The following article is adapted from a wonderful newsletter shared recently by Steve O’Keefe, author of Set the Page on Fire: Secrets of Successful Writers. It outlines ten ways you can promote your books on Amazon—as well as ten ways you SHOULD promote your books on Amazon.

1. Register, Claim, and Fix Your Amazon Author Page

Amazon Author Central (https://author.amazon.com/claim/welcome) enables you to register as a book author and claim your books. You can add a blog feed (from your main author blog), videos, photos, a bio, and more. Steve wrote a detailed article for IBPA on how to claim and complete your author page here: https://www.ibpa-online.org/blogpost/1734581/309773/The-Amazon-Makeover-by-Steve-O-Keefe.

An Amazon author page can act as your home page on the internet (if you like to use it for that purpose). From there you can promote yourself as an author, talk show guest, consultant, expert, speaker, and more.

Steve O’Keefe’s Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-OKeefe/e/B001HD0BJ4

John Kremer’s author page: https://www.amazon.com/John-Kremer/e/B001H6L2T4

2. Fix Your Amazon Book Pages

You can control the content on the pages for your books. Amazon provides six bins you can fill with content, including Editorial Reviews, Inside Flap Copy, Back Cover Copy, and About the Author. You can put anything you want into those bins, within reason, such as excerpts, reviews, special offers, rights information, tour schedule, etc.

But don’t be annoying or too aggressive. And don’t link to any site outside of Amazon (Amazon does not like to send people outside of itself when people are reading about books to buy).

3. Add a Media Kit to Your Website

A good media kit, the key to promoting your book to a variety of audiences, is foundational content for a book website. Your kit should contain a single-page printable summary with Contact Info, Book Summary, Author Summary, Book Cover, Author Photo, and META data such as dimensions, pages, ISBN, etc.

Steve recommends an index to Best Lines, Power Paragraphs, and Best Excerpts, along with Keynames, Keyplaces, and Keywords. You should also include and update Author Endorsements and Book Endorsements. And, of course, you can add all that onto your Amazon Book and Author pages.

Check out this wonderfully complete media kit for Words Whispered in Water: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fgJI0dZvI09JBmJGMsEuSPT2Y8SRVILhHM0OQVeHNR4.

4. Review Books on Amazon

Review books in your field, books you like, books you’ve just read, books Amazon associates with your book (both in the Amazon ads as well as on your book pages), and books by authors Amazon associates with you. When you do a review, always link your name to your Amazon Author Page and your book title to your Amazon Book Page.

You don’t have to write long reviews, but you should show that you read the book (or at least scanned it). A one-sentence review can often get more attention and be more effective. Most important, make sure your review enhances your credibility as well as the credibility for your book.

Besides reviewing books on Amazon, you can also post your book reviews to GoodReads, Facebook, Twitter, your website, and more. Again, with links to your Amazon Author Page and Amazon Book Page.

Note: If you start doing effective book reviews that help sell books, you can ask for review copies from the publicity department of book publishers.

Here is Steve’s book review page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AFAEINMZMSHSFDABB5CJDQ5NR3OQ.

For the other six points in this article, go to https://bookmarketing.substack.com/p/10-free-things-you-can-do-to-promote.

After you finish reading the other six points, subscribe for the free version of my book marketing newsletter or upgrade for a small price to the paid version with extra issues, free books, free audios, and free videos—all to help you sell more books. - John Kremer