Amazon as a Social Networking Website: Authors Take Note
As Amazon.com evolves and begins offering more and more services such as the Kindle, online storage solutions, API’s, “cloud software” and the like, I thought it would be useful to go back and re-examine their “core” business of selling new and used books.
You may already know that for an author who wants to reach a worldwide market, Amazon is the ticket. Whether you are self-published or going through a publishing house, you can use Amazon to sell your book or products related to your book. You can even have Amazon sell your book new while you are selling it as a 3rd party book seller on Amazon Marketplace. What you might not realize is that you can build an audience on Amazon and use it to promote yourself and your book. Here are two quick tips.
Promoting on Amazon:
1) Write reviews on Amazon of the books that you have read. The reviews will help you build name recognition. People will read your reviews and learn more about you and your ideas.
Having these reviews published on Amazon will be very useful later when you are selling your own books (see suggestion #2 below) It’s also a great way to do research on your niche. What better way to learn about your particular book’s category and audience than by reading books in that category and writing reviews? And by using Amazon you will be able to go deeper into your niche and find many related books. You may have already noticed that below most books are descriptions that say: “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought.” Those listings are clue to what your market wants and where there might be gaps in your niche.
To write a review, navigate to the product page of a book that you are interested in and click “write your own review” or “create your own review.” You can then write an intelligent, thoughtful review. Keep it positive, find something you like about the book and talk about both it’s strengths and weaknesses. Remember, these people are your colleagues. At some point you may contact them for a review or back-cover blurb for your next book.
2) Create an Amazon Profile. Later, when you publish your book, people in that niche can click your review and then click onto your amazon profile. On your profile you will create a bio of yourself and there will also be a list of the books that you have written. If your book is not out yet, don’t worry. You can still create a profile and an amazon blog and use it to your benefit to share your credentials and get the word out about you.
If you publish enough interviews you can draw quite a few visitors to your profile and get some steady traffic to help sell your new book. The best resource that I have seen for how to sell your book on Amazon is Sell Your Book on Amazon: The Book Marketing COACH Reveals Top-Secret 
My first book: “The Productivity Paradox: Getting More Done, By Doing Less,” is not scheduled to come out for several months. But I can assure you that by the time it does, I will have written 50-60 book reviews (1-2 per day) and will have a fully-functional and optimized amazon profile. I hope you do as well!
Be well – Ryan
Update 2/13/09: Reader’s of this blog who want to take Bill O’Hanlon‘s online bookwriting workshop are eligible for a $100 discount. Just type in the code “NAGY” when you checkout. Bill knows his stuff, 29 books and counting: Bill O’Hanlon Book Writing Workshop. If you do buy anything else from Bill or take a workshop, let him know that I (Ryan Nagy) referred you.
