Blurb has always been a great way for people to make books about the things that interest them and I’ve made my own Pieday Friday recipe book using their design and publishing services. I’ve been sharing a free e-book version of my recipe book with my lovely readers (drop me an email if you’d like me to send it to you – [email protected]) and while it’s always been possible to sell your books via Blurb’s website, you can now sell the books you make on Amazon.com! Imagine, your work on the world’s biggest marketplace – that’s something that I’m getting pretty excited about and I’ve been investigating how I can bring my recipe book to Amazon. Here’s an interview with Donna Boyer, Blurb’s Chief Product Officer, on how the whole thing works:
What’s the most exciting thing about authors being able to sell their books through Amazon.com?
Setting up Blurb books to be available on Amazon.com couldn’t be easier. Once authors have uploaded their book to their Blurb account, they simply go to their Book Details page to select “Amazon” under the “Sell my book” options. That’s it. Once authors provide their info to get paid, Blurb handles the rest.
What can authors expect when listing on Amazon.com?
Once an author submits their book, it will be available for sale on Amazon.com within about seven days. Authors should plan to market their book to their network in order to drive reviews and sales rankings on Amazon, which can then lead to organic sales from new readers. It’s important for authors to remember that Amazon adds a fee for selling through Amazon.com, so the list price will need to be higher in order to make the same profit as a book sold directly via the Blurb platform.
Selling through Amazon.com is quite the game changer—can authors list their books on Amazon.com if they’ve already published them through Blurb?
Absolutely. Any existing photo paper book is eligible for distribution Amazon. For authors who want to sell on Amazon, it’s strongly recommended to drive all sales to Amazon in order to increase their Amazon ranking. But, if someone wants to sell both through Amazon and directly through Blurb’s platform, they can do this by uploading their book twice. It’s important to remember that the list price must be the same on both Amazon and on Blurb, per Amazon’s terms. This just means that the author gets a bigger profit for any copies sold through Blurb!
What are the biggest reason Blurb authors will want to take advantage of Amazon.com distribution?
A big benefit of Amazon is that it gives authors a new opportunity to expand their audience beyond their current network. The best way to take advantage of Amazon is to follow Amazon’s best practices for sellers—for example, choosing the right words for the book’s description, maintaining positive ratings and reviews, setting up your seller’s page, and driving all sales to your book listing on Amazon in order to increase authority. It’s these little things that will make your book more discoverable to new readers.
What one book do you hope to write and self-publish one day when you aren’t too busy focused on helping others with their books?
Actually, I’ve always been way more of a reader than a writer. So when I’m not too busy helping other people with their books, I’m most likely to be reading a lot more books by Blurb authors. I’m particularly interested in non-fiction—I’m fascinated by how much expertise there is across such a wide variety of interesting topics. My favourite part of my job is just how many books there are about things I’ve never even heard of!
Find out more about selling your Blurb book on Amazon.
Some items in this blog post have been gifted to me and the pink links indicate a gifted product, affiliate link or information source. All thoughts and opinions in this post are based on my own experience and I am not responsible for your experience 🙂
