirectly.

And people will go, Oh, so and so contributed to this book. Think I’ll go check out other titles by that person. They go to your Amazon author page. They found you from a book you were included in, not your book. All works. All good. Go for it. It adds to your authority factor. Now the next section you want to visit is the reports and marketing section.

This is where you can recommend books and Amazon gives you three prompts for your books and three prompts for recommendations of other books. So the three prompts for your books are my most talked about book is. So whatever, which one you ever you think is the most talked about, recommend that one. My book I wish more readers knew about is.

For example, I use my book called Your Perfect Pie because I love that book. It’s an awesome book and people aren’t noticing it. I need to fix it. I haven’t fixed it yet. And the third prompt is if you are new to my work, I recommend starting with my book, whichever one. So if you’ve got multiple books, these are really, really good.

If you’ve only got one book, choose whichever one of these three prompts you think is the most appropriate. and get your book there.

Now, you can also recommend other people’s books, and I highly recommend doing this because it adds to your generosity factor. When you’re recommending somebody else besides yourself, then it shows that you’re a magnanimous, you support other authors, and it adds to sort of an SEO, Amazon factor, because when those authors find out that you recommended them, some of them might recommend you back in return.

And the three prompts that Amazon gives you for these books are, if you like my work, I think you’ll like X. This is a great one because especially if you’re in a niche where people might be looking, they will, if you recommend a book they enjoy, they’ll come back to you. So that’s a really good prompt.

 The second one is a book I couldn’t put down was, and this one shares with your readers a little bit into who you are. It makes you a little bit more personable and human. So for example, most of my books are nonfiction, but the book I put for that particular prompt is a fiction book because I love reading fiction.

I love reading science fiction and the book I just happened to choose was Raptor Red by Robert Bakker. Robert Bakker’s a paleontologist who wrote one fiction book and it was amazing. And the third prompt is a book that left an impression on me was. Now this is another one that helps your readers get a feel for who you are and what you might like and therefore gives them a taste of what you might be like in your own books.

Now, what are the benefits of doing all these things and optimizing your author page?

Well for one and I’ve talked about this already a little bit in this episode is It increases your number of followers. Remember, I said I had 200 and then suddenly I had 2000. All I can figure is that my marketing of my books in general, got people landing on my book pages and then clicking my name and following me to see what I was up to next.

And you want to grow that following because like I said, every time you release a book, Amazon sends out an email to your followers and says, Hey, Carma just released a new book. You might want to check it out. In fact, earlier this week, one of the authors I’m following is releasing a new book. And I learned about it from Amazon, and he hasn’t even talked about it yet.

So when you follow an Amazon author, you’re kind of in the know and you often will find out about books that the authors haven’t gotten ready to promote in their social media yet. So when you’re sharing your Amazon author page URL, let people know, Hey, when you follow me, you will be among the first to know about my next book because Amazon will let you know.

Another reason why you want to optimize is because people will find you and follow you. They just, they just will. And I don’t know how that happens all the time, but some of it is because you’re, you’re doing it. You’re doing the things to get people to know about your Amazon author page, but sometimes Amazon is doing the things to get people to notice your books. And when they notice your books, they’ll notice your Amazon author page.

Another reason why you want to have an Amazon central account is because you have powerful analytics tools at your fingertips. You can keep tabs on your follower growth. You can view your sales rank. You can review the reviews of your books across multiple books in one place, rather than having to go to each book page and look at them up.

You get access to Kindle Unlimited, which if you don’t want to have your book listed anywhere else, you could have all these really powerful marketing tools for marketing your book on Amazon using Kindle Unlimited. And honestly, I know authors who do that because as much as it’s kind of cool to see your book everywhere, most people will buy your book on Amazon.

So why not leverage that? In fact, the next five books I’m going to be releasing January through May are all going to be Kindle exclusive books. At least for the first several months, maybe even a year that they’re out, because I want to leverage that. And of course, this is how you, if you decide to do Amazon advertising, it’s from your Amazon author account that you access the Amazon advertising.

Now, the anatomy I’ve just talked about is on the U.S. Version of Amazon.Com. And I recommend that you always use that, no matter where you are, I recommend that you use that as your benchmark. Not because the U.S. Is amazing or anything like that, but because you know that Amazon is eventually going to roll that look out to all their places.

In fact, you used to be able to put your blog. onto your Amazon page. You can’t anymore. You also used to be able to put images on your page. You can’t do that in the U.S., but I checked Canada, Australia, the U.K., and for hoots and giggles, Japan. My images are all still on that. In fact, it’s still using the old format.

So, even though you can’t really upload anymore, they always roll out their changes to the U.S. first, so make sure you’re optimized there and then you get optimized everywhere else.

So that, my friends, is how you leverage Amazon Author Page for your benefit. Now again, if you only have one book, do it anyway, because it helps. But if you are going to be releasing more than one book, which I highly recommend, this Amazon author page becomes paramount for your book marketing success.

This is the end of today’s episode. I really hope that you got some value out of it. Again, this is Carma Spence, your host, saying ciao for now.

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