Publish more than once on Amazon.
Once you publish, your opus having trundled through the four-to-five-hour cycle, lo, True Believer, you'll gain access to a magical cave.
This is your author page on Amazon. Better to say, a collection of pages. For there are several territories involved. We'll wade to all that.
But first, I'll mention the carousel.
Amazon's carousel widget houses at least six items. The gadget takes up to ten products. You should be able to see it on this blog. Just look to the right.
Maybe you can't see it. Here's a screenshot...
I check my blog posts one last time - that's after publication. Yes, I check one last time before. Then again. I checked the blog post above, and noticed...
Okay, I play music when I am working. If I am working on the internet, I'll hit YouTube and select a string of videos. A movie soundtrack, say.
The annoying thing? Adverts. I like to hear a soundtrack unfold without ads intervening. Call me traditional. The ad blocker just wasn't working.
Maybe the blocker worked over on Google Chrome. Did I have Google Chrome installed on this computer? Yes. Did I use it, or Regular Flavour Google?
I used Regular. Until I was on my Amazon bookshelf, arranging the publication of more material. And the online previewer was in severe need of Google Chrome.
So I converted to Chrome. I'll have to throw in the ad blocker. See if that sorts out YouTube.
Was YouTube Chrome-plated? Yes. All was right with the world.
I can preview my work online inside the Amazon bookshelf, and I can listen to a movie soundtrack while I do that. All without the intervention of adverts.
Great. Except. I come here and check my blog. Can't see the carousel. It shows up on Regular Google. Not with Chrome. And so...
I added a link on my dedicated pages, inviting readers to click through to a free story about Amish ice cream. That link is for those who can't see my Amazon carousel.
What a saga.
(Update from Eclectic Ed. Blocking software erases the blog sign-up box. If you can't see the carousel, you won't see the sign-up box. To see both, temporarily disable your blocker software for this site. That may lead to a side-effect of seeing parts of the blog vibrate. Yes, that's REALLY annoying.)
Anyway, the free story of Amish ice cream features on my Amazon author page. And I thought I'd talk about that.
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I was distracted by Amazon's changes to the arcane process of publishing books. Amazon warns me of this sort of strangeness in cunning e-mail messages I feel obliged to read.
Obviously, I don't open the requests from Sani Abacha's widows.
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What should you put on your author page? Jam? Messy. I went with ice cream. Messier. Now that's more like it. The author page had a minimum word-count back in the day. Not sure if that's still the case. I have my suspicions that it is handy to write something for the author page. Just sayin'.
When I checked to see what the maximum was, I discovered there was no bar to wordiness. So I told my story of Amish ice cream.
You can dish out straight facts about yourself on the author page, but are you telling me much about your writing style?
Will you have to update your biography with the on-again-off-again hijinks of a Liz Taylor/Richard Burton splicing?
This author is currently married/divorced/detached from reality. In hiding from general taxation. Write an author bio that doesn't need much by way of updating. Why?
As I type, which is not to say that in the future the situation will change for the better, Amazon forces authors to throw out the same author page in different territories.
Linguistically, this is understandable. But it's annoying that I am forced to put the details on Amazon.usa, Amazon.narnia, Amazon.regular, and Amazon.menthol.
More so, if I must update every page.
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Once you have that author page, you'll find your books on it. BUT. You still have to add the books officially. Then they really will be on your author page.
Strange, I know. Just a quirk of Amazon's. Sign in. Select your books. Check to see that they are yours and not some other poor bastard's. Tick the check-boxes. Fly, be free!
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No, of course I don't have advice on how to run your Amazon author page. Do what you have to do. Depending on the gadgets available, and your tolerance for them, you can throw a Twitter feed on the author page...same goes for a blog feed.
People see all the swearing I do on Twitter, right there on my author page. Do I fucking care about that? Of course I fucking care about that. Swearing's fucking important.
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This blog post was really about adding a link to my books, running from my blog to the point of purchase on Amazon. And that, for those who can't see the Amazon carousel.
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Images of Melissa C. Water are copyright 2014, and appear here by kind persimmons.
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