What author doesn’t love being in control of their books? Author Spots loves this idea, so the platform is designed to put the author in complete control of their bookselling venture! On Author Spots, you get full access to your own personal behind-the-scenes dashboard that lets you control everything about your storefront, including how it looks, what books you sell, how you price them, and how you get them to customers.

User-Friendly Dashboard

The dashboard on Author Spots is super easy to use and truly has everything you need to set up your store. When you open an Author Spots account, your dashboard immediately offers steps and tutorials for a successful set-up, including how to connect to stripe, brand your store, and add products. We suggest watching the tutorials to gain confidence as you learn the site, but you can also just dive right in and explore the tabs along the top, which give you access to all the tools you need to create a wonderful shop to share with your readers.

Storefront & Stripe Account: Manage My Spot

To get started, navigate to the Storefront & Stripe Account tab then click on Manage My Spot. This opens the branding part of your dashboard with the following elements:

• Banner: This is the hero image that appears at the top of your storefront. Image specifications are given for the best results. Use this space however you like, but it should identify your author brand in some way. Showcase all your books, use a picture of you or pictures of your readers with your books, or make it a bigger or stylized version of your logo. The banner also can change periodically if you have a new release or want to run a sale.
• SEO: Also within the Banner & SEO tab is your ability to add SEO (search engine optimization) to your storefront. Use keywords that people might search to find you and your books.
• Description: This text appears on your storefront under your logo with a limited character count, so make sure all the most important information shows up here. You can certainly go over the character count because the entire text will appear on the Browse All Authors search page as well as in our places within your storefront.
• Logo: Add your author or publishing logo, depending on your needs. This image appears at the upper left corner of your storefront as well as on the Browse All Authors page. If you don’t have a logo, we can help you create one (https://authorspots.com/contact-support/), or you can use a photo of yourself or something else. 
• Buyer Motivation Blocks: These information blocks appear on each product page under Add to Cart. They default to the same text for everyone, but you can customize these messages to be specific to you.
• Reviews: Right now, this will be blank, but once you get reviews, you can view and manage them here.
• Available Shipping Methods: This defaults to free shipping, but you can uncheck that and later input shipping on each product. Or you can leave this as free and work the shipping cost into the product price.

Products

This tab is where you’ll add products. Once you’re in the tab, find the green + sign in the upper right to add a new product. For each product, just fill in all the necessary fields (detailed here).

• Name: For Author Spots, generally this would be the title of your book, but it can be anything that would help readers identify the product.
• Categories: Here is where you assign your book to its appropriate genre(s) so readers looking for their next read will be able to find your books with ease through the Shop By Category tab on the Author Spots homepage.
• Price: You decide the public price of your book here. 
• Full Description: This usually is the synopsis of your book, but it can also list additional information about length, format, or anything else you want to include.
• Product Images: Your main product image likely will be your book’s front cover, but you can other images if you like. 
• Other Stuff: There is so much more here to do if you want to further customize your product page, so go ahead and explore. Of note, if your product is a digital download (pdf/mobi), you can assign that in the section called More Details, which is also where you can add product-specific search terms.

Don’t forget to add additional SEO on the second tab of the page or add Quantity Discounts if you like. Once all this information is filled in, click Save, and voilà you have a live product to sell!

Add or Revise Any Time

You can return to each book any time to adjust information as needed. Moreover, once the product is live, the product page shows additional options, including a Video Gallery for adding videos like book trailers.

With all of this and more right at your fingertips, how can you go wrong? Get your storefront up and running and start adding products today!

Want to Know More about Author Spots?

There’s so much more to share about the benefits of selling your books on Author Spots. Stay tuned for more blogs that detail all the advantages or check out the Top Ten Author Spots Advantages at Your Service blog for a little bit of everything.

Ready to Register Today?

If you haven’t already, learn more and open your Author Spots storefront today.