When Your Book Goes Live on Amazon
As a digital publisher, Amazon is our largest retailer, blowing everyone else out of the water. To give perspective, in its first year, Jenny Hale’s The Magic of Sea Glass sold 7,511 POD paperback copies on Amazon. The same year, on all other retailers combined, the POD paperback sold 504 copies. We don’t want to discount those 504 copies, so we upload to the other retailers, but the numbers speak for themselves. Our focus is Amazon.
Because of this, we upload to Amazon first and we almost always make the eBook exclusive to Amazon through their Kindle Unlimited Program. (You can read more about Kindle Unlimited in our separate page, here on the Author Portal.)
Amazon is also incredibly efficient and will usually have your book up and ready for sale in a day or so. The other retailers have to be fulfilled by Ingram, a distributor, and the book could take upwards of eight weeks to show on those retailer sites. In terms of doing physical book signings at traditional bookstores, this lag could greatly impact your schedule. You’ll have to wait for the book to show up in Ingram’s catalog (8+ weeks after publication on Amazon), which is why we suggest promoting a backlist title at bookshops.
Once your book clears on Amazon, here’s what you can expect: (although it usually goes faster than this.)
Availability: It takes up to 3 days for Amazon.com to show as in stock.
Linking: The detail pages of your print book, audiobook, and eBook should link within 48 hours, but it can take up to 5 days.
Product description: It can take 24-48 hours for any changes or updates to appear on the detail page.
Look Inside the Book: This feature will be available in 9-10 business days.
Book Details: Changes to contributor, series name, series number, page count, description, keywords, and browse categories take up to 72 hours to appear.
Ranking: If you have a spike in sales, the book’s ranking won’t show immediately—it isn’t instantaneous. We’ve found that it usually takes between 12 and 24 hours for the ranking to catch up to sales. Even then, sometimes, it can take longer. Amazon’s information for publishers does not give a definitive number for hours.
Your mission before cover reveal:
About a week or so before pre-order or publication (when we have your cover reveal scheduled), once the book has cleared on Amazon, you will need to begin the process below. The book sits on Amazon quietly, and we don’t tell anyone until cover reveal. But getting the book up a few days in advance allows you to have the link and be connected to Amazon so you can begin to set up the major players in your marketing.
Your very important job is to begin setting up the following online author accounts in your name, if you don’t already have them. You can’t begin doing this until you have a buy-link to your book, which means it has to clear on Amazon first. But then you’ll have only a few days to set them up to be sure your accounts are primed and ready for the big launch/cover reveal.
Author Central
It's time to set up or spruce up your Author Central account! You'll want to do this right away so your author page shows on Amazon. You’ll need your most recent headshot and bio. Here’s a great article with information on how to begin. (There’s a full page on Amazon Central here in the portal. Please read that for more.) You have to set up each country's page. We’d suggest doing US and UK, although US is our primary market by a landslide. When you're in there, you might be able to access the retail description. Just leave that alone. We will have optimized it and checked it over, and we can make direct changes from our dashboard. Under editorial reviews, you'll want to list the reviews you have, if any.
One new option, that we recommend you try in Author Central, is “Recommend Books.” (Thanks so our author Nancy Naigle for doing this!) Amazon has unveiled a feature where you can add book recommendations to your Author Central account, which has several benefits. First, and perhaps most importantly, Amazon says if you submit at least three book recommendations, it may send an email notifying readers. In Nancy Naigle’s case, that was true.
These notification emails are part of the Amazon marketing engine. For example, when readers follow author Nancy Naigle or buy one or more of her books, Amazon tracks this information. When Nancy releases a new book, her readers and followers receive an email from Amazon letting them know it’s available.
If Amazon sends an email with your book recommendations, it seems to include a button to that author’s page. Therefore, recommending other Harpeth Road authors might be an incredible way to assist each other in reach.
Bookbub
Do check out the article in the portal on Bookbub. Once you've finished on Amazon, you can set up a Bookbub Author Page. Here's an article for how to do that. If you already have one, check that your bio and profile information are up to date. This is very important, as once you get 1,000 followers there, we can do all kinds of wonderful things when your books come out that catapult sales! For example, Bookbub will send two pre-order alerts to your 1,000 followers every time one of your new books is released.
Goodreads
You can also set up or spruce up your Goodreads page. Be sure to call yourself an Author (versus "writer") and DO NOT link your Facebook page! If you do that, Amazon will link to Facebook and connect everything, and anyone who is one of your friends may not be able to review your book on Amazon because Amazon thinks a friend isn't a real review. If your account is already connected to Facebook there’s no way to change it.