Amazon Author Central Tips 2021 Update

Amazon Author Central is one of the most underutilized tools by authors, but it shouldn't be. Amazon has created it to help authors sell more books. It has data you can't find anywhere else on Amazon platforms. There's opportunities to update your author profile and manage your book details. And at the end of 2020 they gave this tool a facelift and an upgrade. So if you are selling a book on Amazon and not utilizing this tool, then this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julie the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will help you grow your brand, build your business and make you money. The best part? You yes, you keep all rights and royalties. Amazon Author Central got a refresh at the end of 2020. You can now manage your author page, claim your books and view your reports for multiple marketplaces from a single Amazon Central site with with a single account. It's a cool update for authors with books in different Amazon stores. There's also some new reporting and it's mobile friendly now. But before we get into the update and take you inside the new view, you may want to grab a pen and paper because this is about to be a mini course on Amazon Author Central. Before we dive too deep, let me make sure you know what I'm talking about. It's a completely free tool that Amazon has given authors to increase their visibility, create their author brand and sell more books. If you don't have an author website already, this could be your hub until you do do. It's pretty cool. Here, let me show you. You could type in Amazon Author Central into your favorite search engine or go to author.Amazon.com you'll use your Amazon account to log in, but if you've never set anything up here before, you're going to have to follow the prompts to join for free. So sign in with your regular Amazon username and password. Oh, and your book must be available for purchase on Amazon. In order to set it up on Amazon Central's Amazon account. I'm going to take you inside my account, but I feel a little nervous showing you this because I'm really just as guilty as the next author of not keeping this up to date. I like to say that I'm like that professional cleaner that never cleans their house, or the car mechanic that never fixes their car. I'm too busy helping all of you and I haven't been following my own advice to keep this up to date. I don't even market my own books these days. But that's gonna change, I promise you. And you can hold me to it. By the time you watch this video, my book self published and succeed is going to be launched or launching and my lovely team at Book Launchers will helping me get my author butt in shape. All right, enough of that. Let's just pull the curtain open and show you what's behind the fabric. Once you're in, here's what it looks like. Okay, so here's what you see. Of course you won't see hello Julie unless you're blessed with that awesome name as well, but you will then see your books A link to view your profile and view it on a variety of Amazon pages in different countries. Weirdly, Amazon CA and Amazon Australia aren't on this list, but France, India, UK and a few others are. They also have a link saying Learn more about Author Central. I always read these things because Amazon actually tells you how to succeed with their platform. You just have to read the little details that they put in front of you. One thing to note is that they are encouraging you to upload your biography in other languages. They're also encouraging you to update your product description, your editorial reviews and other details right there in your Author Central account. And most importantly, they want you to add your books to your Amazon Author page. Now. Book Launchers clients, I want you to know that we have already done this for you, so it probably feels like it magically happens. You can log in as I've laid out here and you'll see. I still recommend you make notes though, because you're going to be responsible for keeping it up to date. You can also use this to gain insights from your book data. You can access US NPD BookScan data including sales by geography. Follow the Amazon sales rank and customer reviews of your books. Before I go into a couple of details on this page, let me show you what an author page looks like and how readers will access it. Just so you know what you're playing with here. So here I'll just click over to mine. You can have video, blog posts and pictures here. Of course you'll have your books as well. Also, let me show you Carol Sanford's page right here as she's a great example of an author with a lot of books and she has some that are traditionally published and some that she's self published. So let's go to this profile page and talk about what you should be doing here Number one Upload a professional author photo I'm going to link to a video at the end to help you get a great author photo because this is a no selfies allowed section. Do not post a selfie. Get a professional photo. Number two Include your well crafted bio, ideally with keywords in it. Just a couple of notes on your bio specific to your Amazon author page. Especially if you have multiple books, you probably want to focus on a more general bio that covers your credentials, awards, degrees, fun facts, and what's relevant to your most recent book. If your books are all in different genres or slightly different, you should also include social media and website links there. Number three Obviously your books. Number four Videos this can be book trailers or videos about you talking about your book. We always upload our clients unboxing videos to this page because those are popular. And of course this can also be interviews of you talking about your book as well. Number five A blog feed not sure how to find your blog feed and add it? Try typing in your URL +feed so book launchers.com feed. You can also add your Goodreads blog feed if you want. Number six Include pictures of any awards you've won and number seven Add your editorial reviews. Here's how you add reviews to your Amazon Author page. Select the Books tab, Choose the book you want to add reviews to. Select Add under Editorial Reviews and follow the provided instructions. Preview the review and when you're ready, make sure you hit Save now. Previously there was a step you needed to take to create your custom Amazon Author page URL. I don't see that here, but assuming it's still still here and I don't see it because mine is already created, then you should do that. Couple notes on video Ensure the video meets Amazon's requirements. Either mov, mpg, avi, FLV or WMV format. Just read their small print. It has to be smaller than 500 megabytes and less than 10 minutes long. One question that does come up is how do I remove a book from my Amazon author page? A physical book can't be completely deleted on Amazon, which is why we always recommend that authors are completely ready to hit publish on kdp. If you've only published ebooks, then this a feasible option from Amazon's page. Your author page should list all editions of your book. Used copies of out of print books may still be available if someone lists them for sale. Many customers appreciate being able to find used copies of books, and Amazon makes it possible for that kind of sale to happen. So Amazon won't remove books from your author page even if they're out of print for that reason. If a book is incorrectly attributed to you, you would contact them. You can find the contact links in the help section of your author account. You can have up to three Author Central profiles on your Amazon Author Central account. This allows you to create different author pages for different pen names or pseudonyms that you may be publishing under. They have help on how to add a pen name in the help tag as well. Now, every quarter or so you should have a task set up to go in and update your page. Don't be like me. Make sure things are working and update with any new content that you think should be there. If not quarterly, then certainly do it every six months. We're almost done, but there's one last awesome thing that I want to share. There's some sales data in here so you can check out your book's performance. Go to reports/marketing and there's two things to check out here. Amazon Sales Sales Rank report. You can see your books and see all the formats and see how they rank there. And the cooler report I think is the book Scan report. I like this one because you get geographical breakdowns like I had a big buyer for More than Cash flow in Cincinnati. If I were running ads or planning live appearances, I might use this information to focus on areas where I have an existing fan base to leverage the momentum that was already there. There's also an Amalgamated spot for reviewing your customer reviews, also by format and also by Amazon. You can see if you have activity on different Amazon sites without going to all the places. This is a cool new feature. Oh lovely. Another one star review. All right. Gotta love the effort this person put into writing that review. I have a great video for you on how to handle 1 star reviews, by the way. Okay, well on that uplifting note, the main thing I want you to take away from this video is that this is an often overlooked and underutilized tool available to you. And please hold me to this. If my Amazon Author pages aren't updated by the time you're watching this video, call me out. With my latest book coming out, this should be updated. I should be all over it. So let me do that. Okay, I'm super curious. What other video topics should I cover in the next few months? And do you have any questions or comments on the new Amazon Author Central? Let's chat about all that in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet book launcher Swag like this fabulous noboringbooks mug or our oh so soft journal. We have new videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch everyone by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. You really are lovely to hang out with. Would you like to learn a little more and share a few more laughs? Okay, great. This video right here is all about getting a great author photo. A must for that Amazon author page. Or this one is on handling one star reviews. Also a must because when you do your job right as an author, you will get one star reviews, so you might as well know how to handle them. So click on the one you want to watch next. I'm in the mood for tea today, so I'll get that going and we can share a cup.