A key marketing tool you are missing

It's easy to miss, yet it's right before your eyes. I think I know why you miss it. It's because most, if not all of you, don't get involved. You just either hand it over to someone else expecting that person to have your interest and do it for you, or if you do it yourself, you don't pay close attention to the details.

You may be wondering what I am referring to. It's a key marketing tool that Amazon offers you free of charge called Author Central.

Here are a few things you can do with it:

1. You can add all your books in one place. This means you don't even need a website, if you can't afford one. Not that it should replace a website, but at least it's a cheap start to get you some visibility and makes you look professional

2. You can add a feed to your blogs if you have a blog, which will encourage readers to follow you

3. Speaking about readers, you can also encourage dialogue and conversation through author central.

4. You can do promos and events. Say, you're having a book launch, you can set the date and input other information about the event, or maybe you want to offer your books for free for a certain time, you can do that, too. Hey, you can also post photos from your events! How cool is that?

5. Do you have a promotional video for your books? And while I am at it, I strongly suggest that you get those, too. Upload those videos to your Author Central. It adds more value and piques readers' interest.

6. You can add information about yourself a biography - and edit it anytime you wish.

7. Last, but certainly not least, you can create your own author central url and use it to promote yourself and your work

So, for those of you scraping around for where to get started once you're published, make sure you check out this link for more: amzn.to/23M1dMg.

Just so you know, when you are published on Amazon, they send you this information in your email to help you get off the ground running, so please ensure the same way you want people to read your work, try to do some reading of your own, especially when it takes little to no effort on your part to do so. Some tough love coming your way!

Corine La Font is a speaker, author, coach and self -publishing consultant. She is also an award-winning publishing resource in the 2013 Small Business Book Awards. Get a copy of her book at amzn.to/TFHQka, Subscribe to her magazine at bit.ly/1IDj7pQ tune in to her radio programme at blogtalkra dio.com/helpdeskja and check out her website at helpdeskja.com She can be reached at corinelaf@gmail.com.