An Amazon Author Central page is a free profile that gathers all your books in one place on Amazon. To set one up, sign in at Amazon Author Central with your regular Amazon account, search for a book you have written, and claim it. Once Amazon confirms you wrote it, you can add your photo and bio.
What Is Amazon Author Central, and Is It Free?
Amazon Author Central is a free tool that lets you control how you appear to readers on Amazon. It is the place where you build your public author profile, link all your titles together, and see how your books are selling. There is no fee to join and no subscription to keep it.
Your profile does a lot of quiet work once it is set up. Amazon shows your photo and bio on your Author Page, on each book’s detail page, in search results, inside your Kindle books, and in the “Follow” emails Amazon sends to readers. A reader who likes one of your books can click through to a single page that lists everything else you have written.
One point of confusion comes up again and again with authors we help: they assume Author Central and the dashboard they used to publish their book are the same thing. They are two separate places with two separate jobs. Author Central is your storefront for you; the publishing dashboard is where the book files and pricing live.
How Do You Set Up an Amazon Author Central Account?
To set up an Amazon Author Central page, you need at least one book already for sale on Amazon under your author name. With that in place, the whole process takes a few minutes. Here are the steps Amazon lists:
- Go to author.amazon.com and sign in. If you published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP, Amazon’s free self-publishing service), use your KDP login. Otherwise, use your normal Amazon account.
- Search for one of your books by title, ISBN (the number that identifies your print edition), or author name.
- Click the book to claim your Author Page.
- Agree to the terms and conditions.
- Check that you have picked the right book and author, then click “Yes, Join as [your author name].”
After you claim a book, your account may sit in a “pending” state for a short while. Amazon sometimes contacts your publisher to confirm your identity by checking your email address. Amazon says this verification can take up to seven days. While you wait, you are not locked out: you can still add or edit your photo and bio, and Amazon holds that content until you are approved. Changes to the actual list of books on your page wait until verification finishes.
What if you can’t find your book?
If your book does not show up when you search, the usual cause is timing rather than a mistake. A newly published title can take up to three business days to go live on Amazon, and a brand-new account that has just claimed its first book is the moment authors most often panic. Before contacting support, search by the book’s ISBN or ASIN (the 10-character code Amazon assigns to every product), and make sure you are signed in to the marketplace where the book is actually on sale. If your name still is not listed under the title on the book’s detail page, Amazon asks you to contact them with proof, such as a link to your publisher’s site or a table of contents showing your name.
Amazon Author Central vs KDP: What Is the Difference?
Author Central and KDP look similar and even share a login, but they manage different things. KDP is where your book itself lives: the manuscript file, the cover, the price, the categories, and the keywords. Author Central is where you live: your bio, your photo, and the page that ties your whole catalogue together. Most self-published authors use both.
A practical way to remember it: if you want to change something about the book, you go to KDP; if you want to change something about yourself as the author, you go to Author Central. We often see authors hunt through Author Central trying to fix a typo in their book description, when that edit actually lives in KDP. (Our guide on how to update your book on Amazon after publishing walks through the listing side.)
| Task | Where you do it |
|---|---|
| Upload or replace your book file | KDP |
| Set or change your price | KDP |
| Choose categories and keywords | KDP |
| Write your author bio and add your photo | Author Central |
| Add editorial reviews to a book | Author Central |
| See your sales rank and BookScan data | Author Central |
Author Central is not required to publish a book, but it is worth the few minutes. The Alliance of Independent Authors treats a complete author profile as part of a basic author platform, and a filled-in page simply gives readers more reasons to trust and follow you.
What Can You Add to Your Author Page?
Once your account is verified, the Profile tab is where you build out your page. The core pieces are an author bio, an author photo, a shareable web address, and (for U.S. books) editorial reviews. Each has its own simple rules.
Author bio and photo
Your bio goes under the Profile tab; click “Add bio,” pick a language, and enter plain text. Amazon does not allow formatting or HTML code in the bio, and it recommends keeping it under 1,000 characters so it displays well everywhere. A bio update takes one to two business days to appear. For the photo, Amazon requires an image at least 300 pixels wide and tall, saved as a JPG, GIF, or PNG.
Watch the content rules here, because this is where we see the most rejections. Amazon’s bio guidelines do not allow phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses, or website links, and they do not allow promotional lines or prices. A bio that ends with “buy my book at…” or a web address will not pass, so keep it to who you are and what you write.
Custom Author Page URL
You can create a clean, shareable link for your page under the Profile tab. The custom address must be 1 to 30 characters and can use letters, numbers, dashes, periods, and underscores, with no spaces or other symbols. It goes live in about 30 minutes. This feature is available only on Amazon.com.
Editorial reviews
Editorial reviews are quotes from reputable sources (a publication, a website, or a known reviewer) that appear on your book’s detail page, separate from customer star reviews and from the book description you write in KDP. You add them under the Books tab by selecting a book, choosing the edition, and clicking “Edit book details.” A print book can hold up to five editorial reviews; a Kindle book holds one; and each book has a 20,000-character ceiling across all its reviews. Amazon does not allow links, prices, time-sensitive details, or spoilers in them, and changes take three to five business days to show up.
The Follow button
Every claimed book and Author Page carries a yellow “Follow” button. Amazon’s Author Central help says that when a reader clicks it, Amazon may email them when your next book is released or goes up for pre-order, as long as the book is eligible and the reader accepts marketing emails from Amazon. It is a quiet, free way to build an audience that complements your own pre-launch email list. The catch is simple: a book has to be added to your Author Central account to be eligible for those follow alerts, which is one more reason to claim every title.
Here is roughly how long common changes take to appear:
| Change | Time to appear |
|---|---|
| Custom Author Page URL goes live | Up to 30 minutes |
| Bio update | 1 to 2 business days |
| New book added to your page | 3 to 5 business days |
| Editorial review | 3 to 5 business days |
| Pen name verified | Up to 7 days |
What Changed in Author Central Recently?
If you set up a page years ago and have come back to it, parts of it have moved or disappeared, so older how-to guides can mislead you. The biggest change is that Amazon retired the “Author Updates” section. That means the old blog or RSS feed, plus the gallery of extra photos and videos, are no longer shown on your U.S. Author Page. Existing photos and videos may still appear on non-U.S. pages, and you can download your old media from the Profile tab.
This trips up returning authors more than any other change: they go looking for the feed that used to pull in their blog posts, or the video reel they uploaded, and cannot find where to manage them. There is nothing to fix; that feature is simply gone. Your single author photo and your bio still appear everywhere, and they now sit together under the Profile tab.
It also helps to know that Author Central works one marketplace at a time. The sign-in screen asks you to make sure you are using the right Amazon domain for where you live, and you can hold a separate Author Page on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, and others. Some features are limited by region: the custom URL and self-service editorial reviews are Amazon.com only, while book recommendations are available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Author Central is an Amazon tool; if you sell through other retailers, each runs its own separate author profile system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Amazon Author Central free?
Yes. Amazon Author Central costs nothing to join or use. The only requirement is that you have at least one book available for purchase on Amazon under your author name before you can claim a page.
Can I manage more than one pen name on Author Central?
Yes. A single Author Central account can handle more than one pen name, and Amazon verifies a new pen name within about seven days. If you write under many names, you may eventually need a second account under a different email address, so it helps to plan your pen names before you start claiming books.
Is Author Central available outside the United States?
Yes. Amazon runs Author Central in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and Brazil, and you maintain a separate Author Page on each one. A few features, such as the custom page URL and self-service editorial reviews, currently work only on Amazon.com.
Do I need Author Central if I already use KDP?
You do not need it to publish, but it is worth setting up. KDP manages your book files, pricing, and categories, while Author Central manages your public author profile and the Follow button readers use to hear about new releases. They do different jobs, so most authors use both.
Why can’t I find my new book to claim?
A newly published book can take up to three business days to appear on Amazon, so a brand-new title often is not claimable the moment you publish it. Try searching by ISBN or ASIN, confirm you are signed in to the marketplace where the book is on sale, and check that your name is listed as the author on the book’s detail page.
Setting up your Amazon Author Central page is one of the few marketing tasks that is genuinely free, fairly quick, and entirely in your control. Claim your books, add a clean bio and a good photo, create your custom link, and check back every month or two to keep it current as your catalogue grows.
