Why universal book stores are important? When a potential book buyer clicks on a link to your book, where does it end up?
Will you send them to Amazon in the US if they live in Scotland? Are you sending them to Amazon UK for people living in South Africa?
You’re likely to miss out on a great opportunity to sell the book, as UK book buyers can’t buy books from Amazon USA, and South African buyers can’t use Amazon UK either.
Are you an open publication? Yes? Great. But how do book buyers who use Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble or Kobot buy your book? Definitely not from your Amazon Kindle link.
Universal Book Links
If you want to buy your book as easily as possible, you want to link to your buyer’s favourite store. But what store is this? Amazon USA? Kobo France? Nurk? Google South Africa? Book culture in Brazil? The temptation is to add all possible links to your landing page.
Enter a universal link – the only website / URL you can share that will send your excited reader to the store of your choice. This page allows you to choose your favourite store and links to the local version of that store, and even adds the appropriate affiliate code!
Top 3 Universal book link solutions
1. Books2Read’s Universal Book Links
Draft2Digital has found a solution to a problem-plagued author for years.
Authors are often encouraged to link to as many different online bookstores as possible. The goal is to make sure that the reader will find the author’s book in their favourite bookstore, but considering the amount of work involved, most authors link to Amazon and several second-class stores (Google, Apple, Kobo).
If you’ve been following news about digital publishers long enough, you’ll probably remember the days when authors were underestimated because they didn’t link to all bookstores. Now they can.
Books2Read offers a wonderful universal link. Use this link to add all your retailers. Yes, EVERYONE! You can even add affiliate links. When you publish with Draft2Digital, the link is automatically populated with all Draft2Digital retailers. Log in to your Draft2digital account, and you can scan to check all of your available retailers.
I found my eBooks on Google Play. But you need to add your Amazon link. Amazon is manual because you can add your Amazon affiliate account if you have it.
It only takes a few seconds, so it’s easy. You create a single link that gives your book buyers several retail options. They may prefer their favourite store and always be there if they wish.
2. Book Linker
Book Linker is the perfect solution for you to get your potential buyers to the right Amazon store. This is especially useful if you only publish with Amazon KDP Select.
All you have to do is paste a link to your Amazon book, and this service will give you a short link. You can even edit the link to add a title to your book. It works by using the geographical location of all the clickers on your link and sending them to the Amazon store that serves the buyer.
These universal Amazon links are extremely beneficial for British authors due to Amazon UK restrictions. This link will primarily direct UK and US customers to the right store.
Although it certainly works in many countries. Book Linker is a service that helps many of the authors listed on Amazon.
3. Linktree
Linktree is a web-based tool that allows you to centralize all your links. This is especially important on platforms like Instagram, where the only active link is in your resume. This means you need to decide which link is most important to you for sharing. Maybe it’s your blog, Facebook or Amazon page.
This is frustrating because what if you organize your Facebook or newsletter donation, but your link leads to your Amazon page? Linktree allows you to create a “tree” where all your links are stored in one place, and then you can share the “LinkTree” link in your biography.
Linktree allows you to keep all the content you want to share with your followers wherever you can share the link. And although it was created just for Instagram, it can be shared and used anywhere.
Free and paid options are available, but the free version offers more than enough to help you promote your books. You can add as many links as you like and track your views and clicks.
Another advantage is using your link on other social platforms, such as TikTok, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn.
Takeaway
If you have these beautiful links, where are you using them?
It’s a good idea to add the country page of your book to your website. Even if you don’t have an e-commerce solution installed, the reader can now go straight to your favourite store to buy from your site.
You can also add a link to your email signature, web posts, business cards and bookmarks, and ads anywhere you let people know about your book.
The whole idea is to give the reader – who has already shown interest in your book – the easiest way to get this book.
