The Top 10 Things All Authors Should Know about Amazon

Plus a bonus #11: book people don't like Amazon

Whether you’re a published author already, or getting ready for the wild ride that is authorship, there’s a lot to know about Amazon, its business practices, and how to use it to your advantage while still retaining a healthy amount of skepticism about its role and how it’s perceived in the book industry. Here goes:

1. Amazon has long employed scarcity tactics to people to buy, so authors often think their books are running out of out of stock when they're not! If you see on your Amazon page: “Only 3 left in stock - order soon," fear not. It’s not true. If you’re worried that your book is low or out of stock on Amazon, ask your publisher. The only notice that really matters is if your book is showing as actually out of stock. That message does in fact mean that Amazon is out of books.

2. Claim your book via Author Central as soon as your book page publishes. Many authors know this and still forget to do it. When you publish a new book, you must claim it. Claim books you’ve contributed to as well. Amazon Central is an important tool for authors; it’s extension of your author platform and should be tended to as such. Update your photo, bio, and other information as regularly as you would your website.

3. Amazon reviews carry weight, and 50+ reviews is often cited as the magic number. Why? Because with 50 or more reviews, you start to get more visibility on Amazon. Additionally, you’ll start to see more and better “also bought” recommendations, which can boost sales as well. Be careful about who you ask to review your book, however, because Amazon has a fairly strict nepotism policy. That said, if a reader contacts you telling you how much your book meant to them, ask them to post their thoughts on Amazon. You can’t organize to get everyone you know and love to review your book without Amazon going on notice (and possibly removing those reviews), but you can organically build your reviews by remembering to ask readers to review your work after they’ve already told you they’re fans.

4. As of March 2022, any author registered with Author Central can run their own Amazon ads—and there are some things to know about doing this well.
***Correction to #4 as of 3/11/25: I discovered that as of March 2025 (possibly earlier) Amazon has revoked the privilege from authors who are not self-published to run their own ads. Therefore, this has to be rewritten. In this in-between time, all authors have been able to run their own ads, accessed through Author Central. Before 2022 and again now, if you have a publisher, you cannot run your own ads. This is a disappointing development because our authors enjoyed being able to set, control, and track their own ads. Not being able to do that anymore means that we, the publisher, have to manage authors’ Amazon ads on their behalf. It’s a lot of work! And the authors have better success when they can watch their campaigns in real time. When I asked Raquel, the Amazon employee or AI I was chatting with, why they revoked this, she answered:

So “some” liked it but “most” were not comfortable. I’ve shared before how much I dislike the way that publishing infantilizes its authors, and here’s another example of that. Taking away the privilege to run your own ads, if it’s indeed publisher-driven, and I believe Raquel that it is, happens only because the publishers want to fully control their own ad campaigns. That said, you better believe that if Amazon had been making good money on authors running their own ads, they wouldn’t have discontinued it. Nevertheless, this is a bummer for indie publishers (like me) who trust their authors to be able to run their own ad campaigns, and it’s particularly frustrating that Amazon would roll something like this out only to take it away.

5. Amazon wants you to be exclusive, but they’re not the only fish in the sea. KDP is Amazon’s self-publishing platform (which publishers also use to make their books available via print on demand with Amazon). If you’re using KDP to self-publish, make sure to also upload your book to IngramSpark. Amazon wants all self-published authors to be Amazon loyalists, but be careful here because you can get into trouble when uploading to IngramSpark if you’re not careful. It’s essential not to opt into “extended distribution” through Amazon, or they’ll commandeer your ISBN. Ingram, by contrast, does not offer this kind of exclusivity this to authors, and frankly to lead authors toward exclusivity when many of them don’t understand what they’re doing is a shitty business practice (bonkers, actually) that is unnecessary and for which Amazon should be called out. This doesn’t affect authors with publishers, but if you’re self-published, tread carefully, and don’t opt into extended distribution. Make that a mantra.
*Please note that this was edited per the original based on some of readers’ helpful comments. Thank you.

6. Publishers cannot control the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature, but authors can. This feature is another of Amazon's algorithms, and there are ways to get your book linked to books you like or admire that are similar to yours. You can influence the “also bought” mentions by: 1) Strategically encouraging your readers to buy specific comparative titles when they purchase your book, which links the books at checkout; 2) Cross-promoting with other authors, meaning that you talk about other people’s books and they talk about yours, and even better if you can jointly discount your eBooks in the same window to encourage readers to buy multiple books that get linked at the point of checkout; 3) Running Amazon Ads targeting books you want to appear in the “also bought” section of your page.

7. Amazon is cost-controlling your book, and our mindsets. If you’re a KDP author (self-published through Amazon), then you know that you get a much nicer cut (70 percent as opposed to 30 percent) of your list price if you price your book between $2.99 and $9.99. The fact that this range has not budged in over a decade shows a little something about the stagnation of book prices, but also how authors and readers alike have been trained by Amazon to hold the line at $9.99. Our default price point for eBooks is now $12.99, but countless authors ask us to price their books at $9.99 or less. I don’t blame them, I get it, but this is further evidence of how Amazon drives down the value of our intellectual and creative property and we all fall in line to accept less—and we do it happily and willingly. Monopoly, anyone?

8. If you see that your book is selling for lower than its list price, don’t worry. You get paid on the list price, not the sale price. Often authors fret that because Amazon is discounting their books by 30 percent off the list price (which is typical), they’re getting paid less. Not the case. Amazon pays on “list price” (see image below, the $17.99 crossed out) minus its discount. For the regular book trade, Amazon gets a 50-55% discount. If you self-publish, you set the discount yourself, and some authors will discount as low as 30-40%. If you offer Amazon such a low discount, will they still price the book at 30% off? Absolutely! We’ve seen Amazon undercut its profits, sometimes listing eBooks in particular at 99 cents in the aftermath of an eBook sale and many months after the list price has gone back up to full price. People often wonder why Amazon undercuts its own profits, but there is strategic thinking behind it. First, they believe customers come to buy lower-priced items and will often add other, more profitable items to their carts. Second, Amazon is very interested in people’s book-buying habits. Know what a person reads and you can control their world—and advertise to them to your heart’s (and wallet’s) content. But if you’re an author concerned about your profits, don’t worry about Amazon. They pay on list price and they pay on time.

9. The sales information tab inside Author Central is not an accurate measure of sales. When you go into Author Central, they give you access to Nielsen Bookscan ratings, a helpful tool. However, in this capacity, all you’re getting is access to how many books Amazon is selling; it’s not a measure of overall sales. Furthermore, Bookscan accounts for approximately 70 percent of through-the-register sales. So these numbers can help you understand how well your book is performing generally, but they’re not reliable enough to serve as a true baseline for your sales.

10. Amazon is more author-friendly than they are publisher-friendly. If you’re an author, you can go into Author Central and ask Amazon to call you and they will—on the spot. Your publisher doesn’t have that same kind of access. The way publishers access Amazon is through their distributors, so there’s a degree of separation. What this means for authors with publishers is that you should work with your publisher to effect the changes you need or want made on Amazon. I’m incredibly grateful when authors ask me if they can or should make data changes inside Author Central because sometimes doing so will disrupt their Amazon listings, whereas other times the author’s proactivity will result in the needed update happening faster. Case in point: When authors upload endorsements (blurbs) to Author Central, we have often seen duplicate listings of said blurbs on authors’ Amazon page that we cannot fix, so our preference is that authors not add data to Author Central. Counterpoint: We have been largely unsuccessful at getting Amazon to link formats (ie, when a print book and an eBook aren’t synching, or when the audiobook comes out and Amazon is being slow to synch it to the other formats), whereas an author call usually results in the Amazon employee making this change right away. Your publisher will know what things they can and should do for you and what things you can and should try on your own, so work collaboratively to get the job done!

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This week’s Substack is a revised version of a post I originally wrote on Huffington Post in 2015. The most interesting thing is how little has changed in ten years, notably the fact of Amazon still insisting that eBooks be priced between $2.99-$9.99. Amazon should be opening our eyes to just how controlled we are as consumers by their practices. I’m trying to buy much less from Amazon these days, as hard as they make it (thank you, Whole Foods, for being three blocks away from my house). For authors, Amazon’s dominance poses a challenge because we need Amazon since it’s where most people buy books. That said, don’t let Amazon convince you that there aren’t other better ways to get your books into the world. And authors, here’s an eleventh important thing to know about Amazon in closing:

Bonus tip. Book people don’t like Amazon. Book people is a term used to describe the broader swath of people who work in publishing and with books—from reps to buyers to librarians to reviewers to bookstores and many others. As Amazon is broadly unpopular among this set, you want to make sure that on your website you always list other ways (aside from Amazon) readers can buy your book. Every time I host a sales meeting with the reps who sell our books to retailers, invariably they call me out about one of our authors whose site is listing Amazon as the only buying option. Here’s a screen shot from my own website so you can see what it looks like to offer more options. It’s this simple, and it shows the book publishing world that while you acknowledge Amazon as an option for your buyers, you’re part of the author club that knows that supporting indies matters to the broader and bigger publishing and book ecosystem.