Creating Your Author Profiles for Beginners

Originally published at https://medium.com on December 9, 2019 (as Creating Your Author Profile)

You likely already have a digital footprint, but what you really want to do is streamline how you are appearing online to reflect who you are as an author. Three common places new authors can start are: Amazon Author Central, Goodreads Author Program, and social media.

Amazon Author Central: If you are an author, whether independent or affiliated with a publishing company, Amazon is one of the platforms your readers find, buy or borrow your books. Each author that is represented through Amazon can create a profile through Amazon Author central. The author page allows your readers to know a little bit about you. It also gives them the option to follow you to see your latest releases, new updates, and can even feeds to your blog posts maintained in your website (or wherever you like to blog.). It also allows authors to see the listing of their books, their sales rankings and customer reviews in one spot.

Goodreads Author Program: By having your book published through KDP, almost automatically the book also appears on Goodreads, which is owned by amazon. Even if this is not the channel you want to invest in to promote your books, you still want to claim your profile page through the Goodreads author program. At the very least, you can create a clean author profile and ensure your books are appropriately credited to you. In your bio, you can even post a call to action for readers to follow you somewhere else. Goodreads also gives opportunities for authors to interact with readers or fellow authors through blogs, paid giveaways and community forums. For both Goodreads and Amazon author central, it helps to look at how other authors in your genre have structured their pages and wrote their profiles. I still struggle with my bios coming off a little like dating profiles, but I’ve done a few iterations and am slowly getting to where I need to be.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Designated Author Social channel: As an independent author, it’s nice to have a single channel of communication to promote your work. I already had a presence on Twitter for personal endeavors and my regular job, and the worst thing I could do (and have been doing) is sending mixed messages. The one account I didn’t already have was Instagram so I decided this was a good channel to send one clear message on my books and attract readers. Instagram gives you the option to setup a creator account, so you can tag yourself as an author and make your account a little more official. If you are a new author committing to a social channel, keep it consistent. Try not to mingle messaging by going off on product defects or hating on celebrities or getting super political UNLESS that’s what you focus your writing on. As a new author building your brand, you don’t have the luxuries other more established authors do where people really care what they do every second of every day. You are first trying to build some credibility and prove why you are worth a follow. As an independent author building her brand, readers should know what they are getting when they follow you. You don’t want to do straight promotions all the time either. Share what you are reading, what inspires you to write, who you like to follow, tips on getting over writers block etc.

Choose a professional profile picture. For all these channels choose a professional profile picture. I use the word professional kind of loosely. As a reader, I don’t mind if an author I follow has an actual professional headshot or if it’s a picture of them with their dog and kids. Make sure the image is good quality and not grainy. Also, steer away from the awkward selfie shot, where it feels like the reader is looking up at you from a tunnel (those I like less). I personally like to minimize the pictures of myself online, so I keep a pretty consistent photo of myself across my channels and when I update one I try to update it across the board, but that’s more based on personal preference.

One thing I will not get into in this blog is establishing and maintaining your own website. I will share a future blog on this and my experiences. You can find more details in the article by Erica Verrillo, How to Build Your Author Platform from Scratch.

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