Tell Your "Origins" Story With A+ Content

I’d like to start this week’s blog by asking you to use your imagination for a moment.
 
Imagine you are at a book fair and a potential customer stops in front of your table. They pick up your book, examine the front cover and then turn it over to read the back matter. Then they raise their eyes and are clearly going to speak to you.
 
“Did you write this?” they ask (they always ask that for some reason, that or “are you the author”?).
 
“Yes.” you reply. “Is there anything you want to know about it?”
 
There then follows a conversation about the book, which can take too many forms for me to cover all possibilities. But one question that is often asked is “What inspired you to write this book?”
 
This is the solid gold question. If you can answer that, you have an almost certain sale. Readers love to know the “origins” story of a book. Not the origin in the way “Batman Begins” is an origins story. This is the origin of the idea, the inspiration that caused the book to be written.

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But on Amazon (and other retail sites) you are unable to tell that origins story that increases the likelihood of making the sale.
 
Except that you can tell the story. This blog is about how you can tell it.
 
You might think that you could include it in your blurb. But that is not effective. Readers rarely read all the way to the end of a blurb.
 
After 200 – 300 words they are either interested enough in the book that they stop reading or are so disinterested they are already scrolling through the search results looking for something else. Those latter readers are lost to you, so we can dismiss them for the purposes of this blog (though why they are disinterested is the subject of lots of blogs about blurb writing).
 
The trick now is to turn interested readers into buyers. They are the person stood in front of your table at the book fair asking about how your book came to be written. But they are viewing the book on Amazon, so how can you answer that question?

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Finally, we get to the point of this blog, which is that you use A+ Content.
 
This is exclusive to Amazon and Amazon claims that using A+ Content increases conversions to sales by up to 10%. In terms of ad clicks, that’s one extra sale for every 10 clicks. Those extra sales alone could pay for the ad.
 
We have blogged about using A+ Content in the past, so this is something of an update based on what we have learnt since then.
 
First of all, what is A+ Content? 

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It is space on your Amazon sales page that you can use to provide additional information about your books. There are several ways of using it and different types of sellers will use it in different ways.

You have probably seen A+ Content when you have shopped on Amazon and not even been aware of it.
 
You can insert graphics, graphics and text, product comparisons and all sorts of other stuff.
 
But the key thing for this blog is that you can provide that “origins” story. The wordcount is limited, so you have to be brief, but a good writer can pack a lot into very few words.
 
A+ Content is inserted as “modules”. Each module is a combination of graphics, text and other elements that allow you to provide the additional information. In addition, you can add keywords to the graphics, so the measly 7 sets of keywords that KDP allows you for your books is now capable of being multiplied.
 
You can use up to 5 modules. The type of content we are about to describe uses 3 modules, but don’t let that limit you. If you can think of ways to use 5 modules, then use 5 modules.
 
Below is the total display we used for one of our books. We’ll talk you through each module below it.

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The top module is the attention grabber. It is the sort of thing we use in our ads, so some of our potential readers may already have seen it. As you can see, it makes it clear that the book we are trying to sell is part of a much longer series, which appeals to a lot of readers.
 
Below the main graphic we have used a module that inserts 3 images side-by-side. Each image features a quote from reviews of the book. We created these as images so we could make them stand out more than just using plain text.
 
Reviews are known to be a critical part of the “sales funnel” because good reviews stimulate a desire in the reader to read the book. 
 
Our 3rd and final module is the one we think is doing the heavy lifting. It is where we tell the “origins” story.
 
It is an image on one side (it can be either left or right) along with accompanying text which we have headlined “The Inspiration”. You don't have to use an image, of course, but we think that adds greater interest as images draw the eye to the text.
 
It is this final module that will turn interested readers into buyers. Yes, they may still scroll down the page to see more reviews. Yes, they may still go to the “free sample” to read the opening chapter(s). But mentally they have already bought the book if they like the “origins” story that goes with it.
 
Just an FYI, when the Amazon page is viewed on a phone, the A+ Content is usually the first content to be seen, so you can get a strong message across even before the reader gets to the blurb.

How do you upload A+ Content onto your page?

Go to your KDP bookshelf and select “promote and advertise” from the drop-down menu to the right of the book (3 dots). On the marketing tools page, look for “A+ Content”. Select the marketplace for your book (you can use different content for different Amazon territories) and then go through the various steps to select and insert the modules you want to use.
 
I suggest you read the KDP tutorials on A+ Content before you start if you want to avoid wasting time, because the process isn’t as intuitive as KDP’s designers would like to think. You can find more information here. A+ Content
 
If you want to use A+ Content on both an ebook and paperback page, you have to create it twice, once for each ASIN.
 
If you have enjoyed this blog or found it informative, make sure you don’t miss future instalments by signing up to our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook if you do.

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