Update: GeoRiot is now geni.us. Find out more!

From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's books

GeoRiot is now GeniusLink

I was reading a post on D.G. Kaye’s blog where she was explaining that “when we post links to our books on Amazon and people from different countries of the world click on them, you may be losing potential readers because many countries have their own country code in the URL and believe it or not, if they land on Amazon.com and aren’t tech savvy to navigate to their own country page, it results in a potentially lost sale.”

That’s when it occurred to me; I’m friends with Ryan Shepherd of GeoRiot fame, so why not ask him for a guest post on the subject? Here is what he has to say.

How To Sell More Books Through Your Amazon Links

In today’s break-neck, 24-hour news cycle culture, most people find it hard to decide what to pay attention to. So when someone elects to browse books online instead of their Facebook timeline or Twitter feed, it is a minor miracle. When someone chooses to consider your book, that’s a full-fledged, water-to-wine miracle (no matter your literary clout), which makes every interaction with potential readers a rather holy experience.

So whether you have an all-time best selling series or you are just breaking on to the scene as an independent author, making the most of each fan interaction is crucial.

Your email footer, your Twitter bio, your website, and any other outward facing medium you may have, has to take full advantage of your user’s attention. One detail that is far too often overlooked however, is the experience you offer your users via the Amazon links you provide for purchasing your book.

There are good experiences and there are bad experiences. Each experience can boil down to one simple thing: your “Purchase” links.

Bad Experiences  

When you use raw Amazon.com URLs that send every person to your book in the U.S. Amazon storefront, that’s a bad experience for your users.

Here’s why.

You may know that Amazon has 13 storefronts globally. The result of these multiple storefronts (combined with the various devices people use to access them) is a phenomena known as the “purchasing gap”. This purchasing gap is defined as the barriers between potential customers and the products you promote (like your book) that arise from the ever-increasing complexity of the online marketplace, and it’s where potential sales go to die.

If you or your book has earned any international esteem, you have fans overseas that would rather not shop in the US Amazon storefront (Amazon.com) for a few reasons:

  • They may not be able to purchase items with a foreign bank account
  • They may have to wait abnormally long for shipping
  • They may have to pay for international shipping
  • They may not even understand the language

Luckily, there’s a way to bridge that purchasing gap and fight that bad experience.

Good Experiences

Good user experiences mean a higher chance of a sale, and are provided by intelligent (or even Genius) links. These links are able to tell where in the world someone is when they click your link, and then send them to your book in their local Amazon storefront.

There are a few tools for converting your links into “global” links, but I’ll tell you about the best one: GeoRiot.com.

This platform allows you to take the URL for your book (or any book) on Amazon and turn it into an intelligent global link that translates each click and sends it to that book in the user’s local Amazon storefront.

GeoRiot also incorporates your Amazon Associates parameters for each country (because the Associate’s program is country specific too), and makes sure you get any referral commissions you’re owed for each purchase. Yes, even if it’s your own book.

By replacing raw Amazon links with intelligent links you can be sure that every fan is sent to your book in the storefront that best suits them. This leads to happier fans and, often, seriously increased sales numbers.

Hallelujah.

Don’t forget that for a few more days, The Power of Six will be on sale. Read seven short sci-fi stories for only 99c!