How to Use Author Central as a Marketing Tool #WWow

If you want to appear as a serious writer, there are several resources/tools you need to have. The most obvious is a website, perhaps a blog, but have you thought about the ever apparent Amazon? When you click your author name, what happens? Does it take you to your author page? If not, you're behind!

HOW TO USE AUTHOR CENTRAL for your benefit

You'll want to use Author Central to be visible to your readers, to market yourself and to appear as a serious writer. Author Central is the first thing you should use to start building your brand!

How can this be a marketing tool?

1. Promote your blog, twitter and videos by connecting them to your Author Central Page.
2. Track your sales.
3. Track your author ranking.

What is Author Central?

Author Central is an Amazon service that connects your books on Amazon to your author profile. If you click on an author's name on Amazon, it'll take you to your profile and you set up that profile on Author Central.

Here's an idea of what you can do:

How do you create your account? 

1. Go to https://authorcentral.amazon.com/
2. Sign in with your regular Amazon account. If you don't have an Amazon account, now's the time to start one!
3. Go to the PROFILE tab and add your picture and bio.
4. Other options in the PROFILE are to add your Twitter handle, your blog's RSS feed, videos of your trailers and events.
5. Next, claim your books. Search for your book under the BOOKS tab and click CLAIM IT.

USING AUTHOR CENTRAL TO MONITOR YOUR RANKINGS

You can track three key items on Author Central:  book sales,  author rankings and customer reviews.

BOOK SALES - Found under the SALES INFO. Keep an open mind as sales figures sometimes come in slowly and are not up-to-date. Also, this is obviously only Amazon numbers.

AUTHOR RANKINGS - I'm not sure what good this data is, but it's interesting to look at, nonetheless. From what I can tell, your ranking goes up with more sales. Makes sense. You can also see how you play out in your specific genres.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS- Find recent customer reviews in the REVIEWS TAB. 

What I ultimately suggest is that you take an hour or two (or twenty) to set up your account, play with the features and see what you can do. Also, promote your page and let others know you're out there!

How have you used Author Central? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

Melinda Dozier is a contemporary romance author published by Crimson Romance and Swoon Romance. She is also Marketing and Art Director for a small publisher and spends way too much analyzing data for fun. Her current book is on sale TODAY for 99 cents! ONE LUCKY NIGHT can be found HERE and her Amazon page is HERE.