What's In Your Amazon Store?

Sometimes I’m amazed at the marketing possibilities that I’ve known about for years and just haven’t gotten around to utilizing. As I was catching up with my reading recently, one of those opportunities leaped up and swatted me upside my head. I’m warning you now, this isn’t new information. But it is a method that can help you sell your books and do other writers a favor, too. Especially if you promote it. It’s called the Amazon Store.

You can have an Amazon A-Store of your own.

The magazine I was reading when I got this Aha! moment was Anchora, my college fraternity’s magazine. In each issue they have a column called “From the Pens of Delta Gammas” and in it they featured my newest book, A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques.

The introduction said, “Now you can hop online and browse books by your sisters. Make a purchase through our new Amazon Associates program and the Fraternity will get a small referral fee. Support your sisters and Delta Gamma! What could be better? Bookmark this page:
http://astore.amazon.com/deltagamma-20 .”

When I support my alumnae group in small ways like this, I support the charity the Blind Childrens' Center they’ve supported for decades. So I did as I was told. I bookmarked their URL.

But what about you?

I imagine you could use a small stream of income (called passive income because once you’ve set up you “store,” you don’t have to do much else but let the money dribble in--and, of course, let people know you have a store).

But the real value here is having one more way for your readers to buy your book. And, really . . . even better. Having one more way you can help expose the writing of authors you love. Your may not know them but you love them because they are talented. You love them because they support causes that interest you. You support them because--like you--they are writers.

We’re all in this together!

PS: The photo is by Randy Detroit who is videographer for the Green New Media Life Expo. -----
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books for writers, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Her FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.