When I teach classes on “Amazon Rules, Tips & Sales Success!,” the subtitle of this presentation is, “Yes, it is Possible and Yes, You Can Do This…”  I love this subtitle because it’s absolutely true.  I know that it can be confusing to try to sell your books on Amazon, and the hardest part is that everything about the retailer and its sites is constantly changing.  So, once you feel like you’ve almost got it down, suddenly there’s more to learn.

Your Book’s Page on Amazon

One of the first things that people ask me when they put their books up on Amazon is about the “Look Inside” feature.  People want to know if they can choose the pages that are shown or if they have to take whatever they can get.  Unfortunately, you can’t designate this.  Their computer chooses what’s shown.  There’s no human being who flips through your book to decide which 11 pages are best to show.  It’s a computer bot that makes that call, and you may notice that they switch it up.  Every couple of months, it’s a different set of pages that are shown inside.

While the “Look Inside” feature isn’t something that you can choose, it’s incredibly important.  The reason why this feature is so crucial to you and your marketing is because people have learned to browse books online.  They have been trained to do so, essentially.  If you had asked me if that was possible prior to Amazon’s existence, I would have bet money that there was no way that such a huge chunk of the American population would be trained to browse online for new books and new authors.  I would have insisted that they needed to visit bookstores and libraries, but that’s just not the case anymore.

The “Look Inside,” feature gives all of those Millennials, and others who are fine browsing books online, a chance to flip through and sneak a peak to help ensure that what they are browsing is really what they want to buy.  

Amazon Prime and Pricing

Another critical aspect of your book’s page is that it shows whether or not your book is available through Amazon Prime.  I always make sure that my book shows to be a part of that program because Prime members can get the book within two days without having to pay for shipping, and if they want it delivered in just one day, it only costs $3.99 for that quick delivery.

Amazon Prime has become a very important program in the Amazon marketplace, and there’s even an option on some of the pages that people can click if they only want to see books that qualify for Prime.  I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t make your book available through Amazon Prime, so I’m going to say that you should always make sure it is available as part of that program.  Your book’s page should always include the “Look Inside” feature as well.

One more aspect of your book’s page that I want to point out is that Amazon allows you to show your book as discounted.  On one of my pages, for instance, it shows that the retail price of my book is $16, but this price is struck through on the page, and the discounted price shows to be $12.49.  When Amazon decides to discount a book, it’s usually because the book is doing so well that they are trying to draw more sales. 

So, if my book, The Write Way, were doing very well one particular week, like it was selling a couple of copies an hour, Amazon would dramatically discount the book.  That’s because they would want to encourage shoppers, or potential purchasers, to buy from them.  They don’t want people buying the book from Barnes & Noble, or IndieBound, or any other book retailer. They want people to buy from them.  This is another feature that’s taken care of by a computer bot.  There’s no human being sitting there, with his finger on his cheek, going, “Hmm… Amy’s book is doing really well.”

Another reason why books will sometimes get discounted is when a relevant topic is doing well.  Let’s say, for example, that Dateline NBC ran a story on Wikipedia, and suddenly there was a slew of books being purchased on that topic.  Well, if you had written a book on that topic, your book would probably be discounted by Amazon while this craze was occurring.  Rest assured that the discount isn’t coming out of your cut.

If you sell your book through KDP, through IngramSpark, or directly through an Advantage or Seller Central program, the amount of money that Amazon has contracted to give you does not change.  It doesn’t matter how deep the discount is.  So, if they discounted my book $3.51, that amount comes from their cut.  They’ve decided that they are going to take that cut out.  I would still get paid the same amount of money for each sale that’s made from my book.  Hopefully, that makes sense.

About Author Central

Having your page fully flushed-out with a great description and a good bio is important.  You may be asking, “How can I get the best bio and the best look?”  That brings me to my next suggestion for Amazon.  Do you currently have an Author Central page?  I hope that the answer is “yes”.  If not, you should go to Author Central (http://authorcentral.amazon.com) and build your page.  I have set up my bio, complete with a picture of myself and a list of the books that I have published.  My bio is also full of search engine terms and keywords that people might be using in their searches.

I use keyword terms like, “book expert,” “book sales,” and “book marketing,” in my bio.  I try to use as many keywords as I can that people may be using in their searches on Amazon because I want them to find my Author Central page and my books.  Aside from my bio, my books, and my picture, I have included a link to my blog posts on my Author Central page.  Every time I add a new blog post, it shows up on my Author Central page.

I recommend that after you’ve taken a hard look at your Amazon book’s page, you then go to your Author Central page and make sure that you have taken advantage of all of the different elements that Amazon offers.  This includes Twitter feeds, blog feeds, your biography, your bibliography, and video.  All of this can be added.