FOLLOWING AUTHORS AT AMAZON

A really cool thing happened to me recently.

I received an email from Amazon a week or two ago.

I almost deleted it. At first, I thought it was an advertisement for a book. I get those a lot.

But I noticed the subject line and realized it was different.

The email subject was: A Question about Your Book “Learn or Review Trigonometry: Essential Skills.”

My first thought was to wonder what was wrong. But it was good news, not bad.

The question was, “Would you like to share this release with your Amazon Followers?”

You bet I would! (Too bad I don’t have that many Amazon followers. But I’ll take what I can get.)

The email included a picture of my book cover, the title, and Yes and No buttons. I clicked Yes.

I published this book on June 10. I received the email from Amazon on June 26, a little over two weeks after the publication date. I responded Yes on the 26th.

According to Amazon, “…you may be invited by Amazon Follow to share a personal message about an upcoming release to your followers.”

It’s available by invitation only. I’ve published dozens of books, and this was my first invitation. (Maybe I deleted a few others!! At least, this was the first invitation that I noticed.)

If you receive an invitation, when you click the Yes button, you must compose a message for your followers.

At 1:07 a.m. this morning, I received an email from Amazon. That’s about a week after I clicked Yes.

The subject states that I have 1 new update from people I follow on Amazon. Inside the email, there is:

• One of my pictures from my author page, but not the default main image. How and why they chose the image, I have no idea.
• Text: “Chris McMullen released and wrote a personal message about Learn or Review Trigonometry: Essential Skills.”
• A See More button.

When I click the See More button, I come to an Amazon page with:

• the same author page picture
• my name as a hyperlink (click on it and you visit my author page)
• the message I had composed
• the cover thumbnail
• the title of the book as a hyperlink (to visit the product page)
• the list price
• and the review count (0 reviews as of now)

One thing I regret is that the Look Inside still hasn’t activated, even though the book has been out for a few weeks. Usually, the Look Inside shows up quickly, but this time it seems to be stuck. It’s odd that Amazon didn’t check this out and either delay my message until it was resolved or speed up the Look Inside process. (The Kindle edition doesn’t have a Look Inside because I used the Kindle Textbook Creator, but if the print Look Inside shows up, that should show up with the Kindle edition, too.)

FOLLOW AUTHORS ON AMAZON

First, if you’re an author, whether you’ve self-published or traditionally published, you should follow yourself at Amazon.

That way, if you ever get the chance to send a message to your followers, you’ll get to see firsthand what it looks like from the other side.

Next, you should visit the author pages of your favorite authors at Amazon and follow them.

Amazon might let you know when their new books come out.

Visit the author’s Author Central page. From any of the author’s books, if the author has an Amazon author page, you can find a link to it with their picture and biography on the book’s product page.

Once you reach the author page, click the large yellow Follow button under the author’s picture.

LEARN OR REVIEW TRIGONOMETRY

Paperback: http://amzn.com/1941691021

(Has a #1 new release tag, though the sales rank is around 300,000 right now. Nice thing about some nonfiction categories is that you don’t have to sell dozens of books per day to get extra exposure, though there was a magical day a couple of weeks back where it sold 15 copies.)

Kindle: http://amzn.com/B0106X7NL4

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

• Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
• Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
• 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
• Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

Comments

Click here to jump to the comments section.