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Monday, 21 October 2013

Author? Books On Amazon? Did You Know…?

In common with many writers, I have books listed on Amazon. Also, in common with other authors, I attract readers by presenting links to my books on various social networks. There is, however, a real problem with this as far as Amazon is concerned. Any link will lead readers only to one specific amazon site - .com, .co.uk, .de, etc.

This means potential readers have to either do a search on the appropriate amazon site for their country, or – holds up hands in horror! – pay extra postage for the books to be delivered overseas. Let’s face it, we want readers spending their hard-earned cash on books, not postage. Of course, in the case of an ebook, readers can only purchase from their home Amazon site.

It would be really useful if a single link could enable all your readers to find you at their home site, wouldn’t it? Well, help is at hand. Such a site exists. And – wait for it- it’s FREE!

I was recently on holiday in Santorini and kept in touch through my iPad. One of my contacts on Twitter complained that a link took him to the wrong Amazon site and suggested I try Booklinker.net. I wasn’t keen to explore during my holiday and, in any case, the iPad, useful as it is, is no substitute for the desktop iMac with all my links, pictures, contacts and other settings easily available, so I decided to wait until I returned home.

A busy week later, I explored the site and discovered I could very easily set up a universal link to my Author Page at Amazon. Try it here. However, when I tried to set up links to my books, I seemed to get nowhere. This, it turned out, was due to my idiocy. But a simple exchange with the site’s helpful ‘Contact’ service soon resolved my problems. You’re presented with two screens. The first requires that you enter the link to your book from the Amazon.com site (just copy and paste). The second allows you to type in the short name for the link you wish to develop. E.g. http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Faith-Stuart-Aken/dp/1849233144/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382367245&sr=1-1&keywords=Breaking+Faith+stuart+aken  becomes http://mybook.to/breakingfaith  (By the way, you need only enter the initial link as far as the end of the unique number: e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Faith-Stuart-Aken/dp/1849233144/ ) I have now successfully set up universal links for all my books.

The outcome is that I can now place quotes from books and reviews on social networks and attach a single link in the knowledge that it will lead to the Amazon site appropriate to the reader. What’s more, I’ll know how successful each site is for my books as the Booklinker site does a count of clicks on each link.

It really is FREE. The site works on the basis that they get a small commission from Amazon for each book bought through the links; the author loses nothing and gains a simple and effective marketing tool.
Try it. You’ve nothing to lose and a great deal to gain.


Right; now I’ve got to sort out the links here on my blog and remove all the extraneous ones to the different Amazon sites. A tedious job I’ll have to do just once but one that I expect to make life easier for both me and my potential readers. Everyone wins!
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