Often Overlooked Amazon Opportunities for Authors

(Reprinted from www.MillerMosaicLLC.com blog)

I have been working on marketing self-published books and ebooks, and here are some often overlooked Amazon opportunities:

Amazon store on a Facebook Page:

You can have an Amazon store on your Facebook Page. (See the Phyllis Zimbler Miller author Facebook Page Amazon store as an example.) Kudos go to Yael K. Miller for figuring out how to do this.

The basic steps are:

1. Sign up for an Amazon associate account — https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

2. Go to Associates Central — https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/network/main.html

3. On nav bar – click “aStore”

4. Click on “Add a Category Page”

5. Change category name, such as to: My Books on Amazon

6. “Add products” (you can rearrange the order manually)

7. The return to “Create aStore Pages” and click “Continue” to “Color and Design” to choose options for your Amazon store.

8. Click “Continue” to “Sidebar Widgets” and choose your options.

9. Click “Finish & Get Link” and choose “Embed my store using an inline frame”

10. Then copy link (change width to 100%) and go to your Facebook Page and use the “Static HTML: iFrame Tabs” app to create a customized Facebook Page tab.

Adding a book or ebook to your Amazon Author Central account:

As you add books on Amazon – whether physical or in the Kindle format – you must tell Amazon that these are your books.

You need to go to https://authorcentral.amazon.com and “Add a book to your bibliography” and claim the book as yours.

While the book may be added, what may not happen automatically is that, if you are adding a Kindle edition after the physical book is on Amazon (or the other way round), these two formats may not automatically be linked.

I learned about this issue when my father asked why his second book of short stories – BLOSSOM WINTERS IS DRIVING ON THE LOS ANGELES FREEWAYS AND OTHER SHORT STORIES – did not show both formats in one listing as Amazon did for his first book of short stories – THE LOVE LIFE OF HOWARD HANDSOME AND OTHER SHORT STORIES.

The answer is that often an author must contact Author Central to ask that this be done, and it can take one to three days to show on Amazon after the request is made. (This is especially important in order to ensure that the reviews of the same book are shared between both formats.)

Plus you want to check that all your books on Amazon, whether physical or ebook, have the “Look Inside” feature. (You can contact the Amazon team responsible for this at insidethebook-submission@amazon.com )

And then there is Amazon Studios, as Amazon has now entered the film business and screenwriters can upload their screenplays after carefully reading and considering the agreement.

(If you are interested in reading screenplays, check out my screenplays that you can download for free at Amazon studios.)

CreateSpace Kindle conversion note:

I had learned that $69 was the base price for a Kindle conversion by Amazon’s POD publisher CreateSpace of a book published in physical format via CreateSpace. I then asked for a quote for conversion of Shirley Windward’s THE EDNALOR MYSTERIES and was given the price of $165.

When I asked why so much higher, I was told by a support rep:

All books with a trim size that exceed 7 x 10 are considered a complex conversion and require more time for our Kindle Conversion team to perform the necessary steps to adapt your book to Kindle compatible format.

If you are publishing a book through CreateSpace and deciding on the trim size, keep this information in mind. You may want to choose a size smaller than 7 x 10 if you plan to have CreateSpace do the Kindle conversion.

And please add in the comments below any other Amazon opportunities for authors that may not be well-known.

© 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter and @ZimblerMiller on Pinterest) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, which helps clients with defining who they are and what they have to offer.