I thought I'd share some information that mostly only book authors know. I'll give you an inside look at general things an author deals with and my writing life, specifically.
Author Central: If a person has books listed for sale on Amazon, he or she has access to a web page called Author Central. This page lists all books by the author and shows sales of the books (both paperback and ebook) via a graph. The author has some responsibility on setting this page up. For instance, she links all of her books to the page when she adds them to her public Amazon author page.
There are options on this page as to some books, such as anthologies to which the author has contributed. I have contributed to three Chicken Soup for the Soul books but I do not choose to link them to my page. I have seen where other authors have. I have several reasons for not linking them: 1) their sales do not generate any additional revenue to me. (I was paid a one-time fee of $200 by Chicken Soup for the use of my story.) 2) I am one of 101 other writers in the books, and 3) I have a growing number of other books that I have either fully written or co-written with only one other author and I would rather direct traffic.
The Author Central page shows individual sales ranks of the various books, information that is also posted on the books themselves when people search for them on Amazon but it has an author rank, too, which only the author can see. For the past year I have averaged around the 200,000 rank out of millions of authors on Amazon. This rank goes up and down daily with sales or the lack of them. The highest I have ever hit was close to 15,000.
Reviews: Book Reviews posted on Amazon are so important to authors! The more reviews a book has the more exposure Amazon will give it. This is especially true if the book has 50 or more. I am always begging people to leave reviews of my books. It is such a simple thing to do but people seem to have a real resistance to it. There are ways to get reviews. Amazon does not allow a person to pay for a review but they do allow an author to pay for a blog tour where the bloggers signed up to participate agree to review the book. I have never participated in a blog tour but am scheduled for my first one in December after the prayer anthology is released. This is a book I am super excited about and am willing to pay for the blog tour in exchange for the exposure the tour will give it.
Social Media: There are numerous social media outlits that authors can participate in to help get exposure for their books. At this time, I have only a Facebook author page. My page currently has 387 "likes" but every one is what is known as an organic like, which means, again, I did not pay to get new likes on my page. Everyone who has liked it has chosen to like it. I probably will not pay to gain new likes because though it might look better to the public (as though my page is more popular than it really is) the people who really notice anything I put on that page will likely only be the organic "likes" anyway and the purpose of my page is not to impress, but to share with my readers.
And finally …
There are so many other writing related things I could share and may overtime, but to keep the blog post from being too long, I will stop with these except to tell you my best-selling book so far, a question I am often asked. Drum roll please …
My best-selling book, so far, is my first book, "Prayer: It's Not About You." This book has been sold in groups many times, however, when church groups and community groups choose to study it in their group Bible studies and I'm sure that helps in the over-all number that has been sold to date. My other books are also selling well, for which I am glad. Here's a link to my author page where my books can be found: Harriet;s Amazon Page
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