Author profiles let readers know about you and your books. And they’re free! Here are the 3 author profiles you must claim once your first book is available for sale.
Amazon Author Central
A no-brainer. Once your book is available on Amazon, head over to Amazon Author Central. Not only will you be able to claim your author profile, but once you’re approved, you will be able to edit your book’s details (so you can avoid going back to your KDP dashboard every time you want to tweak your book’s description)
Here’s a screen grab of my author page. Note that this page is accessible to readers, so write your blurb with them in mind. The author profile contains your book thumbnails, bio (notice how I suggest followers click the button to follow me), a post feed from my author blog, and other media, such as videos. Again, you have access to this page through your Amazon Author Central account.
One cool feature is that Amazon often (not always) sends your new releases to your followers. The downside is you don’t know who is following you or how many followers you have. Still, you can’t lose when one of the largest search engines in the world offers you free advertising!
UPDATE: Here’s a screen grab of an email I just received from Amazon today (7/2/18). This is the kind of email Amazon will send your followers when you release a new book. Cool, right?: 
BookBub Author Profile
I love BookBub, both as a reader and an author. I signed up early on to get a daily list of eBook deals for my own e-reader. Soon after, I found myself claiming my author profile and readers began following me over there. BookBub will send your followers an email when you have a new release. And here’s a big WIN: You can see who your followers are and how many you have.
Another fun and relatively new feature on BookBub is the ability to recommend books to your readers. This promotes positive reader engagement, which is a pretty nice idea in my, uh, book.
I also purchase featured deals on BookBub a few times a year as a way to let potential readers know my books exist 😄. I’ve ALWAYS seen a nice bump in sales after a BookBub paid feature.
Ready to get started? First, head over to BookBub. Next, scroll to the bottom of their website (the footer) and on the right side, click on the link that says: CLAIM AN AUTHOR PROFILE. Follow their instructions.
One HOT tip: If your book doesn’t populate the form, email an alert to BookBub. I did this for another author and they took care of adding her and her book quickly.
Okay, here are a few sample author profiles on BookBub to check out (note: When you get to their pages, you’ll need to click on “About” in order to see their bios):
Goodreads Author Profile
Goodreads is now owned by Amazon. The largest review site in the world with 75 million members offers The Goodreads Author Program, which gives authors the ability to claim a profile, obtain librarian status (important for being able to update your titles/covers), and interact with readers who are members of the site.
I’ve done a few Goodreads giveaways, which helped my books gain extra attention. This service used to be free (minus the cost of the book sent to winners), but now there’s a cost to the program. Still, there are plenty of other ways to engage with readers in Goodreads, such as linking your blog and/or social media accounts to feed right into your page.
Here are a few Goodreads author profiles, including my own, to check out. Notice how all three have a “Goodreads Author” badge on the top right of their profiles. That’s what you’ll want to see on your page as well:
As writers, we know the importance of connecting with other writers. All three of these sites provide critical opportunity for you as an author to engage with your readers as well. I hope you’ve found this helpful and will start today by claiming your author profile at each site. Best!
Aw, thanks for mentioning me! And such useful information. It was a long time before I knew I could claim a BookBub profile!
You’re very welcome, Jennifer! I recently met a newly published author who wasn’t aware of author profiles, hence this post.