Just a bit of help for budding authors on Amazon
A while ago Amazon launched Author Central, a simple resource where an author can upload a profile that is attached to any books they may have published.
I have created a profile for myself on both the dot com and UK site (It appears you have to create these individually) which was a fairly painless operation.
The system allows an author to list their books, write a basic profile, add a nice picture, your twitter feed, video links, upcoming events (like signing and speaking engagements) and your blog feed (though not on the UK site, it seems).
You can also track sales information and customer reviews.
This is a pretty good service, generally speaking, and is very useful for the self-publishing author in particular as well as other authors.
The author profile is linked from your book pages under the section More About the Author. It displays the author image and links to the full author profile page.
Getting this set up is very easy.
First visit https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk - change the country for your need. Hit Join Now or log in with your Amazon account and follow the prompts. You will need to track down one of your books and link to it as part of the process, but it really is very simple.
Once you have signed up, you will be taken to Author Central. The two main tabs at the top you will initially be concerned with are Books and Profile. With any luck the books will appear automatically, but you can manually add them if you need.
The Profile tab lets you add a Biography (keep it snappy), Image, choose a short URL to help find the page, and add various other items of interest.
The help page warns you that it can take several days for the author page to appear. This confused me as mine appeared in minutes! Still, maybe that was a freak occurrence (or maybe the Help section is a little out of date).
At this stage I have no idea whether this is a really beneficial service or not, but my gut says that a) it wont hurt and b) for the curious reader it may make them a fan if it is written nicely and they feel they have got to know you a little more - always a good marketing philosophy!
