by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
For Monday’s post, I mentioned that I frequently amend published books with updated back matter. I do this for both Amazon and non-Amazon retailers.
Author Deborah Nam-Krane stated in the comments for the post that she had run into some trouble while updating back matter on Smashwords. Which reminded me that I had also run into trouble there for the same reason.
My updates had kicked a couple of books temporarily out of the Smashwords catalog because I’d linked to Amazon with my buy-links. Accidentally. Because, by default, nearly every buy-link I’ve got goes to Amazon…the retailer where I make the most money.
I do get steady income from non-Amazon retailers, also. Why make it more difficult for readers who are interested in my books to find them?
But when I thought about the fact that I had 19 published books, the idea of going through and making separate book lists for Apple or Kobo (because, really, who knew where it was going to stop? Would I get kicked out of the catalog because Kobo was upset by a random link to Apple?) it seemed like a more time-consuming project than I could possibly invest in.
At the same time, I was also hearing advice about making sure we link to all the retailers on our websites. And my website ‘Books’ page was already looking unwieldy with the number of published books I’ve got and all the different formats and retailers.
I kept reading that we should have a dedicated page on our websites for each of our books: I’ve heard this from everyone from Tim Grahl to Jane Friedman. To be honest, I never quite caught the why with this, but after repeatedly hearing this advice from people I trust, I stopped wondering why. I’m sure it’s got to have something to do with SEO and our book titles. At any rate, I created a page for each book and links to each retailer/format on my website.
Then it was easy. I typed up a list of my published books with hyperlinks leading back to each book’s page on my site, giving readers their choice of retailer and format for my books…audio, print, ebook, kindle, epub, etc.
Most importantly, I keep this list handy. I’ve got it backed up to clouds and servers and can easily copy-paste it when I am uploading books to distributors like Smashwords or Draft2Digital or individual retailers.
It’s one of those things that cost me a chunk of time to set up but has saved me time later and has hopefully also provided readers an easy way to find the rest of my books.
How do you handle linking to your other books on non-Amazon sites?
Create a dedicated book list for non-Amazon retailers: Share on X
I’ve always had separate pages for my books. (Then again, I only have four plus some anthologies.) Not because I was smart, I just didn’t think there would be more than one book. I do have links to as many retailers as I know.
And I’m an iTunes guy. That’s where I go first for all of my books.
Alex–Interesting. I’ve found that the readers who use iTunes are AVID iTunes readers/listeners. They’re the ones I’m sure to hear from if they have any problem finding my products online.
I started putting Goodreads links in the back matter for any book I have with a wide distribution. That way, the reader can learn more about the book and see reviews, and also have a place to go for buy links.
B.E.–That’s a really cool idea. Because of Amazon’s association with Goodreads, I hadn’t realized that they still maintained the links for other retailers…but I do see them listed (under “stores”) on each book’s page there.
Elizabeth, you’re the best! I’m going to implement this in the next few days.
I’ve also heard we should have excerpts for all of our books on our websites as well; this would be a great place to put those as well.
Deborah–Absolutely! I hesitated in listing all the things we should put on our book pages because it makes it look like a bigger project (and bigger projects can more easily be procrastinated…at least, they are for me!)
If authors plan dates in advance to spruce up their book pages (schedule it farther into the future so it’s not a time challenge), then add book descriptions, endorsements, printable book lists, book club questions, our series in order, or even clips of us reading a chapter. I haven’t done all of these things yet either, although they’re on my ever-present list!
Elizabeth, what timely posts. The last couple weeks I added back matter to my book: a chapter from the next book, a link to leave a review at Amazon, and links to amazon to download my other books.
Now I’m going back (again) and changing these links to my individual blog pages for each book where a visitor can read the synopsis and have icons to choose (Kindle, B&N, etc) if they want to download a copy. And they’re now at my blog and hopefully they’ll navigate around and get to know me a bit better.
And yes individual pages for each books does help with SEO. And this post is worthy of a share!
Stephen–Thanks so much! And thanks for clearing up the SEO issue and book titles. :) Sounds like you’ve been very busy lately!
You know, I think a dedicated book list makes a lot of sense, Elizabeth, especially in a situation such as yours, where you have so many releases. And it seems to me that, links or no links, each book will have more ‘oomph’ if readers can focus on just that one book per page, with fewer ‘busyness’ on the page. I like the idea a lot.
Margot–Good point–it’s not as busy as the single “books” page that I originally had. That page was a monster and you’d have had to keep scrolling and scrolling to see all the books. Really, it was a mess. This, so far, appears to be working much better. I may have to rethink this current set-up, though, when I have many more books than I do now…maybe I’ll have to have a dedicated tab for each series, for example, instead of the drop-down thing.
I have one page where I list all of my books with a brief description and then I have a page for each of my books, which has a more lengthy description and some reviews.
Frances–I have a similar set up, except I have each series with its own page and then each book dropping down out of that page. It seems pretty organized, but I have a feeling I may hit a time when I have to shuffle things around.
Thanks for coming by!
Should I ever get big enough I will do this. Your experiences (and blogging about them) makes it so much easier for the rest of us. We are FORTUNATE!!!
Teresa–And I’m fortunate that I can learn so much from all of *you*! Hope you have a happy week!
I also have a book page for each title with all the vendor links on it on my website. I update all my back matter links with store specific links using Vellum (so easy to do compared to when I was compiling the ebook with Scrivener). So far, it’s been a simple process, but that’s because I have a short back list.
Anne–I think everything with Scrivener is a bit harder! Glad you found a method that worked so much better for you. :)