Everyone is talking about Amazon’s newest gift to indie-authors: A+ Content.
It used to be that only traditional publishers and other vendors were given access to this special ability to add images and information to their sales pages, but now Amazon has given the rest of a chance to play with the big kids and everyone is in a tizzy over it.
Okay, so what is A+ Content?
Here’s an Amazon sales page as they normally are for a book:
Now look at this one:
Notice those beautiful blocks under that second row of covers (“Recommended For You”)? That’s the A+ Content produced and uploaded by Sarah MacLean’s publisher. Now, you can do that too. You can put A+ Content onto your sales pages turning them from ordinary into “Wow! I want to read that!”.
There are now a whole bunch of really wonderful and helpful blog posts telling you exactly how to add this content to your sales page (there’s one from Kindlepreneur that’s really good, as is the one from Written Word Media). Neither one of those blog posts, however, tell you what to put on your sales page; what you’re A+ Content should be.
I went searching to see what other people were doing to get an idea of just what I might want on my pages.
First, let me say, although I looked at sales pages from books of many different genres, it was mostly romance novels that had this content added (maybe that’s why romance sells more than any other genre?). The images that authors added were beautiful and interesting. Some echoed or outright mirrored the book’s cover, some were completely different, and some just took smaller elements from the cover – a dog or the couple.
The most arresting of the images I found were the ones that took the cover image and broke it apart into two or three sections sometimes adding either reviews, quotes from the book, or the book’s tagline overlaid. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Other A+ Content was more simple:
One blog I read simply showed A+ Content that was interviews with the author. Honestly, I think that’s a waste of this opportunity. Anyone can put up text at any time –authors have had access to doing that through Author Central for years.
But the ability to add arresting images with quotes, or reviews (please note, you can’t put up Amazon reader reviews, that won’t be accepted by the Powers That Be at Amazon) that’s where the power lies. The whole point is to grab a reader’s eye and make them take note.
So, to that end, I’ve created some images to add to my books, and I’m working on more. Some are simple:
And some will be more complicated. Here’s the sales page I managed to create for the first book in my Ladies’ Wagering Whist Society Series:
I am definitely going to use this new ability Amazon has gifted to me and see if it doesn’t sell more books!
Have you played with adding A+ Content to your sales pages yet? What sort of images had you put up?