May 2, 2011 – President of Outskirts Press

How to link to your book on Amazon

If you don’t yet have a published book on Amazon, it’s time to get published. And if you have a book on Amazon, you probably spend a lot of time trying different online marketing tactics to send people to your book’s sales detail page. If you don’t you should – -they’re not going to know about your book unless you tell them. And don’t just tell them about the book, send them to it.

So how do you “send” a link to a specific book on Amazon? I often see people include long, unwieldy links that are filled with superfluous Amazon code. Sometimes they even work. And often, those links contain information like affiliate codes, or cookie codes that could result in the link working for you, but NOT working for someone else. It’s best to use as clean and short of a URL (webpage address) as possible.

Amazon makes this easy. Just follow this convention:

domain name/program name/10-digit ISBN

Amazon’s “program name” for its forwarding function is called “dp,” perhaps short for “direct point.” So, for instance, to aim directly to Self Publishing Simplified on Amazon, which is our sample book and publishing guide, you would go to: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1598000810

That’s pretty short, and much better than the longer URLs you might be using, especially if you’ve ever wanted to TWEET the location of your book on Twitter or Facebook.

Here’s an even shorter path: http://www.amzn.com/1598000810 — When you only have 140 characters, every character counts. Here, Amazon has taken the “dp” program and put it within its own domain name “Amzn.com” which shortens the URL by 5 characters. Brilliant!

Amazon

How to add a Twitter Feed to your Amazon Author Central Account

If you’re a published author with a book on Amazon, you need to have an Author Central Account. This is pivotal advice I share in my book Sell Your Book on Amazon. And if you’re a business person, manager, entrepreneur or CEO and you don’t have a published book on Amazon, what are you waiting for?

Amazon’s Author Central functionality gives you some tools to establish your presence on Amazon. They recently added the ability to pick up your Twitter feed. Here’s how:

1. Sign-in to your Author Central account (or create one) at http://amazon.com/authors

2. Once you are signed-in click on your Profile button.

3. Along the right-hand side under “Photos” and “Videos” is a section headlined “Twitter.” Click the “Add account” link and provide your twitter username. It will start picking up the RSS feed immediately.

Amazon, branding, self publishing

How to add a video to your Amazon Author Central account

If you’re a published author with a book on Amazon, you need to have an Author Central Account. And if you don’t yet have a published book on Amazon, it’s time to get published.

Here’s how to add a video to your Author Central account:

1. Sign-in or register at http://amazon.com/authors

2. Once your are signed-in click on your Profile button.

3. Along the right-hand side under “Photos” is a section headlined “Video.” Click the “Add Video” link and browse the contents of your hard drive to upload a video. It must be under 10 minutes in length and under 500 MB.

In fact, that’s a good rule of thumb for any internet video. In fact, 10 minutes is a bit too long.

If you don’t have a video to upload, you may be interested in our Book Video and Distribution option, which you can order by clicking here. It’s available to writers and professionals regardless of where you published your book (although you’ll get a substantial discount if you’ve published the book with Outskirts Press).