You’ve just published your first book on Amazon. You can see it there in the store when you search for your title. It’s a book that people can buy, right now, if only they knew how to get there!
You could tell them:
“Go to Amazon, search for ‘mighty woodchucks in space’ and it’ll come right up!”
Or you could share with them the URL that’s sitting in your address bar. You know, something like this:
Or you could share something short and sweet:
Or you could give them a catchy short link like this:
2 Ways to the Slightly Cryptic Short Link (amzn.com/B00C7C6702)
Way #1
On every product page on Amazon, there will be a little share widget. I have seen this appear in a couple of different locations, but look for it somewhere above the customer reviews. It may be in the sidebar on the right under the various ‘buy it now!’ buttons. It will say ‘Share’ with 4 different icons – Email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.
Click on ‘Share’ or the Email icon. A window should pop up prompting you to share it. Look for where it says ‘Link’. There’s your link! Just copy it and then you can close that pop up.
Paste and share that link wherever you want!
Way #2
The secret about that link is that the B00C7C6702 part after the slash? That’s your ASIN. Your unique Amazon product number. So if you know that, you can just substitute that in.
It’s listed in Product Details on your book’s Amazon page.
Use whichever of those two ways seems easiest to you.
The Way to the Prettier, More Memorable Short Link (amzn.to/geekytrivia1)
The amzn.to short urls are coming from a service called bit.ly.
Step 1: Sign up for an account at http://bit.ly. It’s a quick registration, free, and it doesn’t even require an Email verification.
Step 2: Look for the happy pufferfish in the upper right corner, imploring you to paste your URL.
Step 3: What URL do you want to paste? You can paste the really long Amazon URL, the short amzn.com URL, or even a URL that has your Amazon Associates affiliate link in it. Choose whichever one you want and paste it near the pufferfish.
Step 4: It’s created a short link for you! It will probably say amzn.to/(random#). You can use that, but the point was to make it pretty!
Step 5: There’s a little pencil icon indicating you can edit the URL. Go ahead and do that. These shorturls are shared throughout the bit.ly network, however. That means you probably can’t get something like amzn.to/myebook, because it’s likely already taken. Choose something short, memorable, related to your book, but unique.
Step 6: This is a tricky bit that confused me at first. After you’ve edited it, it shows it as a bit.ly address, not an amzn.to one. But actually, they’ll both work. bit.ly/geekytrivia1 and amzn.to/geekytrivia1 both go to the same location.
BONUS! This bit.ly / amzn.to method will work for your Amazon author page as well.
Short URLs! Useful for more than just Twitter! Share them with all your friends, followers, and fans!
