Your readers have a choice of where to buy eBooks so why aren't you making it easy for them?

 It never ceases to amaze me that book promotion sites and authors, who write in English, provide links only to Amazon.com. Yes - that's probably the biggest market but it's far from the only market. There are many countries where the use of English is common and as a result English books are available all over the world.

So why limit your links to .com addresses only? Yes, you can change a link such as amazon.com to amazon.co.uk and the link will then work just fine, but that's especially fiddly on a tablet or phone. Many people just don't bother.

What Amazon sites sell books in English?

Just considering Amazon alone these sites sell eBooks and print copies in English. The site is in English.

United States - amazon.com

United Kingdom - amazon.co.uk

Australia - amazon.com.au

Canada - amazon.ca

India -amazon.in

These sites are NOT in English but offer English versions of eBooks and Print copies in English

• Brazil - amazon.com.br
• France - amazon.fr
• Germany - amazon.de A multi-lingual site offering German, English, Czech, Dutch, Polish and Turkish languages. Currency can be Euros and a wide variety of others (but not USD)
• Italy - amazon.it
• Japan - amazon.co.jp A trilingual site offering Japanese, English and Chinese
• Mexico - amazon.com.mx
• Netherlands - amazon.nl
• Spain - amazon.es A bilingual site in Spanish and Portuguese.

• Poland - printed books in English
• Singapore - printed books in English
• Sweden - Offers an English language version of the website. eBooks are sold via amazon.com

There are Amazon stores in these countries too but due to government restrictions content is curated. Ex-pats can usually still buy amazon eBooks using a VPN and their home country Amazon store

• China
• Egypt
• Saudi Arabia
• Turkey
• United Arab Emirates

What about other book and eBook retailers? Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and now Draft2Digital (via Smashwords) are major retailers selling books worldwide but as well as these there are numerous smaller e-retailers such as Angus & Robertson in Australia.

Your readers have a choice of where to buy eBooks so why aren't you making it easy for them?

The answer to this problem is to use a link shortening service. There are lots of them available. My own personal choice is Books2Read.com which allows:

• country specific links for retailers - someone in the UK will go to an amazon.co.uk page while someone in Canada will go to amazon.ca
• Affiliate links automatically added - if you are not using affiliate links you should be! At amazon for example it gives you an extra 4% royalty. Affiliate links are usually country specific and books2read.com sorts that out for you.
• You can customise the link to make it easy to type in. For my book 'Immortality Gene' my link becomes books2read.com/immgen; for 'Dark Secrets' it's books2read.com/dse.
• I enter the link to one website and Books2Read automatically finds the book at other e-retailers so my link at Amazon.com finds the book at these e-retailers
  
  
  
  
  

For readers, this link allows them to select the store they will buy the eBook at and a link such as books2read.com/immgen is far easier than a link to books.apple.com/gb/book/a-vested-interest-immortality-gene/id550312609. The reader can also opt to be automatically directed to their favourite e-retailer's store directly.

Books2Read is a website run by Draft2Digital and it's free for authors to use.

If this post has helped or entertained, will you help me? Download a FREE copy of our book 'Immortality Gene' from https://books2read.com/immgen Even if you never read it (but I hope you will) - it will help my rankings. As to this post - it will be added to the new edition of 'An Illustrated Guide to Getting Published.'