Amazon as a Marketing Platform for Published Authors

As we have all heard the Social Media Revolution is here and in full swing.  No longer are outlets like Facebook and Twitter used for just personal use as we have seen its full integration with professional capabilities.

Blogging, Tweeting, Skyping, and Facebooking are all common terms you more than likely hear on a daily basis. As an author this new wave of technology should be making you extremely excited about the year to come.  Being an author is not as easy as many of you have come to learn.  Writing the content for your book was just step 1, where the difficulties begin is getting your book into the hands of your readers and taping into the marketing aspects. You can have a New York Times best seller on your hands but if you don’t actively market your work no one will ever know it exists.

Currently publishers around the world are gearing into full marketing programs and services that help assist their authors in social media promotion.  Social Media Marketing needs to be one of your top priorities in 2011 as what we learn now will be the building blocks for the future.

Now to Amazon.

What a lot of authors don’t realize is that Amazon needs to be treated and regarded in the same manner as you would Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Online distribution sites like Amazon.com and B&N are transforming the book industry in terms of retail.  Physical Book stores are fading in importance as the ease of clicking a mouse and selecting shipping options allows you to order your items from the seat of your couch. What is unique about Amazon is that their aim is to “personalize” your shopping experience. They want to customize your time on the site and give you the best shopping experience possible as this ultimately would lead to re-peat use or business for them.  

This blog is intended to help authors promote their published books on Amazon.  In this blog I will cover tips on how to improve your author presence on Amazon, how to get quality reviews for your book, concept definitions (Voting, Tagging, Listmania, etc.) and examination of the Amazon business model and what leads to its success.

With over 5 million books listed on Amazon for sale, this is a distribution outlet you cannot afford to overlook.

Kait