How Authors Build Visibility for Their Books on Amazon
Knowing how to increase your book’s visibility on Amazon is key to its success
Whether we want to admit it or not, Amazon is the largest and most successful bookseller among readers.
Why?
Because they have a reach worldwide, quick customer service, and they offer almost everything you need. Making it inevitable that it would be the best place for authors to sell their books to readers. But only if they manage to check off the right boxes.
See more about how Amazon rose to its status here: Three decades in, Amazon is still working to perfect its original bookstore business.
But before we cover these boxes you need to check off, remember this.
Once your book gathers 50 reviews on Amazon, it automatically gets bumped into a more visible category for shoppers.
If you are wondering why this is, it’s because when Amazon’s algorithm is notified that a book has gathered 50 reviews (otherwise meaning, 50 reputable sales), then it gets considered as a more valuable option to readers. In other words, once a book reaches 50 sales on Amazon, the algorithm will promote or recommend this book to more readers.
Now the question is, what boxes do I need to check off to gain more visibility on Amazon for my book?
A stellar book page
Take a moment and browse through some of your favorite books on Amazon.
What is it that you notice about some of these books? Is it the reviews they have gathered or the quoted reviews in bold in the description? Or is the extra content further down the page that shows book quotes or images from the book?
One of the keys to gaining more visibility on Amazon is by having a great book page on the platform.
Amazon’s KDP offers authors a great opportunity in the form of A+ content.
If you haven’t heard about Amazon’s A+ feature, it’s a way for authors to give readers extra information before purchasing.
Amazon’s A+ feature allows authors to place extra information on the book’s page which will hopefully increase the chances of a reader purchasing your book. Amazon provides a variety of templates to choose from, providing authors with the image sizes and text boxes to create your desired content.
Some authors will use the following for their A+ content:
Character spotlights
Memorable quotes
Early reviews
A sneak page of an illustration
By adding these special content features, readers know what to expect from the work and possibly be swayed towards purchasing as a result.
There are also traditional publishers who are taking advantage of this feature such as:
Credit of: https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Brennans-Tracey-Lange/dp/1250796229
In addition to the book and author spotlight, the publisher also showed highlights from the book in boxes that had a similar background to the image with the clovers on it for a cohesive look.
For the book, Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score, the publisher chose to be simple, sharing a conversation between the two main characters with photos of the characters.
Where can this A+ feature be found?
This feature can be found in the marketing section of KDP and from there you can choose what marketplace you are based in. After that, you can create the modules you want and apply them to your ASIN. It was surprisingly easy to use.
When you create a module, it brought up photo examples of each type of module so I had an idea of what it would look like in the end.
Once I chose what module I wanted to proceed with, Amazon provided easy-to-navigate fill-in-the-blanks.
Photo: They provide the sizing you need for the photo image.
Title/ Headline: Provides a long bar of a few hundred characters for this.
Text: Allows for 1000 characters accompanied with italics, bolding, underlining, and more.
When I was done, I simply clicked the Apply ASIN option.
At first, I had a little trouble applying it, but it was because I didn’t save the module as a draft. Once I did that, it quickly applied and I could preview it before I submitted it to Amazon. Once I submitted it for review, they provided me a window of 7 days.
I was surprised to find it took way less than that.
For my book Anywhere Else, a contemporary romance, it took 2 days for them to accept my submission. All of the books in my series The Backup Superhero, it was live on the same day as my submission. Not bad at all!
What did my A+ content look like in the end?
Here is what I came up with:
Using the A+ feature on Amazon KDP helps to boost your book page to the next level, allowing readers to get not only a more professional opinion of your book but more information before they buy.
Perfecting your Amazon Author Central Page
There are a surprising amount of readers who are willing to check out the author page on Amazon.
So when they do happen to stop by, why not make their visit memorable?
Amazon Author Central page offers authors important information such as:
Their follower count on Amazon
Their sales rank for each book
A book review tab that separates reviews by books
Book comparisons for readers
A decent size author biography section
As wonderful as the Amazon Author Central Page feature is, there are three things that its users aren’t making use of that hinder its full impact on readers who come across it.
A well-crafted author bio
When readers come across your author page, they want to know a little more about you.
And unfortunately, this can be a tricky line to walk. For starters, you don’t want to launch into a long back story that deters readers. But you also don’t want to make it short and pointless to have visited your page.
So, what makes a well-crafted author bio?
Think of this page as your time to shine. This is where you want to share your most shining achievements such as writing credentials or awards you’ve earned. Or consider sharing your media appearances as well as any outstanding publications.
By including this, you are showing readers that you have something amazing to show them.
Last but not least, it’s important to throw in a bit of personality. This could range from a sentence about what you do in your spare time to what your favorite authors are.
A professional photo
The power of a good photo can do wonders for reader perception.
Now, I do realize that not everyone is photogenic or has the money to have professional photos taken, but there are ways to have it done.
For example, try:
Taking a photo in front of a bright, plain wall with decent lighting
Having a photo taken somewhere outdoors
Displaying a photo of yourself from the shoulders up with a good background
If you don’t have the money to hire a professional to take your photo, ask someone you know who’s good with a camera to take a bunch of photos for you. The chances are that you will get at least one good one.
This is the image I have for my author bio
Displaying reader reviews
Once your book begins to garner a decent amount of reviews, the chances of readers finding your best reviews become slimmer.
Near the end of your author bio, one of the best things you can do is create a selection of three to five reviews. Once you’ve chosen the reviews you want to display, place them in a bold font with quotation marks and a dash with the reviewer’s name. By doing this, you draw the reader’s eye to the review area.
Remember that when you choose reviews to display, you want to choose the best ones.
For example, if you happen to have gained a review from a popular book blog, this is an important review to display on your page. Mainly because it shows that someone who reviews books for a living took the time to read and review your book. Which ultimately garners more recognition.
The main point to remember is that the Amazon Author Central Page is a tool to help you sell yourself to your audience.
And when it’s used correctly, it can encourage readers to take the next step.
Just remember to:
Have a well-crafted author bio that both shows off your accomplishments as well as tells the reader more about you
Try by any means to get a professional author photo
Display reviews that show readers that your work is worth reading
Here is an example of mine
By crafting a wonderful Amazon Author Central page, you increase the likelihood that readers are going to check out your books and take you more seriously, thus moving you closer to gathering reviews for that 50-review visibility mark.
Gathering Reviews
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is actually the toughest task on this whole checklist.
The current problem is that readers have no other incentive to leave a review of any kind for a book that they read. Why? Because it takes time and effort.
And readers only leave book reviews if they hate it and want to warn others or if they absolutely loved it and want to tell others.
So, how in the world do we get readers to leave reviews for our books and increase our book’s visibility?
Here are some tricks you can try:
Top Amazon Reviewers:
You can actually search Amazon for Top Amazon Reviewers and it will bring up a list of these top reviewers.
This is a very tedious process but can reap huge rewards if shown dedication. By this I mean, I went through all 1,000 of the 3,000 people on that list, clicked on their profiles, and checked if they accepted book review submissions. Some provided a website, some provided an email or Facebook, and some provided nothing at all.
But, I could follow them on Amazon, and if they had a unique name, a simple Google search brought me to their website or Facebook page.
Similar books:
I first went to my book’s Amazon page and checked what books they were recommending as similar to my own.
Once I went to these books, I looked through their reviews and clicked and searched for any book bloggers or reviewers who reviewed the book. This led me to nearly 100 websites of book bloggers to who I was able to submit a review submission. Not bad.
Next, I searched for three books I considered similar to my own and did the same thing.
Book review websites:
If you search on Google for book review sites, you will find a surprising number of websites designed for book reviews.
Now, many of these websites I found through FeedSpot, as they had long lists of these sites. Some of them wanted payment and some wanted a simple subscription to their website in exchange for the review while others would add your submission to their list for consideration. Another site I found asked if you wanted a simple basic review for free or an in-depth review for a price.
Other suggestions included sending a physical copy of your book to newspapers and such to obtain a review.
Instagram:
This was a social media platform I wasn’t as familiar with but am growing to like.
At first, I searched for book reviewers and started following any that interested me. After I took the time to do this, I came up with around 30 bloggers and reviewers. I also took the effort to follow them on Goodreads for good measure.
After finding all of these wonderful people, I started exploring their profiles.
Many bookstagramers have LinkTrees. These connect to their Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter profiles as well as their websites and any sponsored things they are part of.
They also list what they are interested in reading in their profile description for the social platform.
Once I took the time to look at their link trees and interests, I started figuring out how I could submit. Some of them had submission spaces on their website which was wonderful, but then there were a few who didn’t have any submission sections. The question was, what to do?
The simple ask is applied here.
I sent out a message on Instagram or to an email provided through their LinkTree, simply saying:
Hello! Your profile caught my interest and I was able to look over your LinkTree and Website. I may have missed it, but I was wondering if you are accepting review submissions. I have a Contemporary Romance called Anywhere Else and I would love to provide a free Ebook copy via email. Looking forward to hearing from you.
And you know what? I actually had five of the eleven contact me back and tell me they would love to add me to their list!
For those who didn’t answer, I waited. I waited about a week and a half before sending a follow-up message asking if they received my message. And from that follow-up message, I received three more messages.
Who would have thought that by doing all of this research, I would have come into contact with 40 book reviewers who said yes!
As tedious as it was, it paid off.
I was able to show people that I paid attention to what they had to offer. And I went the extra mile by following them on Goodreads and Amazon before I asked them for a review. By doing this, I showed them I was invested in more than one book.
In addition to this, it’s important to use your platform to your advantage.
Becoming an author and publishing books means that you eventually need to reach the audience they were intended for.
This is where your author’s platform comes into play. Pieces such as the social media audience you have been hopefully been growing. Or the mailing list you have been hopefully been plugging away at in the form of a newsletter.
As authors, we need to make direct contact with readers in order to help sell and gather reviews for our books.
It can take a long time to reach this 50-review mark on Amazon, but there are ways to get you there.
And once you do achieve this 50-review goal, hopefully, Amazon’s algorithm will do the rest by suggesting your book to more potential readers.