Selling Books on Amazon: Things Indie Authors Should Know

Amazon is an important platform for bookselling. As the largest retailer, it’s often the topic of a lot of discussion, However, it is also very unique in how it operates. 

Managing our authors’ books on Amazon is a key part of my role, and it can be quite daunting for self-published authors. In this article, we’re going to explore some important information that self-publishers should know if they are listing their book on Amazon, whether it is published through Amazon KDP or published elsewhere, to help you navigate what can be a bit of a maze! 

Key Questions For Authors 

How is Your Book Available on Amazon?

Firstly, It’s important to remember that there are different ways to make a book available on Amazon, and what you can do with your book on their site will vary depending on which route you have taken. For instance: 

• Publishers who are supplying Amazon with stock from a print run will use platforms such as Amazon Vendor Central, as we do at Troubador. This is different for authors who use Amazon KDP.
• Amazon also has their own self-publishing platform, known as Amazon KDP (Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing), which makes the book available as a print on demand edition only. 

If you’d like to read some more about the pros and cons of self-publishing on Amazon KDP, we have written a helpful article about this to help you ascertain if it’s the right publishing route for you. 

What is the Difference Between eBook and Paperback Books on Amazon 

Ebooks on Amazon will also have different requirements to the physical edition of the book. Ebooks can also be enrolled in what’s known as the KDP select program, which requires them to be exclusive to Amazon for the first ninety days after publication. 

Their Automated System

How Does Amazon Order Stock of Books? 

Almost everything on Amazon is automated, from the categories to the pricing and reviews. Their ordering system is also automated, and as such, there isn’t someone making manual decisions on stock. 

Amazon places orders for stock based on algorithms. These algorithms: 

• Take into account all customer activity there is for a book
• Generates what orders to place based on this 

It can be really common for Amazon to only order stock in small quantities, or for it to go in and out of stock in their warehouse, particularly when it’s first been published as it figures out the demand there is. 

Why Is Amazon Showing Automated Delivery Times?

The most common query we get asked at Troubador about Amazon is about the automated delivery times we sometimes see as a result of their system.

If a book is out of stock in Amazon’s warehouse, or hasn’t received many orders in some time (and therefore their algorithms haven’t got information about delivery times from recent orders) Amazon will often put up long estimated delivery times. These can vary from:

• ‘Temporarily unavailable’
• ‘Available in 3-7 months’

While these may seem concerning, these are standard, generic messages. The reality is that in many cases, the stock can be supplied much faster than what they are quoting. However, until Amazon has stock in their warehouse again, or has lots of information from recent orders, they won’t remove this message.

Any changes that are made to a book’s listing have to be reviewed and updated by Amazon. This generally happens quite quickly, but can take several working days.

Can You Receive Personal Support From Amazon?

Support from Amazon can be quite limited. Responses are often automated, and sometimes contradictory; as a consequence of it being an extremely large, automated company, how fast an issue is resolved can really depend on who you are speaking with at the time.

As the largest retailer, they can do as they please, so even if something is slightly contradictory, they may refuse to fix an issue just because they can! 

What are the Differences between Amazon Categories and Amazon Rankings?

Amazon categories are discussed a lot, however it’s important to distinguish between Amazon categories and Amazon rankings. 

Amazon Categories

The Amazon categories at the top of the page, that appear above the book, are where the book sits in Amazon’s catalogue. Printed books and ebooks have different categories which can be selected, and sometimes it isn’t possible to have exactly the same for the different formats.

Amazon Rankings 

Separate to Amazon Categories, further down under the ‘product details’ are the top three bestseller rankings. Whether you are working with a publisher who is supplying Amazon with stock, or published via Amazon directly, it’s not possible to manually edit the rankings. The categories that appear in the rankings are automatically generated based on Amazon algorithms, which take into account many things, including how your book is selling, how other books are performing in the same category and how customers are finding the book. The top three categories the book is ranking in are displayed here, however this isn’t to say the book isn’t ranking in more.

Reviews 

Having lots of reviews on Amazon can help with visibility, and give your book more credibility, so it’s worth encouraging as many readers as you can to leave one for your book. However, Amazon has a very strong authentic review policy. 

As a result of this, do not ever write your own reviews, post a review on behalf of someone else, copy reviews of your book from other sites, or pay for reviews. Any of these things could be seen by Amazon as breaching their review policy, and as such they may remove all the reviews for the book and/or disable the ability to leave reviews.

If this happens, it’s not possible to get this reversed unless they decide to do so, so while reviews are great to have, do be very cautious of this. 

Third Party Sellers and Historical listings

While Amazon is a retailer, it is also a marketplace. What this means is that Amazon allows third party sellers to sell new or second hand copies of books directly to customers via their website.

As such, once your book has been released it’s possible that other sellers may also list the book for sale. Whether or not they can actually get hold of stock will depend; it’s very common for second hand sellers to list all books that are available, then worry about whether they can actually source copies once somebody places an order from them. 

The ‘featured offer’ is the offer that is listed directly on a book’s page. This is normally the offer from Amazon, however, Amazon’s algorithms will occasionally select an offer from a third party as the featured offer. This doesn’t mean that the book is no longer available from Amazon, it just means that to order it this way, you would need to manually select this from the full list of offers and sellers. You can go to the full list by clicking on the ‘others new and used’ button. 

If you decide that you would like to make your book unavailable, keep in mind that Amazon will not ever completely remove a book’s listing, even if it is no longer available. This is in case any third party sellers would like to sell a second hand copy via their marketplace. This means that information about the book will still be available; as with anything that is put online, once information has been put out there, it’s very hard to remove all record of it completely. 

What Extras on Amazon Should Authors Consider?

There are plenty of things you can do to enhance your Amazon page, including Amazon A+, Amazon Author Central and Look Inside A Book. The more you can do to enhance your Amazon page, the more chance that someone is going to interact with it, stay on the page and potentially order a copy.

Amazon A+ 

Amazon A+ is a way to add enhanced content to your book’s page with the aim of keeping customers on your Amazon page for longer. These graphics appear halfway down the page, and are a great way to catch someone’s attention. If you get good reviews coming in for your book that you’re not sure how to make use of, this could be a great place to utilise these. 

If you are publishing with Troubador we offer a service to design and upload Amazon A+ content on your behalf. For more information about A+, you can read our blog post here.

Amazon Author Central

Author Central allows you to add extra information to your book’s listing. Amongst other things, this platform allows an author to add a short bio, an image of themself, and link all of their books together, so if you have multiple titles published, whether these are published via the same platform or publisher or not, they can all be linked to you.You can also run your own Amazon adverts via this platform which you can manage yourself.

If you are adding content to your Author central page, make sure that this is as professional as possible to make sure it’s really adding to your author brand. For example, if you are uploading a photo of yourself, make sure it’s a professional shot, not a picture of you on holiday!

If you would  like to read further information about Author central, our article can be found here.

Look Inside a Book

Amazon’s Look Inside a Book is their digital equivalent of a reader being able to pick up a book and have a browse of a few pages before buying, the same way they would in a physical bookshop. This will allow a reader to read about 20% of a book. If you are a Troubador author we can set this up for your printed book as part of our Enhanced Discoverability service. It is a condition of distribution that a sample shows for the ebook, so this is automatic.

Summary 

Amazon is constantly evolving and changing, and the way it operates and appears now could be completely different from month to month. If you’re publishing with us at Troubador, remember we’re here to navigate Amazon on your behalf, and help with any questions you may have.