This week’s guest post was written by Phyllis Zimbler Miller, co-founder of the online marketing company Miller MosaicLLC.com. She is the author of fiction and nonfiction books, including the new ebook, “Top Tips for How to Market Your Book on Amazon and Facebook.” She blogs about book publishing and marketing at PhyllisZimblerMiller.com.
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One of the best free publicity features for authors on Amazon is one that appears to be “secret” because it is so often overlooked, especially by self-published authors.
This is an author’s ability to set up an Author Central profile, which is not the same as an Amazon public profile that anyone on Amazon can create and use for writing reviews on the site.
For an example of what an Author Central profile can include, look at mine in the screenshot above, or take a closer look on Amazon. The option to get a customized URL is relatively new.
Why Author Central Is Important
Besides the all-important headshot and bio, you can import several blog feeds, your Twitter stream if you have one, and add a video. The biggest advantage of an Author Central profile probably is that all your books and ebooks on Amazon can be displayed here in one place along with your bio, etc.
People on Amazon can get to your Author Central profile (if you have set one up) in at least three ways:
- If they type your name in Amazon’s browser field, your Author Central profile will be one of the choices returned in search results along with books by the same author name.
- If they have typed in one of your book titles and then are on that book page, they can click on your name right under the title at the top of the page.
- They can scroll down the Amazon page of one of your books until they come to the “More About the Author” section.
If readers click on the “Visit” link, they will be taken to your Author Central profile. Note that this profile is much more than just the biography that’s displayed on the book’s page.
The “secret password” to this publicity op: http://authorcentral.amazon.com (in the U.S.) and http://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk (in the U.K.)
You can actually fill out information in English on other Amazon country sites if you can read enough of that language to figure out what to do. And not all Amazon country sites may yet have this option, or as robust an option.
At the moment, the U.S. Author Central profile bio information seems to be automatically transferring to other Amazon country sites. In addition, you can go into the specific country site and add to that country’s Author Central profile bio. Your Amazon password tends to work across all Amazon sites.
I did this for my thriller CIA Fall Guy on the German Amazon site (amazon.de) because the book takes place partly in Germany. I added specific Germany-related info to the bio because I lived in Germany a long time ago.
Many More Options
Once signed into Author Central, you can take advantage of lots of other options. In fact, Amazon now owns Shelfari, a community for book lovers, and is using this subsidiary site to enable others, besides the author, to add information, just like Wikipedia does. Readers can comment on the characters, plot, etc. of a novel, and their contributions show up on the book’s page on Amazon.
Tip: Every so often, check out these Shelfari additions by others. I discovered that a well-meaning person had actually confused characters and given away plot points in the character descriptions of one of my novels. I simply made the correct adjustments.
Big advantage: As of this writing, you can only email Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) with issues about your Kindle books. But you can actually get an immediate callback during phone center hours for an issue on a topic that Author Central handles. I have found the people who call back quite helpful.
If you are an author and have not yet claimed your Author Central profile, do this immediately! Then gradually make your profile more robust.
Your readers will appreciate it.
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Phyllis,
Thanks for this timely and useful info about Author Central page Even though I already have one set up, I didn’t know that I could get a human on the phone, if needed, by calling Author Central. I also didn’t know they were affiliated with Shelfari now.
Joan,
Once again you keep us in the loop.
Flora, it’s Phyllis who is keeping you in the loop. I’m simply offering her the space for a very helpful guest post. Glad you liked it.
I agree that Author Central is important and much more flexible than we usually realize. Be aware also that whatever you put at the beginning of your Author Central profile will be visible immediately on your book page(s), whether or not readers go looking for it. So choose wisely what to put at the beginning.
For example, my book, Naked at Our Age, had just won two prestigious awards. Rather than going through the normal route of asking my publisher to add this to my book description and submit the change to Amazon, which would take weeks, I simply put news of the award in the first paragraph of my Author Central profile, and bingo, the news was out.
Smart, Joan! Thanks for the tip. Authors thank you, too.
On a personal note, I am glad to see my favorite two “Joans” connected!
Thanks for making the “introduction” Karen.
You guys win accolades for the best title of the year. Secret sauce indeed.
And Joan Price, congratulations!
And Phyllis, I highly recommend your Amazon/Facebook e-book. A fast read that clears up tons of misinformation for beginners.
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Excited about the new edition (expanded! updated! even more helpful for writers!) of The Frugal Book Promoter, now a USA Book News award-winner in its own right (www.budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo)
Carolyn, when I first read Phyllis’ guest post, I thought of you and wondered how you were using your Author Central profile. Thanks for stopping by.
Joan gets a huge amount of the credit for how clear this blog post is on a complicated subject. As I explain in my brand-new blog post “For Authors: Tiny Tips for Marketing on Amazon” (http://budurl.com/tinytips), Joan and I worked on the phone together to ensure this post was as clear as possible. (We’re both former newspaper journalists so we could easily do this in a spirit of cooperation.)
Do read my new post about the annoying “tiny tip” I just learned through a lot of back and forth experimentation.
Thanks to everyone who has written such nice comments here and to Carolyn for the recommendation of TOP TIPS. Plus a note to Joan Price — isn’t it great to not have to wait for your publisher to add new info!
Phyllis
http://twitter.com/ZimblerMiller
Phyllis, you pitched a great topic, your pitch right was right on target and I appreciated your willingness to let me make small little changes here and there. Do pitch me again. Love your guest posts.
Thanks for a very helpful post. I set up my Author Central profile within minutes and with ease. Hurray.
With gratitude,
Nancy “Broadcast Your Brilliance” Juetten
Hope you sell a ton of books, Nancy. Good luck!
[…] Secret publicity sauce on Amazon: Author Central profile […]
With havin so much content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright violation?
My site has a lot of unique content I’ve either authored myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my permission. Do you know any methods to help protect against content from being stolen? I’d genuinely appreciate it.
Bill, this happens to me occasionally. I just call or email the offender and ask if they realize that the content on their site is mine. This is usually all it takes to get them to cease and desist. If they refuse, I would gently remind them that copyright violation is punishable in a court of law, or something like that.