Thursday, June 26, 2014

4 Tips for Setting Up Your International Amazon Author Central Pages


By Marcy Kennedy, @MarcyKennedy

Part of the Indie Author Series

Last month, I walked you through the 6 Steps for Setting Up Your Amazon Author Page. In that article, I talked exclusively about your author profile on Amazon.com, but Amazon sells books all over the world. While setting up our author page on Amazon.com is the most important (because that’s where we’re likely to sell the most books), we shouldn’t overlook our author pages elsewhere.

You might be thinking, Why do I want to take the time to do that for non-English speaking countries?

The answer is simple. English is the most common second language in the world. Even if English isn’t the primary language of Germany or India or China, many people living in those countries still speak it, read it, or are trying to learn. Creating an author page on international sites gives us a leg up over authors who only bother to update their Amazon.com page.

Because you’ll want to add the same information as you did for your Amazon.com author page, I won’t go over all of that again. You can read my previous article for details. What I’m going to focus on in this article are the unique things to keep in mind when we’re updating our pages on the international sites.

Tip #1 – How to Find International Amazon Author Central Sites


Currently, there’s no centralized list of Amazon Author Central sites, so the first thing we need to do is explore a little. Searching for sites is a two-step process.

Google the Amazon site for the particular country you’re interested in. For example, I might type “Amazon France” into my search bar.

This lets you know if Amazon has a site in that country, but what you’re really looking for here is the little country code that comes after www.amazon in the search results. For France, it’s fr.

The URL for all Author Central sites begins like this…

https://authorcentral.amazon.

So once you have the country code, you add it like this…

https://authorcentral.amazon.fr/gp/landing?

And that’s where you’ll sign in to create your author page.

Not all countries currently have Author Central, but more and more are appearing all the time. If you can’t find an Author Central site for a specific country (I’m looking at you Canada), just wait. It will probably appear in the not-too-distant future.

Here are a few sites to get you started:

http://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk
http://authorcentral.amazon.fr
http://authorcentral.amazon.de
http://authorcentral.amazon.co.jp

Tip #2 – How to Read International Amazon Author Central Sites


Remember how we talked about these sites being targeted at non-English speakers? That creates a snag for those of us who don’t speak multiple languages.

Thankfully, technology gives us two ways around it:

(A) Keep your Amazon.com Author Central page open so you can compare. For the most part, the sites are all the same structurally, so you’ll know what it’s asking for even if you can’t read all the words.

(B) Use Google Translate or download Google Chrome (which comes with a built-in translator) to use as your browser while you create your pages.

These won’t be perfect, but they’ll be enough to allow you to easily fill in your author pages.

Tip #3 – Some Other Countries Will Want You to Create a New Account


Some countries will allow you to sign in with the same email and password you used when you created your Amazon.com account, and some countries will require you to set up a new Amazon account with them. If your regular Amazon email and password won’t work, it just means you need to start from the ground up with a new account.

Tip #4 – Don’t Think You’re Doing Something Wrong If You Can’t Find All the Same Features


Strangely enough, not all international sites are created equal. Some won’t allow you to connect your blog. Some won’t allow you to upload pictures. If you can’t find a particular feature, it’s probably not because you’re blind. It’s probably because it doesn’t exist on that specific site. The key with the international Amazon author pages is to fill out what you’re offered and not worry about the rest.

When you find a site that doesn’t allow you to connect your blog, make sure you include your website address somewhere. Along with claiming your books, this is the most important thing. This is all about providing readers with a way to find more of your books and to form a relationship with you.

Good luck!

Have you taken the time to set up your author page on international Amazon sites? Do you have any other tips I haven’t included?

Marcy Kennedy is a suspense and speculative fiction writer who believes fantasy is more real than you think. Alongside her own writing, Marcy works as a freelance fiction editor and teaches classes on craft and social media through WANA International. She’s also the author of the Busy Writer’s Guides series of books. You can find her blogging about writing and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth at marcykennedy.com.

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Both How to Write Dialogue: A Busy Writer’s Guide and Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction: A Busy Writer’s Guide are now available in print!

19 comments:

  1. This is timely! I actually just setup my German page last week and I've suddenly been invited to a Google+ group that's in German and gotten new followers to my blog and Google+ account as a result.

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    1. Thanks for sharing your results. With how globally English is being used now, we probably have more people reading our work in other countries than we realize!

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  2. Thanks - goes into the bookmarks and onto the To Do list.

    AFTER 'publish,' of course. That list keeps getting longer, but this appears to be a relatively easy thing to do after you explained it. I like the part about being able to fill in many spaces without actually knowing what it says in the language of the country - because the format is similar.

    Thanks also for the warning that they may not be exactly the same. 'When in doubt, leave it out' should work (rather than looking like an idiot!).

    Alicia

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    1. I'm glad you found it helpful. When I write these posts, I try to think of what I wish I'd known.

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  3. Marcy! Great minds think alike. One of my goals for 2015 is to learn to navigate amazon.de, amazon.fr and amazon.in. While our fans in those countries are bi-lingual and our books are in English, I searched for and found translators for my bio in German, and French. Still searching for Hindu. It is just a courtesy, but I also am having a couple of short reviews translated to include in my bios. I always include SEOs. Otherwise a bio is a dead end. Like everything else we indies must do--it is a time suck. Will it sell books? I don't know yet. I also reach out to book bloggers home-based in those countries. You have done a real service for indie authors with this post. Best to you and yours in all of 2015 from,
    Jackie Weger
    eNovel Authors at Work

    P.S. For the first time this year, I am adding universal links to my titles on Twitter, which is also global.

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    1. Interesting thought, but if your books are in English, and English speaking customers are indeed your goal, do you really need to translate your bio? Just a thought here...

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  4. Marcy, this was SO helpful. Thank you.

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  5. Yeah, I did this a few years back when I first set up my Amazon author page, it was pretty easy if I recall, as all the Amazon sites are set up the same...and my e-mail and password worked on all the sites except China and Japan, if I recall correctly...I had to join those two separately...I'm over on Amazon China, and I don't see my author page, though I thought I had set one up...I know there are a couple of countries that don't support Author Central on Amazon, do you have a list Marcy? I think it was Italy and Spain or something if I recall, thanks...

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  6. Believe it or not, I'm just getting around to doing this. It went well for me, except for the Japan site. It doesn't recognize my password. :0/

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    1. That is the site that requires you set up a new account.

      http://mickiesherwood.com/blog/2015/07/08/how-to-create-your-author-central-japan-page/

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  7. Great post, and timely find for me! I was adding it for .fr page and found I using doing pretty similar approach as explained here. It's great to get the validation.
    Thanks again, Marcy!

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  8. Why in the world doesn't Canada have their own authorcentral yet??? It's a rather frustrating thing...sigh...just keep waiting I guess ;)

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  9. Is there no Author Central yet for India?

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    1. I don't think there is, sadly. All I see is my author image ported in from my Amazon.com author page - strange, given that I live IN India. :/

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    2. Is there an Author Central for India yet? I ask because this post is from 2016 and we are in 2018.

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    3. I just checked and Amazon India automatically uses your US page. I went to the Amazon India, searched for myself and when I clicked on my name my page was there.

      https://chrismcmullen.com/2015/05/18/author-central-india/

      https://www.amazon.in/ref=nav_logo

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  10. Great information. I have my author central page set up on Germany, France and the UK.
    For the life of me I can't see and icon on the Author's page to set up a link to the sight like the US has right above the photo. help! How do I set up links to those sites.

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  11. Hi Janice,
    Thank you for the info! I'm still having a hard time, since the french site I had to do in french. Do you know if Germany has a site that we need to go claim our book too?

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  12. THANKS I HAVE JOINED INTERNATIONAL AUTHOR CENTER, ALTHOUGH I ONLY SPEAK ENGLISH, THE SITES ARE GREAT, I HOPE MY BOOKS WILL FIND MORE READERS

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