Tag Archives: Amazon

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Authors, Don’t Buy or Create Your Own Website!

Use Your FREE Amazon Author Page, Instead

Create and Manage Your Amazon Author Page

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/profile?ie=UTF8&pn=irid3840097
Whether you are a traditionally published or self published, if you have at least one book released on Amazon you can set up your Author page. It’s FREE, hosted on one of the world’s most popular websites (Amazon), and does not require any special knowledge of web page coding.

From your Author Page you can:

  • Update your Amazon Author Profile
  • Add book trailers, videos, blogs, your blog feeds, your Twitter feed
  • List speaking events and author appearances
  • View and add all your published book titles
  • Add your bio, headshot, and extra content for each of your books.

To add books to your bibliography, claim your books in Author Central (you can do this via your book’s ISBN or title) Then:

  • Make sure your author biography is current
  • Add a head shot on your profile page. (This is the author image that will appear on each your Amazon book page listings)
  • Keep your “About the Author” page current, interesting and engaging

Begin by clicking on the tabs at the top of your Author Central Page

Amazon Author Central nav bar

Welcome to Author Central

We encourage you to add or update information about yourself for your Amazon Author Page. Here’s some quick links to important places:

Add Book Trailers

Add a video book trailer to your author page. You can also share video interviews, book signing videos, and other videos with visitors. Your videos should focus on specific features of your books or your experience as an author.

Add a video to your Author Central Page

Your Bibliography

The Books tab in Author Central lists all your books. If any of the books display incorrect information or are not correctly assigned to you, it’s easy to correct.

Books by (your-name-here)

These are the books on Amazon’s (your-name-here) page. Click on any book below to view additional product details or submit corrections.

Are we missing a book?

If a book you’ve written does not appear in the selection below, you may add it now. Please note that only one edition of each work is shown in this list. Click an edition to make sure all related editions are also listed.

 

In the Search field, enter the book title, ISBN, or author name and click Go.

Once you’ve found the missing title, click “This is my book” below that book. If Amazon’s catalog lists your name as the author, you’re all set.

 

Your Biography

Amazon recommends you write your bio offline and keep a saved copy. Once you have proofed your bio, copy the text and paste it onto the Author Central Profile Page. Click on the Author Page tab, then edit  “Biography.”

Biography                                                      Screen Shot 2016-03-26 at 11.42.21 AM

Eddie is founder and CEO of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. He is also an award-winning author with Harper Collins.

Learn more about Eddie at EddieJones.org

 

Please follow the below guidelines to ensure your submission is acceptable:

  • Include a minimum of 100 characters (about 20 words)
  • Use plain text only – no rich formatting (bolds, italics) or HTML
  • Be creative: share anecdotes or interesting details about yourself with your readers
  • See a sample biography.

Click Preview biography to review your work. When you’re satisfied, click Save biography. Your uploaded biography will appear on the Author Page within 30 minutes.

 

Your Blog

Promote your blog from your Amazon author page. When you add your blog’s RSS feed, your latest posts will appear on your Amazon author page. Author Central supports all versions of RSS and Atom blog feeds. Posts created before you add this feed will not be imported. If you want previous posts to appear on the Author Page, you will need to re-post them on your home blog.

Example RSS feed URLs:

http://www.omnivoracious.com/atom.xml

http://www.aldenteblog.com/rss.xml

http://www.chordstrike.com/index.rdf

Specify an RSS feed for your blog

When you add a blog feed, you are linking to a blog you’ve created elsewhere. Whenever you update your blog, the blog teasers that appear on the Author Page on Amazon.com update automatically, within 24 hours of being posted on your blog.

 

Speaking Events

Announce your speaking appearances and book tour stops. Keep your events calendar current. This gives readers a chance to connect with you in person. Plus, groups, schools and churches may invite you to speak!

After you’ve created an event, it will be displayed in the Scheduled Events section. Customers can see the detail of the Event: Venue, location, time, a short description of the event, and the book you’re touring with. This information appears on the Author Page and on BookTour.com. Your personal information is not shared with BookTour.com and remains confidential.

Your Author Central page is your book signing table at the front of the world’s largest bookseller. Use it!

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How To Remove Duplicate Listings of Your Book on Amazon

Merchant Seller Multiple Books Spam

This week Southern-fried Fiction author Ane Mulligan discovered her novel Chapel Springs Revival was listed multiple times on Amazon.com. This is a growing problem for authors, publishers, and Amazon. In addition to selling these duplicate listings at higher prices, the proliferation of listings also clutters the already over-crowded Amazon store. You might think Amazon would address this issue on their own, but so far they have chosen to place the responsibility of policing this spam issue on authors and publishers. Here is a screen grab of duplicate listings of Ane’s book.

Chapel Springs Revival

Only the top listing is from Ane’s publisher, Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Other listings of Ane’s book are more than the list price. They also don’t offer any other versions like Kindle or audiobook. (See below screen grab.)

Chapel Springs Revival-1

Nor do they have the reviews.

Chapel Springs Revival

So how do you get these spam listings removed from Amazon? Easy.

Contact Amazon Author Central from your author page. You have the option to have them call you or email. Ane chose to call. They immediately returned her call. She explained that Chapel Springs Revival is her book but it’s offered by other vendors. She asked them to please make sure that all versions are linked to the one offered by LPC. In this way the correct retail price, all reviews, and all versions will appear on one and only one listing.

This video explains how to remove duplicate listings of your book from your Amazon Author Central page.

 

Thanks, Ane and Normandie Fischer for bringing this solution to our attention.
EJ

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Look for eBook Sales to Remain Flat in 2015

The stunning increases in ebook sales from 2012 to 2014 led many to wonder if print books were about to become obsolete. Some predicted e-books would soon represent 50% to 70% of all book sales. Then late in the first quarter of 2014, growth rates slowed. After years of double – and triple-digit increases, ebooks remain at around 30% of revenues for the publishers who report their sales through the Association of American Publishers.

Rise of the Machine
With first-generation dedicated e-readers, consumers could only do one thing – read. But with tablets and phones, the distractions of email, social media updates, and video on demand, pull casual readers away from ebooks, thus dampening sales.

An estimated 80 percent of 18 to 24 year olds own a smartphone.

The growth in smartphone and tablet use offers more eReading opportunities but also more distractions.

Apple Owns the Tablet / Smartphone Market
In tablets, Apple continues to dominate the U.S. market with about 80 million users. Consider:

  • A third of tablet owners use them for reading.
  • Tablet owners are the source of 42% of ebook purchases.
  • An estimated 21 million people read books on their phones but account foronly 7% of ebook purchases.

So Where Do eBooks Go in 2015
The biggest threat to new authors and new titles is the glut of high-quality low-cost ebooks.

The quality ebooks – especially self-published ebooks – has dramatically increased competition.

A decade ago, publishers constrained book supply by publishing a limited number of new titles each year. Not anymore. With the introduction of ebooks, every author can be found on Amazon. This rapid growth in the supply of ebooks has eclipsed demand. This means most new ebooks will sell substantially fewer copies than previous new releases.

Where Does eBook Pricing Go in 2015
Down. During the first years of the ebook revolution, large publishers refused to discount their ebooks. Most tried to sell in the $14.95 to $19.95 range. Meanwhile, small publishers and self-published authors were happy to earn royalty rates of 70% and budget-conscious consumers loved the low prices.

FREE and 99 cent ebooks allowed unknown authors to gain new readers and establish careers. No more.

In the last year, large publishers have stepped up their price-cutting and begun offering temporary promotions on titles from big-name authors. In 2015 these temporary promotions will give way to permanent lower prices on backlist titles from big names and more aggressive discounting on recently released titles.

Will Free work in 2015
As the market becomes flooded with free ebooks, FREE will lose influence. With the glut of FREE, high-quality books, good isn’t good enough anymore. To reach readers, an author must deliver an emotionally satisfying read. This holds true for both fiction and non-fiction. If readers aren’t giving your book four or five star reviews and using words in their reviews like, “wow,” “fantastic” and “amazing,” your book probably won’t stick and sell long term. Books that resonate with readers turn consumers into evangelists.

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Five Star Blessings, One Star Review

Five Star Blessings, One Star Review

Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.  Luke 6:28

“This book was a simple waste of my time. It was a full three hours that I cannot get back.”

“Don’t waste your time. I struggled to get almost half through and finally just skipped to the last chapter. It wasn’t funny nor entertaining. Most if the characters were morons. Awful, just awful.”

“Save The Buck!! Please!! Heed my advice! Don’t waste the .99¢ and more importantly: Don’t waste your time reading this dribble.”

These comments are what some people think of my books.

If you write and your books appear on Amazon, you will be judged. This is the life of an author. Negative reviews can kill a book. Moreover, they can crush a writer’s spirit. When I see a negative comment about one of my books, my normal reaction is to reply with a deadly zinger.

I’m good with zingers – just ask Cindy. Or my wife. Or anyone else who has dared to point out my flaws. That’s the way of the “flesh.” Fight back, crush, and destroy.

Christ received a lot of one-star reviews. He heard comments like:

  • “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” (Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.)
  • “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” (Don’t you know bad writing when you see it?)
  • “So he is the King of Israel, is he?” (You think you’re a novelist?)

This year God impressed upon me the need to humbly accept criticism and let it go. If you know me at all, you know how tough that is. Here’s my new strategy for dealing with negative reviews.

Prayer. Yes, prayer. Not for improved book sales but for the person who wasted 99 cents on one of my books or lost three hours of their life reading my “dribble.”

Please, this is not an invitation to heap abuse on my books just so I’ll pray for you. If you want my prayers, ask. But from now on when someone writes a negative review of one of my books, I pray for that individual and ask God to bless them. Obviously, I don’t know how God answers those prayers, but I trust that person’s circumstance or heart is changed.

Praying for those who post honest but painful book reviews may not be the best book marketing strategy, but it’s hard to move forward when you’re hauling a cart full of resentment. We can’t all write five-star books, but we can offer five-star blessings for those who don’t like us.