HOW TO GET MORE AMAZONS FOLLOWERS
Amazon just announced a new tool designed to help authors generate many more Amazon followers.
First, let me give a little background:
- Customers can follow their favorite authors directly at Amazon.com.
- It seems ideal for both customers and authors, EXCEPT…
- Unfortunately, most customers don’t think to do this.
- Customers need to visit the author page and click the button to follow the author. Few do it, presently.
- Amazon lets you send an email to your Amazon followers after publishing a new Kindle edition. But first, you need Amazon followers.
So just imagine how awesome it would be IF…
- Amazon offered a tool to help authors generate more Amazon follows.
- Through this tool, Amazon motivated customers to follow authors.
- Many customers took advantage of this opportunity to follow authors of interest.
- Amazon follows rose from a mere dozen to hundreds or thousands for many authors.
- When you publish your next Kindle e-book, you could send an email through Amazon to hundreds or thousands of Amazon followers.
This seems like a distinct possibility now.
Here is how it works:
- Visit the product page for a print edition of your book. (Don’t have one? Check out CreateSpace.)
- Update: You no longer need a print edition if you publish through KDP.
- Scroll down to the bottom. Click on the option to list an Amazon giveaway.
- Check the box to require contestants to follow you on Amazon. (This is new!)
- Everyone who enters the contest now also follows you on Amazon.
- The next time you publish via KDP, you’ll be invited to notify your Amazon followers of your latest e-book.
In the past, you could only generate Twitter followers or require contestants to watch a YouTube video.
Now, you can require contestants to simply follow you on Amazon.
Finally, Amazon came up with an idea to help authors generate more Amazon follows.
It’s a win-win-win situation:
- Customers don’t have to hunt down the author through social media or newsletters. Follow authors right on Amazon.
- Customers get a chance to win free print books in exchange for becoming Amazon followers.
- Authors get exposure through the giveaway and grow their Amazon following.
- Amazon, of course, sells more books.
MY AMAZON GIVEAWAY
Click the following link or image to enter my Amazon giveaway for a chance to win my mathematical pattern puzzles book.
When you enter the contest, you’ll become one of my Amazon followers. It will keep you updated of new books that I publish.
AMAZON GIVEAWAY TIPS
- When your Amazon Giveaway goes live, tweet about it.
- Click the link in the giveaway email to tweet about it through Twitter.
- Be sure to leave the #AmazonGiveaway hashtag in the tweet. This posts your tweet to the Amazon Giveaway page.
- I’ve had better luck not adding an image directly to the tweet. (The cover for your book will probably still show automatically.) I seem to get more exposure by not including my own image.
- Add 1 or 2 relevant hashtags to your tweet.
Write happy, be happy. 🙂
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
Click here to view my Goodreads author page.
- Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
- Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
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The big drawback about following authors on Amazon Chris, is Amazon’s new idea of deleting reviews from anyone who ‘knows’ authors, even if they only follow them on Twitter, etc.
We hear that for Facebook and Twitter. But how about Amazon follows? These customers are following directly on Amazon, not interacting outside of Amazon. That’s interesting…
Reblogged this on J.A. Stinger.
Thank you. 🙂
Chris, I need a nap – but I still didn’t find anything when I scrolled all over my print edition page. Is it possible this isn’t everywhere yet?
Or am I just not seeing something? Where was it relative to reviews and product information?
If it’s very new, they might try it first on authors with lots of books; I have only the one, but I did do the print edition.
Thanks!
You’re searching the full site, right? Amazon Giveaway have been available for months, even on new books. Just the Amazon Follow feature is new.
Any way I get to the print page – actual search or typing in the link – I don’t see it. I’ll go check your page – to see what I’m looking for.
Thanks.
I’m thinking you set it up somewhere else – and it shows up on the product page IF there is one. Sorry, the brain has quit for today. Is that the way it works?
Okay, I finally figured out why you don’t see the option on your product page. It’s just a temporary issue. After searching through several products pages of my own books in multiple pen names, including some for which I’ve run a giveaway previously but for which the option wasn’t available today, I realized that it’s a “holiday” issue.
Print-on-demand books theoretically should always be “in stock” and available for order. But close to Christmas, things change. Some say “in stock.” Some say they usually ship in 1-2 days. Some say they will ship within 5 days. Others say they temporarily unavailable (including two of my hottest sellers for the holidays, yet my other hottest sellers are all “in stock”). I suspect part of the problem is that today is the 22nd and a lot of Prime customers are hoping to get their gifts delivered by the 25th.
What does all that have to do with Amazon Giveaways? Anything that claims it will ship in 3 days or more is temporarily ineligible for an Amazon Giveaway. Who wants to win a gift that won’t ship for several days? (That’s evidently Amazon’s reasoning.) This shouldn’t be an issue with print-on-demand, and for most of the year it isn’t, but for a few days around Christmas, it is for some books (which books? that’s another great mystery).
Once the stocking issue is resolved, I bet your book will be available for a giveaway.
Typical.
Chris, I’m in Australia and I don’t see the giveaway option on my page. I think it may be only for American authors at this stage. *sigh*
Yes, it’s only in the US Amazon store, presently.
Amazon doesn’t like to disappoint customers by promising things they can’t deliver (in all senses of the word) – I see nothing wrong with that; in fact I think it’s admirable.
Yes, typical. In a very good way.
Thanks for checking – I would have looked again in a few days!
I love how you keep finding all these new things, Chris, and posting them. Thanks!
Alicia, I said “typical” because Amazon offers most of these extras, which benefit authors, only to those living in the USA. I guess the rest of us in the world don’t count.
Hopefully, it will roll out to other countries once they perfect it. But the UK is usually next in line…
I hope so, Chris, because it’s such a good idea. But I think we Aussies will be waiting a lot longer.
Unfortunately, protectionist government has a lot to say about this upstart, Amazon – and other online retailers.
In trying to protect the Australian economy and companies, possibly they neglect the Australian consumers? Balance is incredibly hard.
It’s not Amazon – I still am amazed they can try to carry their system to the whole world, when the world is a patchwork (as it should be) of local economies, laws, and governments.
Consumers want what they want – and what they see other people having. But governments want slow easy change, not tech disruption. Sometimes established businesses and governments and entrenched interests (like big publishing in the States and the UK) have a good thing going, and have no interest at all in changing it.
In our modern world, these frictions are common.
This is my own opinion, gathered over the years from the media and my own experience as a consumer and reader of ‘news’ – I’m sure my own biases are deep and entrenched as well.
Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Blog.
Thank you. 🙂
Thanks Chris, will read more when I get back on my feet. Had to have surgery last week and have been away mostly.
Thanks again, Marianne
Hope your surgery went well, and your recovery does, too. Happy holidays.
Chris, you may want to revise this post to point out that ANYTHING (almost) can be offered as an Amazon giveaway to get more followers, views. etc., and the better the gift, the more subscribers you get. Soon, I am doing one giving away a $25 Starbucks card to the 9,000th (the highest number they allow) entrant who watches a video I posted on YouTube. People are a lot more excited about the Starbucks card than my book, and if I don’t get 9,000 entrants, the whole thing is free for me.
That’s a great idea, Valerie. Happy holidays. 🙂
Also, the “sorry you didn’t win” message is really important and can lead people to a lot more products. I’ve seen some of these that are awful. Before anyone creates a giveaway, they should enter a lot of them and get a feel for the format. One tip — the page already tells the entrant they didn’t win, so no need to waste characters repeating that. Last time, I used: “So sorry! But you can still read and enjoy this book and many others by clicking here: http://amzn.to/1NLSleX” It actually sold a few books!
Reblogged this on Musings on Life & Experience and commented:
Good advice from Chris McMullen.
Thank you. Happy holidays. 🙂
Happy Holidays, to you and yours, Chris. 🙂 — Suzanne
This is good news – particularly because its easy to do 🙂 I didn’t even know we could run giveaways of print books. Learned a lot this morning. Thanks!
You’re welcome. Happy New Year. 🙂
Reblogged this on TheKingsKidChronicles and commented:
Here is more information for authors on how to attract attention to your Amazon site. For my followers on FB, I’m sorry if these types of posts upset you or offend you, but this was supposed to be my FB author page, but FB was not able to distinguish between my friend/family page and author page, so this is what I do. I appreciate my friends and family who have stuck with me. I pray you will continue to do so. You can also unfriend this page and just send a friend request to my Aleta Kay page. It might work.
Reblogged this on The Way of the Storyteller:.
Thank you. Happy 2016. 🙂
Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
Thank you. 🙂
Reblogged this on Amanda's Book Nook for Adults and commented:
Any thoughts?
Thank you for the reblog. 🙂
Just found this out yesterday. I started my own giveaway for an Amazon product and have over 500 followers in little more than 12 hours! I plan to do this with my ebook as well! I’m not sure how to find out the number of followers after my sweepstakes ends … there isn’t an indicator on my author page.