As a self-published author you want to take advantage of every tool at your disposal to get more books in front of more readers. It is a never-ending strategy that includes things like getting customer reviews, utilizing paid promotions, optimizing your Amazon Author Central Account, and creating A+ Content.
Adding A+ Content to your book description page is one more way to elevate your self-published book and make it look more professional and appealing. A+ Content used to be reserved for books published through one of the Big 5 Publishing Companies, but now independently-published books can take advantage of this sales tool as well.
What is Amazon A+ Content
Amazon A+ Content is additional content that goes on your book description page. Unlike your book description or editorial reviews that you can add through your Author Central Account, A+ Content is much more visually appealing and has to be added directly through your Amazon KDP account.
With A+ content you can use photos, tables, and other designed graphics to make your book stand out and showcase your author brand more than ever before.
A+ Content is not anything new and has been a selling tool that Amazon has provided to other products for years. However, self-published books have only recently been able to add A+ content to their book pages. This content appears on your book page in a section titled “From the Publisher.”
What Can You Use as A+ Content?
The possibilities are endless. Your A+ content could be endorsements of your book from well known people. It could be passages from your book, or extra book description marketing copy that you’ve written but didn’t use in the book description.
It could be more about you, as the author. It could be graphs and charts from inside your book that showcase to the reader what they may learn when they purchase your book. Basically, A+ content should be anything that will give your potential reader a better idea of what they are getting if they buy the book.
Other ideas include:
- Highlighting other books in a series
- A carousel of images or character drawings you’ve created for your book
- If it’s a children’s book you could upload images and drawings from your book to show readers what it looks like on the inside
Just remember when creating your A+ Content that Amazon does have some rules about what you can’t include. While the list is worth reviewing yourself, some of the highlights include things like adding “best seller” to your images, posting endorsements that aren’t directly related to the book itself, or any sales language such as adding “50% off” or something like that.
Why Create Amazon A+ Content
Too often authors think their book speaks for itself and don’t believe they need any additional marketing to help sell it. In reality, the opposite is true and the more you can be doing to attract people to your book page, and keep them there by giving them more information about what they will receive if they make a purchase, the better.
Not only does A+ Content give you an opportunity to visually showcase your brand, tell your story, and even give snippets of your book, it also works as a search tool. When you create your A+ content you can add keywords and tags to help Amazon’s search engines and drive more traffic to your page.
Google will also index A+ Content, so for the first time people searching on Google can discover your book’s product detail page.
Creating Amazon A+ Content
Amazon A+ Content is created from your KDP account.
From your main dashboard, click the Marketing Tab:
Once in Marketing Resources, scroll down to A+ Content and choose your marketplace. Then click ‘Manage A+ Content.’
From there you can search for the ASIN number of your book and start creating A+ Content. You will choose from one of 17 different modules to add to your book.
The modules include things like comparison charts, images with text overlays, multiple images with text, and just text. Pick the module that will serve your purpose the best. We like to create all our own images and text in Canva and then just upload those to the module directly.
Just remember if you have multiple versions of your book you will need to add them each separately using their individual ASIN numbers.
After you upload the modules, your A+ Content will go through a review process that can take up to 8 days. Amazon will either accept the content or reject it. If they reject it, they will send you a notice of what rule was violated so you can adjust your content to meet their guidelines.
Tips for Designing your A+ Content
- Any A+ Content you create should match your book cover branding
- To create really compelling graphics, use a tool like Canva to create your designs then upload them into the different modules. Canva even has free options for those authors on a budget
- Try to make your content evergreen. In other words, don’t put things like the price, “buy now” or other promotional, time-sensitive language in your content. Amazon will just reject it anyway
- While you can’t use customer reviews in your A+ content, you can include reviews of celebrities or other well-known public figures or organizations/publications
Some Examples of Amazon A+ Content We Like:
