Today I will be exploring Amazon Author Central. What is it? How do you set up an Amazon Author Page? What can it do for you and your audience?

Let’s start with Amazon Author Central. What is it?

Amazon Author Central is your go-to place as an author who is selling books on the world’s largest online bookstore. There, you can find links to tools you can use as an author to write your books and sell them on Amazon. You can find the reviews people have left for your books as well as your sales statistics. I think the most interesting and useful thing on Amazon Author Central is your Amazon Author page. Here is an overview of what you and your readers can find on your Amazon Author Page.

Readers will find:

• Your profile, including your profile picture and your website address(es). You can also include video, such as a book trailer if you choose. There is also a follow button so that your readers can get your latest posts and be notified when you publish a new book.
• Your books and their prices. These are found at the top for quick reference.
• Your Blog Feed. Yes! Your posts (or at least the first couple of sentences and a link to the post on your site) will automatically appear on your Amazon Author Page, within 24 hours of posting on your site. It’s a great way to connect readers to your website(s).
• Your book details. These include the formats your book is available in, their prices, and how many stars reviewers are giving each book (on average).

Here is a screenshot of my Amazon Author Page to give you an idea of what it looks like, overall. You can also go there to see it for yourself.

How do you set up your Amazon Author Page?

It’s actually quite simple. Amazon does a great job of walking you through the process. And, if you have any problems, they respond to email questions within 24 hours. I am going to give you a super simple overview of where things are on your Amazon Author Page dashboard, to make the process even easier.

Here is a screenshot of my Amazon Author Page dashboard. I’ve circled some things to pay extra-special attention to.

Starting at the very top of the dashboard is a link to your actual page (sorry, I didn’t circle that). This is handy because your page will look different from your dashboard.

Under that is your Biography. This will show up under your profile picture on your Author Page. I’ve circled the link you can click to either edit your bio or delete it completely.

Directly under your Biography is where you can list your blog(s). This allows your feed to show up on your Amazon Author Page within 24 hours of it being posted.

To the right of your Biography, is your Amazon Author Page URL. You can share the URL with your readers by using the social sharing links or copy/pasting the link wherever you like.

Under the URL is your Profile Photo. This is what readers will see when they come to your Amazon Author Page. It will also show up directly on your book’s sales page (which incidentally includes a link to your Author Page).

Finally, In the bottom right of your dashboard is where you can upload video.

Adding Books to your Amazon Author Page

Now that your page is set up, You will want to add your book(s) to your page. Doing this is usually straightforward. Go back to your Amazon Author Central Dashboard. Not your Page dashboard. If you can’t recall how to get there, just click this link, and log in.

Next, click on the tab at the top that says “Books.” You can see in the screenshot below that “Books” is underlined in orange.

Once you’ve gotten to the page where your books will be, you will see a message asking if there are books missing from your page. Click the orange button that says, “Add more books.”

Next, type the title, author name, or ISBN into the search box to automatically find the listing on Amazon.com.

It will pop up like my book did, here.

When you see your correct book, click the orange button beneath it that says, “This is my book.” You will immediately see the following:

“Your book was successfully added. Please note that it may take up to 24 hours for the book to appear in your bibliography.”

Some important things to note

Once you add a book to your page, it can’t be removed without an act of Congress. So, if you aren’t sure you want your book on your page, wait to add it. This policy is in place in case someone want’s to get an old/used copy. That being said, you can make an appeal to Amazon, and if you have a good reason, they will remove it.

I hope you’ve found this informative. Amazon has fantastic tools available to authors. The Author Page is one of my favorites. Yet, many authors don’t set theirs up. It takes very little time and can lead readers to find other books you’ve written or will write in the future.

• Do you have an Amazon Author Page? Feel free to add it in the comments (I will check my spam folder to make sure none get lost).
• If you don’t have one set up, what’s stopped you from doing so?
• If you aren’t an author, have you ever looked at an author’s page on Amazon.com?

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace. My books are available at Amazon.com:

The Memory Maker’s Journal 

Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.

In today’s post, I will be giving you a behind-the-scenes look at me putting together my next book, Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with your Cancer. Today, it’s all about making your book look good with the right formatting.

Making Your Book Look Good starts with no formatting at all

I’ve found this to be incredibly important. To help you see the transformations process that happens when you are making your book look good I have taken some screenshots of my manuscript along with some hints.

Putting Your Best Font Forward

With print projects, I often forget about the importance of font until it’s time to publish. Then I scramble to make it more visually appealing. Originally the paragraph font was Courier New, 12 pt. with the lines at 1.5. The chapter headings were 20 pt.

It was boring and screamed, “self-published!” So, I decided to play around with it. I recommend looking at other professionally published books in your genre to see what they are using.

• After a little trial and error, I decided that Cambria was the font to go with for my non-fiction book. This change, alone, made a big difference.
• I then decided to change the font to 11 pt. and chapter headings to 18 pt. in the print copy of my book.
• I reduced the line spacing from 1.5 to 1.2.  Seeing the proof copy confirmed that this was a good decision.
• Still, something else was missing. It needed a little pizzazz. The subheadings needed to stand out without being obnoxious. I decided to simply go bold. I used these headings sparingly.
• The chapter headings were 18 pt. bold and italicized.

Getting everything in the right (or left) place

One matter of convention (though it really is personal preference) is what goes on the left and what goes on the right. When you open a book, the page on the right-hand side of the book is called recto. The page on the left-hand side is called verso. I believe making your book look good includes keeping (most) front matter pages as well as starting all chapters on the right hand (recto) side of your book.

I put the copyright page on the backside or the verso of the half-title page. I have seen it both ways and for some reason, I like it this way. Likewise, I center it for no good reason other than I like it that way. You can also left-align it if you like.

Center the dedication page. This is important.

Choose how far down the page you will have chapter title or numbers. This is also personal preference. I chose to start mine 2 inches down. and then the content down an inch further. If my chapter title was 2 lines, the content was pushed yet a half an inch lower.

Your paragraphs should be “justified” rather that “ragged.” Ragged edges are fine for online content such as this blog post, but the smooth justified text that matched up along the margins looks far better in your book.

Wait to add page numbers to your table of contents until the very end when you know exactly what page each chapter/section will begin on. Until then, just list the chapter titles. I began my table of contents 1 inch down rather than 2 so that I could fit all of the contents on 2 pages.

Easy as 1-2-3…or Not

If there was one thing that drove me out of my mind when formatting my book for print, it was page numbers. Getting them right is a huge part of making your book look good. I finally got them (mostly) right.

Some basic rules for making your book look good while formatting your page numbers are as follows:

Front matter pages should be left blank, but you still count your pages so that you know which page number you will be on when you do start to put the numbers on the pages.

You will begin actually numbering when you are on the Foreword or Introduction (if your book has these). If you have these sections (as well as the prologue, acknowledgments, and other sections of this type) you will number them with roman numerals. My forward started on the 9th page of the book so I numbered it ix.

Any blank pages should be left blank (no page numbers). Like the front matter, count the pages so that the next section has the correct numeral in it. This is where I failed miserably, though not for lack of trying. If anyone can figure this out, I would love for you to write a guest post on this topic, for me. I got the front matter numberless, but after that, it was all downhill.

The pages in the body of your book will be numbered with Arabic numerals.

Don’t Forget

It’s important to consider your headers and footnotes, as well. Their font doesn’t automatically change with the rest of the document.

Also, use care when deciding whether or not to use bullet points. They are a benefit to web-based work such as blog posts. They can also look good in print books. E books are another matter entirely. Readers can change font styles and sizes on their devices. When they do, bullet points get thrown all out of whack. Therefore, you should never use bullet points in an e book. What I do is create my print copy first. Then I make the needed changes to create a good e book.

When your work is stylistically and visually consistent, it will look more professional and will give your readers a better reading experience.

*Incidentally, as a rule, I spell numbers out except on web-based media where numerals are more eye-catching.

Coming soon!

Facing Cancer as a Parent:

Helping Your Child Cope with Your Cancer —->>>

I’ll be out of town this week and my internet might be unreliable. I would still love to hear your comments on your experience in formatting books, blogs and anything else you can write. I will definitely respond as soon as I return!

What are YOUR thoughts?

I’d love to hear in the comment section, below. I appreciate my readers as well as the writing community. To show that appreciation, I use Comment Luv. Just leave a comment below and your latest post will get a link next to it. Thank you!

About Heather Erickson

I am an author, writer, and speaker and homeschooling mom of 3. Since doctors diagnosed my husband, Dan with stage IV lung cancer in 2012, I’ve focused my writing and speaking on helping cancer patients and their families advocate for themselves and live life to the fullest, in spite of their illness. My goal is to help people face cancer with grace. My books are available at Amazon.com:

The Memory Maker’s Journal 

Facing Cancer as a Friend: How to Support Someone Who Has Cancer

Facing Cancer as a Parent: Helping Your Children Cope with Your Cancer

I also blog about living with cancer at Facing Cancer with Grace.