About three years back Amazon started beta-testing a new author portal called Amazon Author (not to be confused with Author Central). That new portal officially launched this past week with a somewhat confusing name and a new address.
Amazon’s author portal used to be at authorcentral.amazon.com, but it has now been replaced by a new portal at author.amazon.com. Along with the new address, the portal has a new look and new features.
I heard about the launch via the KDP support forum:
We’re excited to announce an upgrade to Amazon Author Central! With this update, we’ve made several key improvements:
- You can now manage your Author Page, claim your books, and view your reports for multiple marketplaces from a single Author Central site with a single account.
- An updated, modern look and feel makes it easier to search for titles, view your reports, and update your page.
- Amazon Author Central is mobile friendly, and works well on a phone, a tablet, or a computer.
If you already have an Amazon Author Central account, you can sign into Amazon Author Central with it and start using it right away. If you don’t have an account but have published a book, sign up today!
One key difference between the new and old portals is that now you can manage your author profiles for all Amazon sites from this one portal. Before you had to login to a different portal for each country-specific Amazon site (Amazon.de, for example).
Speaking of which, the author portals on each of Amazon’s country-specific sites have also been updated with the new features, so if for example your preferred language is French, you can continue to use the French-language portal.
So what can you do with it?
For starters, you can upload language-specific bios, and you can also quickly check what your author profile looks like on each of Amazon’s sites.
BTW, if you have not uploaded the alternate bios yet, you should go do it now. I just noticed that my bio is only showing up on Amazon’s sites in English-language markets. (I had to re-upload a copy of my bio and tell Amazon it was in French in order to get the bio added to Amazon.fr, and I will have to repeat the process if I want to have my bio on other Amazon sites.)
You can no longer create a custom author page URL or list your public events, but you can claim all your books, and you can see customer reviews. Amazon will also tell you your books’ current sales ranks, and they give you access to Bookscan (print book retail stats for the US market).
All of this is available from a clean and pleasant interface.
Have you tried it yet?
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