The Writer’s Skinny on Amazon Market Central – by Melissa Rosati
WNBA-NYC member, Melissa Rosati, CPCC, is a certified professional co-active coach (CPCC), an adjunct professor of publishing at Pace University, and the owner of Melissa’s Coaching Studio, LLC. Her clients are writers, artists, and nonprofits in healthcare and the arts. In today’s guest blog, she shares her thoughts on how to grow your audience using data tools provided by Amazon’s Author Central. 
Amazon is the #1 bookseller in the world. You made it so. Amazon has over 150 million customers. But when writers talk about “getting on Amazon,” what does that mean?
Think of Amazon as a humungous brain. It is an algorithm that crunches our keystrokes and turns them into big data that can be sliced and diced to help readers find the content they are looking for on the site. As an author, you have the opportunity to use all of the tools Amazon provides to you for free. These tools make search and discovery easier for readers, allowing you to sell more books.
Start by going to Amazon’s Author Central and filling out your author page in as much detail as possible. Every bit of content is metadata and it is critical. For example, you can post as many as eight images, plus videos; your blog, Facebook fan page, and tweets can feed right into your author page. Like Google, Amazon is a huge index. The more content you index, the easier it is for people to find you. In fact, Amazon gives you a link to place in your email signature that will take people directly to your Author page.
I know, selecting the information and uploading it feels like drudge work. That’s the difference between so-so sales and increasing sales. Successful authors put in the time to do what others won’t. Amazon built the tools and made them free to you because it is in their best interest for you to be successful. You don’t need to reinvent the marketing wheel. Amazon will deliver your audience to you. But, you have to populate your profile with the data.
If you complete your profile thoroughly, you will see a sales increase within the first two weeks.
Ready to become a leading author?
From BEA, here are two Amazon podcasts about how to maximize sales:
