Marketing and Amazon Author Central!

#indieauthors #writerslife #amwritingromance #RomanceReaders #paranormalromance

Writing the books is a lot of work. Editing the books is a lot of work. Book covers, art, and video trailers, even more work. But it is the marketing that is so damn hard to me. I am not so great with face to face stuff. The internet fixes the anxiety issues a bit that way. I can ask people to look at my book rather than letting them look at me. (Please see my tiger for further clarification. LOL.) 
I have written a whole lot about my using social media to help me promote my books. But after speaking with another independent author via Twitter today, I realized that I have learned a whole lot of things about marketing and promotion of books that may not necessarily be common knowledge for other independent authors. 

This blog is all about my author walk even if I do use it as shameless self promotion of my work. But after chatting with the author of Live, Laugh, Masturbate, Randall McCandless, (This nonfiction, inspirational humorous look at one man's fight against cancer not once, but twice, in his life is well worth the money and the read.) I realized that there were a lot of things that I had to do in order to even begin my journey. (In many ways I am still at the beginning. Perhaps I will always be at the beginning of my author walk, but if that is true, so be it!)

There is a lot of information out there about how to write a book, how to edit a book, and how to create a cover. But if you choose to self-publish, there is not a lot of information about what to do next as far as marketing is concerned. I have spoken about setting up all of your social media accounts. I wish someone had told me to do that before I ever published my first book, but you live and learn. So, you have your social media sites in place. You publish your book. Then what? 
The next step is to leverage Amazon to work for you. You need to build your Author Central page. You will get an email from Amazon congratulating you on a successful publication. In that email, you will find a link to Amazon Author Central. You build this page with all of your author and book biographical information. You can add images, videos, link your blog, etc... I know this all takes a lot of time. But you want to do this. 
Once you have it set up, it will begin to look like the image here. That 'following box' is what you want. I of course follow myself so mine is grey, but yours will be Amazon yellow. When people see your book in the kindle store, they might look at it closer. If they like it, they will be offered an option to follow you as an author on Amazon at the purchase point and again when they finish the book. As you publish more books, be sure to go back and claim them so they populate here. If you are advertising more than one book at a time, this is helpful. In a way Amazon is giving you a landing page for your work kind of like having your very own storefront. In fiction, having more than one book available is always good. If a reader likes your book, they may want to read more of your work. So an Amazon Author central page is great way to get repeat customers.

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For example: Filth and Death was published on Monday. It is the eleventh book in the Draoithe series. Amazon will send out an email to all the readers who follow me notifying them that I have published a new book. It usually takes a few days, but then readers who have been faithfully reading the series become aware of it without needing to rely on social media advertising. That means that my social media advertising actually works better. My loyal readers return to read more of the dream. New readers find out about my books as I advertise the new book. They follow me. I am not really having to mass market email people. Amazon does that for me, keeping my budget as a starving Indie Author far more reasonable. Shameless Promotion. Grab your copy today at the debut price! This one is worth the money at 125,000 words. Good reading!

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I know this was a lot to chew on, but I don't see much out there dealing with this stuff. I will try to speak more on some of the other stuff I touched on this blog later. If you are an Indie Author and you want to self publish on your own, taking advantage of this tool is very important! In other news from the dream, have you guys seen the Storyboard Preview for Light and Dark Magic? It is up on YouTube! I should have it pinned on Pinterest shortly.

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I gotta run off and get my life moving on something new!. If you read, please remember to be kind and leave your reviews. 
Be Careful!
Happy reading,
​Ophelia Kee