Setting up your Amazon Author Page and International Amazon pages

This post is the sixty-second post in a series about writing a novel. You can check out the list of past topics at the end of this post.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about your author bio and author photo. One place you should definitely list this bio is on your Amazon Author page. Don’t miss out on this free option to let your readers know more about you.

I’m always amazed at the number of authors who do not set up this free page. Here readers can find out more about you and can easily see all your books as well as feeds from your blog or posts on Facebook. There is no excuse not to have an Amazon Author page.

Setting up your Amazon Author Page

Go to Amazon’s Author Central and log in.

The Welcome screen invites you to update your author page. This is more than just listing your author bio (which of course should be on the page). You can add photos, blog feeds, videos and even includes your latest Tweets or Facebook posts.

Click to view your list of books to ensure that Amazon is showing all the books you have written. If any books are missing, simply click the “Add more books” button, which will bring up a search screen for you to locate your other books.

Clicking on any book in your book list will bring up details about that book. Here you can edit the product description, add snippets from professional reviews, add notes from the author, inside flap or back cover information as well as your author bio. Whatever is entered in these sections will appear on this book’s Amazon page.

At the top of the page, you will see Sales Info. Here you can look at your Author Rank or your Sales Rank. Author Rank can be viewed in various increments from 2 weeks to 2 years or all available which will how your rank since you began publishing on Amazon. This information can help you evaluate how well any marketing endeavors have fared.

For Sales Rank, the main screen shows the rank of all your books (actually 5 books per page). Clicking on one book will let you see the sales rank over 2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months or all available. It shows both your paid and free book sales. This is updated hourly.

The last tab at the top of the screen is Customer Reviews. Here you can see every review any of your books have received.

International Amazon Author Pages

When you published your book through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, you probably went ahead and selected the Worldwide rights option which allows customers from around the world to purchase your title on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.de (Germany/Switzerland), Amazon.fr (France/Belgium and Monaco), Amazon.es (Spain), Amazon.it (Italy), Amazon.co.jp (Japan), Amazon.com.br (Brazil), Amazon.com.mx (Mexico), Amazon.com.au (Australia), Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.nl (Netherlands), and Amazon.in (India).

Updating your U.S. Amazon Author page will only have this information showing on the United States and the UK sites.

In order to create author profiles for a few of the other Amazon websites, you will need to set up Amazon Author Central profiles on those respective sites. Right now, you can only do this on the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan sites. India brings up your US Author picture but will not allow you to input an author bio or any blog or website links.

Here is a list of the Amazon Author Central sites that you should set up with profiles. (My German one is shown above.)

USA – https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing?

UK – https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/gp/landing?

Germany – https://authorcentral.amazon.de/gp/landing?

France – https://authorcentral.amazon.fr/gp/landing?

Japan – https://authorcentral.amazon.co.jp/gp/landing?

When you go to the German, France and Japan sites, you will probably either need to have your English version of Author Central open or use a translation page (Google has one, or they are easy to find by a quick Internet search.) I found it easier to have my U.S. page open and since the format is the same, it was easy to answer the questions and get my books and bio listed with very little use of a translator.

You will have to decide if you want to translate your bio into the language of that site or leave it in English. I have seen authors giving reasons for both scenarios. However, since my books are in English, and I am only expecting those who speak English to buy them, I left my bio in English too.

You may be thinking why do I need to set up all these author profiles. People in these countries speak a different language. Does it matter if I have an author profile?

Yes, it matters. English is the most popular second language in the world. Even if English isn’t the primary language of some of these locations, many people still speak it, read it or are trying to learn it. And when these readers find one of your books, they will want to know more about you and what else you have written. Your author profile page is an excellent way to get readers interested in you as an author and to form a connection with your readers.

Previous topics

#1 – Deciding to write a novel – Writing Myths

#2 – Three areas to develop before starting to write a novel

#3 – Finding a Story Idea and How to Know if it “good enough”

#4 – Developing Characters for your Novel

#5 – Major characters? Minor Characters? Where does everyone fit in?

#6 – Developing the Setting for your Novel

#7 – The importance of developing conflict in your novel plot

#8 – To Outline or not to outline 

#9 – The importance of a story arc

#10 – The importance of tension and pace

#11 – Prologue and opening scenes

#12 – Beginning and ending scenes in a novel

#13 – The importance of dialogue…and a few tips on how to write it

#14 – Using Internal Dialogue in your novel

#15 – More dialogue tips and help with dialogue tags

#16 – Knowing and incorporating back story into your novel

#17 – Hinting at what is to come with foreshadowing

#18 – Tips for writing different scenes in your novel

#19 – Dealing with Writer’s Block

#20 – Killing a Character in your Novel

#21 – Keeping things realistic in your novel

#22 – Establishing Writing Goals and Developing Good Writing Habits

#23 – Using the five senses and passive voice in your novel

#24 – The benefit of research in fiction writing

#25 – Novella or Novel, Trilogy or Series – decisions for writers

#26 – Avoiding Plot and Character Clichés

#27 – Novel Writing – Endings and Epilogues

#28 – Fantasy Novel Writing – World Building, Dragons, Magic and More

#29 – Finishing your First Draft

#30 – Your Second Draft and Beyond

#31 – Picking Stronger Words and Watching out for Homonyms

#32 – Omitting unnecessary words in your novel

#33 – Beta Reader, Proofreaders and Copy Editors

#34 – Knowing your grammar or at least using a grammar checking program

#35 – Using a Revision Outline during your Novel Editing

#36 – Editing Techniques: Taking a Break and Reading Aloud

#37 – Publishing Options for your book

#38 – Self-publishing an ebook decisions

#39 – Picking Your Book Title and Your Pen Name

#40 – Investing in an eye-catching book cover

#41 – Writing an awesome book blurb

#42 – Deciding on Front Matter for your novel

#43 – Deciding on Back Matter for your novel

#44 – Formatting your eBook for publication

#45 – Pricing your e-book

#46 – Selecting Categories and Keywords to improve your Novel’s visibility

#47 – Book Promotions: Cover Reveal and Pre-Orders

#48 – Publishing your novel with Amazon and KDP Select

#49 – Publishing your e-book with Smashwords or Draft2Digital

#50 – Marketing your E-book

#51 – Finding your Book’s Target Market

#52 – The importance of Book Reviews and how to get them

#53 – Is it worth it to offer your book for free?

#54 – My results from offering my novels for free

#55 – Amzon’s Kindle Countdown Deals explained and my results

#56 – Selling your book through book ads

#57 – Using a Book Trailer to promote your novel

#58 – Offering your novels or short stories as a box set

#59 – Deciding whether to offer your book as an audio book

#60 – Taking your book on a virtual book tour

#61 – Writing your Author Bio and selecting an Author Photo

Quote of the Week – November 28

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.” ~ C.S. Lewis

The morning rush is driving me crazy

Every school morning with my daughter seems to end the same way – with me yelling at her to hurry up.

Lexie is not a morning person. She is like her daddy. She is slow to wake up and the kind of person who can keep hitting snooze on the alarm and going back to sleep. I am not this person. I tend to pop awake but even on the days where I am dragging, I know I need to get up, pack the kids’ lunches, get them ready for school and so on. So, I get up and do it. I may drag for a few minutes, but I trudge through the routine until I am awake.

Jase is like me. While he sometimes does fall back asleep, usually he gets up, turns on the light and then climbs back in bed to eat his breakfast in a half awake/half asleep stage. Yes, both kids eat their breakfast in bed. We have never eaten breakfast at the table. It is usually a breakfast bar, cereal or something easily transported to their rooms or even the living room. Maybe if they ate at the table, they would wake up easier. But then again, I wouldn’t be down there as I have my own morning routine. No one likes eating at the table, so it is not a battle I am willing to have.

One day before Thanksgiving break, it was a pleasant surprise for me to go into Lexie’s room to find her already awake and watching on her iPad. By 7 am she was dressed and in my room asking if I was ready. Of course, she wasn’t fully ready. She still had hair and teeth to brush, socks and shoes to put on, and medicine to take.

Ten minutes later, I am back to yelling at her to hurry up.

Ugh.

I hate this. I hate yelling at her to hurry up. But she seems to run at a snail’s pace. Everything seems to take so long with her. I attribute some of that to the fact that she is trying to watch her iPad and get ready at the same time. She can’t brush her hair and watch something or talk to you. It just doesn’t happen.

I guess I am spoiled with her brother who I never have to tell to hurry up and get ready. He wakes up, gets ready and leaves for middle school without much guidance. (I do have to remind him to brush his teeth.)

I know something needs to change.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” ~ Albert Einstein

The problem is figuring out what works not only for me but for Lexie. I know right now that neither of us enjoy mornings. She hates waking up. She hates me yelling at her. And I hate the yelling too. I hate sending her off to school upset. It makes her day start off bad, and it makes mine start off bad.

The next day my husband got involved in the morning routine. It took a lot of reminding Lexie to stay on track and get ready. But it worked. She was ready on time with no yelling from me. A good start but now we have to keep up with it or if it doesn’t work find something else that will because yelling is no way to start the morning.

A time to say thanks…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Since today is Thanksgiving (for those of us in the US), I wanted to take a moment as an author and blogger to give thanks too.

Thank you…

to those who have read my books…I hope you enjoyed them as much as I have loved writing them.

Thank you…

to those on Twitter, Facebook or other blogs who have helped promote either my books or my blog. I appreciate everyone of you!

Thank you…

to those who follow or read my blog. I hope you have found some interesting or helpful information here.

Thank you...

to my family for the love and support in my writing career. I would not be able to do any of this without you!

Quote of the Week – November 21

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.” ~ C.J. Cherryh