Sunday, May 07, 2023
In this modern day, a writer not only writes novels, non-fiction or poetry, but to be relevant, one needs to adverttise and promote the level of the work. Amongst about three million authors, you cannot just sit back and hope that readers will flock to you.
If you're an unknown the idea is to step up, think outside the box, try fellowships, residencies, book awards, and online promotion, etc. It requires a constant effort and it takes up an enormous amount of time, puting yourself out there, being prepared for anything, trying anything personally or publically.
The graphics included in this post are a recent promotion on Amazon, advertising my latest novel, The Five Lives of Ms Bennett. At the moment, they appear on amazon.co.uk [Amazon United Kingdom], under the book listed as a Kindle copy and also as a paperback. This is a free promotion to all authors and it also includes uploading the same graphics to the US, Australian, Canadian & other allowed Amazon sites. It is commonly known as A+ Content. In the past this was only availavle to mainstream publishers, but by the grace of their good nature it is available to Indi authors. Mind you, it's all about sales and the company is making heaps, considering the amountof self-published books.
According to the experts “images” instead of “text” help readers when it comes to their buying decisions online. Amazon KDP now allows authors to upload advertising content to enhance their book information and to increase sales. You can upload pictures, text and videos into “Modules”.
I have uploaded three modules. The first is a banner that shows a picture of me as an author together with my author central contact where buyers can read my bio. Three separate pics & a third includes all my books. All my books are available at Amazon.
Commercial sellers have the option to have the Premium A+ Content, but for authors the idea is to feature more information about your latest book & bio as the “Look Inside” feature no longer exists on the Kindle copy.
Here’s a quote from SellerApp: “The idea behind using enriched multimedia content is to enhance the user experience which drives high conversions and huge traffic to the listings. In short, it is going a step beyond the usual content that sellers usually create, just to ensure that a potential buyer understands the product features more effectively and gets a sophisticated online shopping experience.”
