How to Improve Your Amazon Sales Page

.

.
One of the greatest benefits of selling your e-book (or paper book) at Amazon is the space they provide you to “advertise” your work.  If you are a savvy author, take advantage of this marvelous opportunity and insert as much information about your writing and yourself as you can. 

Look at it from the standpoint of a reader; which e-book or book would you buy: The one that shows just a boring cover, name of the author, and a very short introduction to the book – or the one that:

– has a beautiful cover
– an all-embracing editorial review
– an authors bio with a portrait
– lots of customer reviews

So, what can you do to improve your appearance on Amazon and improve book sales? A lot indeed! Starting with an appealing cover, detailed editorial review, a marvelous author’s bio and lots and lots of customer reviews from readers and journalists that are writing for newspapers book review articles.
.

APPEALING COVER
Rule # 1 for your book cover at Amazon is NEVER to use a white background! White on white is barely visible and your book will not stick out, especially when you chose to have the text in black.  Your book cover should be:

• be aesthetically appealing
• appeal to the book’s intended audience
• represent the book’s contents
• clean, readable font
• bold or complementary colors
• light on dark for dramatic effects
• visit a bookstore to research book cover designs
• test the cover in thumbnail size to make sure it looks good at Amazon’s website
  .

Hire a professional with a portfolio of great book covers you have admired, or one at Freelancer  or Elance  or just get in touch with your local college / graphic design class to find a young and eager cover artist.
An appealing book cover can be even done through the use software, such as Bookcoverpro.com,  if you are computer-savvy and creative / artsy.
.

YOUR EDITORIAL REVIEW
Write as much about your book as possible and use all the space you get from Amazon:Editorial Review—350 characters

From the Author, From the Inside Flap, and From the Back Cover—8000 characters
About the Author—2000 characters (All characters are including spaces, single page in 12point arial font is approx. 2100 characters)

See the detailed information on Amazon:
https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?ie=UTF8&topicID=200649600

.
AUTHOR CENTRAL & AUTHOR PAGE
At the Author Central page on Amazon you get lots of free marketing help for your book set up your Author Central account if you haven’t already done so.  In Author Central, click the “Profile” tab. You will see sections for adding or changing your biography, photos, videos, speaking or other events, and blog feeds.  Sections are always available in Author Central, so you can add or change the information later.

It can take 3 to 5 days for the Author Page to appear on the Amazon.com site – so start right now adding content to your Author Page. If you add or make changes later, they will appear on the Author Page within 24 hours of the time you add them in Author Central.  There are lots of features for you to choose from – as more you add, as better:

• Your Profile
• Your Biography
• Uploading Photos & Videos
• Managing Your Blog Feeds & Your Events
• Managing Your Bibliography
• Uploading Book Images
• Managing Editorial Reviews

Get all the information at: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help

Uploading Videos: You can share video interviews, book signing videos, and other videos with readers. Your videos should focus on specific features of your books or your experience as an author. If you publish at both, Amazon AND on Barnes&Noble, also use B&N’s video feature: “Interviews, Meet the Writers: Video”.

Hire a professional video maker to create your book promotion and upload the video to YouTube, as well as your own website, your blog or these of your friends, your Facebook site (ask all your friends to spread the word and to re-tweet).
.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT BOOK CATEGORY
Readers have to FIND your book first to buy it. There is a large list of possible categories to put your book in:  the categories that best match your books based on their content. Study carefully each book that is competitive to yours and see in which categories the bestsellers among them are listed. Narrow down your list as much as possible. You can email Amazon’s KDP and ask them to get your book into the proper categories, telling them the exact line, such as this:

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Reference > Writing > Writing Skills
More about the right genre in a former article on this blog.
.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS
Anyone registered as an Amazon.com customer is entitled to write customer reviews. They do not have to buy your book at Amazon, to write a review. Customer reviews are in order from newest to oldest with the exception of “Spotlight Reviews” that are based on how well the review was written and how helpful it was deemed by our customers.
.

BRING IN MORE VISITORS:
What else can you do to bring visitors to you your Amazon page?

1. Create a direct link from your book to your Amazon book’s page
2. Link from your personal webpage, your email addresses, your blog, Twitter, Facebook etc. to your book’s page at Amazon
3. Create a signature with your book link for your email and also for any forums in which you participate. Whenever you write and end with your name, your signature with the direct link is always inviting people to go to your Amazon book page.
4. You can even put your Amazon link to your book’s page on your business card
5. Join the Kindle Forum to ask questions, get help and support from other authors.

.
Use every bit of support you can get from Amazon, and also what you can find on this blog, and your book – if written well – will be a success! These tips are (mostly) valid on other book sales pages, such as Kobo, Barnes & Noble or Apple.

.

<><><><><>

.

If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/seminar

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 750 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

.

.
Hyper Smash

Pingates