As I say in the Nimble Books Marketing Playbook, I strongly encourage authors to sign up for Amazon Connect, because it is the only way that you can post real-time directly to the detail page for your book. Not only that, but you can direct posts specifically to everyone who has bought any of your other books, separately or all together.
Unfortunately, Amazon Connect provides a very cumbersome experience for authors, which requires them to go through a far from intuitive “verification” process, and my experience is that signing up with Connect (especially the verification process) has defeated all but the most dogged and technically savvy authors.
I have finally figured out a work-around that will let us communicate directly with your readers via Amazon Connect. What I do is set up an email account for you at NimbleBooks.com (e.g. Author.Name@nimblebooks.com), then use that to sign up with Amazon Connect as you. Then I verify the titles as myself, and go back to Amazon Connect as you so that I can post on your behalf. Obviously, this has the drawback that I am doing some of the work for you (and as you!). But the good news is that once you are set up with Connect, I can give you the e-mail address and Connect login, and from that point on it will be very easy for you to use Connect as yourself.
Let me know if you want me to help with this.
Notes:
- You can only sign up for Connect once you have at least one book in print on Amazon and available with a “Buy” (from Amazon) button.
- Not sure whether you already have a Connect account? Sign in to Amazon.com/Connect with your “normal” account that you use for shopping. That’s probably what you used.
- Connect is not the same as an Amazon Profile (which you get when you buy books or write reviews) — instead, it is like an extra module attached to a “no frills” Profile. When I set up a Connect account for you with a NimbleBooks.com e-mail address, it creates a Profile with no credit card or other personal information attached, just your name and bibliography.
- Because the {author.name}@NimbleBooks.com Profile has no credit card or personal info, there is no privacy risk to you.
- This process may somehow be folded into or somehow subsumed by Amazon Author Stores, but for now there is an indefinite waiting list for Author Stores, and Author Stores does not (so far) offer the option of direct connection to the detail page. So far the Author Store is a rather lame page of programmatically generated lists without any human touch — see, for example, the Stephen King store.
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