Author Phyllis Z. Miller: Opportunities to Promote Your Book

Please welcome Phyllis Z. Miller, a fiction and non-fiction author, and co-founder of the online marketing company Miller Mosaic, LLC. Phyllis presents a special guest post today in which she asks, “Are You Taking Advantage of the Opportunities on Amazon and Facebook to Promote Your Book?” She generously offers her sound marketing advice for all authors. Thank you for sharing these practical and informative guidelines with us today, Phyllis.

Phyllis Z. Miller:

To be or not to be on Amazon is not the question. In my opinion any author whose books are not on Amazon is shooting himself or herself in the foot. 

And any author whose books are not in ebook format on Amazon is also missing the boat. (Whether to use KDP Select, in which your ebook is exclusively on Amazon for 90-day periods, is not a consideration for this guest post.) 

What is important for authors is ensuring they are taking advantage of the opportunities on Amazon, followed by the opportunities on Facebook, that can help get their books in front of targeted prospective readers. 

Let’s briefly look at the top opportunities: 

First, do you have a robust Amazon public profile?

While this is available for everyone with an Amazon account, it is especially valuable for authors who use the marketing strategy of writing reviews of books in the same genre as the ones in which they publish.

Amazon allows you to have a “signature” automatically attached to your name when you write a review. You can use this signature to encourage people to click on your name and signature in order to go to your Amazon public profile. On your profile you can have information about your own books.

(There are some exemptions to when this automatic name and signature appear, and I describe one of the exceptions in my ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK.) 

Second, whether you utilize a review strategy on Amazon, it is very important that you take advantage of having an Amazon Author Central profile (sometimes referred to as an Amazon author page).

If you are an author with books on Amazon and you have an U.S. Amazon account, you start by going to authorcentral.amazon.com and getting your Author Central profile. (If, for example, you are an author in the U.K., you can start by going to authorcentral.amazon.co.uk ).

Definitely upload a headshot photo (preferably the one you use in connection with your book marketing) and take advantage of the other profile opportunities, including bringing in feeds from your blogs.

This headshot photo and the link to the profile appear on your book’s page on Amazon (you do have to scroll down to find this), encouraging readers to learn more about you. And, of course, all your books are featured on that profile.

(Often you have to tell Author Central that your books are your books or that the Kindle format of a book with the same title and why you should be linked to its physical book.)

For an example of an Author Central profile, see mine at amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller.

Then there is the very, very important topic of which Amazon categories your books are in. I highly recommend Aggie Villanueva’s book AMAZON CATEGORIES CREATE BEST SELLERS. I have been following her advice in order to get attached to my books the best Amazon categories for each book. 

Now to switch to Facebook: 

Besides your personal profile on Amazon, you can have an author Facebook Page. And on this Page you can have an Amazon store featuring your books! This way you make it easy for people interested in your books to buy them.

In my ebook TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK ON AMAZON AND FACEBOOK I provide step-by-step instructions on how to get the above Amazon and Facebook features. The ebook is quite short – it is intended to be quickly read once, then you sit down at your computer and follow along with the steps.

And for those authors interested in KDP Select, there is excellent information on this topic in Jeff Bennington’s book THE INDIE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE. 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is a fiction and nonfiction author, including the 3-book HOW TO SUCCEED series for teens and young adults.  She is also the co-founder of the online marketing company Miller Mosaic, LLC which builds websites for clients and coaches them on Internet marketing.

I now have a brand-new second TOP TIPS short ebook -- TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO MARKET ON THE INTERNET WITH PICTURES. (See http://amzn.to/Oa5Cmb )