Making the Most of Your Amazon Book Page

By Sandy Diaz

Before you start spreading the word about your new book, you need to have your distribution plan in place. For most authors, this means listing your book for sale on Amazon.com.

Here are some tips before you begin sending readers to your Amazon page.

1. Book Cover: “A picture is worth a thousand words” holds true for book covers as well. It is essential your book cover be displayed on your listing. Amazon emphasizes this is the most important part of your page.

2. Synopsis: Readers need to know what your book is about, who should read it and why. Use your back cover or book jacket copy to give potential buyers reasons to purchase. This is your chance to entice people to buy your book!

3. Searchability: Optimizing how people can find your book or topic within the Amazon website will ultimately draw more viewers to your book’s listing.

From Amazon’s website:

To ensure maximum title searchability in our store, it is important that your book listing has complete and correct title, author and subject information. When a general keyword search is performed on site, our search engine will search for those words in the title, author, and subject fields of books on our site. Then, our search engine posts the results in order based on availability, popularity, and relevance.

In addition, we offer our customers numerous search tools to aid them in their hunt. It often depends on the type of search being conducted and the search terms that are entered that will determine where in the search results list an item will appear.

Amazon’s Bookseller’s Guide: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_lnav_dyn?ie=UTF8&nodeId=13685551

4. Search Inside: This feature allows publishers/authors to submit electronic files of their book’s content in PDF format and potential readers to browse. Again, this enables people to learn more about your book and gives them more reasons to purchase it.

Amazon Search Inside Tips:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=13685751

5. Reviews: Have your neighbors, family, friends, even your mailman post positive reviews about your book. The more robust your page is, the more enticing your book is to buyers. Tip: reviewer should refrain from “my son’s book is the best book I’ve ever read” Yes, we’ve seen this—and while most likely true—won’t endear people to buy.

A few simple steps will make all the difference in attracting book buyers to purchase your book
on Amazon.