Your Amazon Author Central setup is one of the most overlooked steps in the KDP publishing process. Most authors upload their book, set up their KDP dashboard, and call it done — but your author page is the only place on Amazon where readers can learn who you are, browse your full catalogue, and choose to follow you. It is completely free to set up, takes under an hour, and directly affects how professional your books look on the storefront.
What Is Amazon Author Central and Why It Matters
Amazon Author Central is a separate platform from your KDP dashboard. You publish through KDP; you build your author brand through Author Central. The two are linked to the same account, but they do different things. Author Central gives you a public-facing profile page on Amazon — a place where your bio, photo, and full book list live. When a reader clicks your name on any of your book listings, they land here.
This matters for a few reasons. A complete profile signals credibility. Readers deciding between two books in the same niche will often check the author page before buying. An empty profile with no photo and no bio is a missed opportunity. Author Central also lets you manage editorial reviews, monitor reader reviews across your catalogue, and track bestseller rank data — features that make it a practical tool, not just a vanity page. If you want to understand how your books are ranking, pair it with the BSR Sales Calculator to put those numbers in context.
Prerequisites Before You Start
There are only two requirements before you can create an Author Central account. First, you need an existing Amazon or KDP account — the same login you use to publish. Second, at least one of your books must already be live and purchasable on Amazon. Author Central cannot be set up on a pre-publication book; the title needs to be available for sale before you can claim it.
If your book is still in review or not yet live, finish that process first. Once it is available, you are ready. Keep your author name and any pen names handy, and have your author photo and bio prepared before you start — it makes the setup smoother to do everything in one session.
Step-by-Step: Creating Your Account
Go to author.amazon.com and click Join Now. Log in with your KDP account credentials. You will be asked to enter your author name exactly as it appears on your books — this matters, because it is what Amazon uses to match your profile to your listings.
Accept the terms and conditions, then proceed to claim your first book. You can search by author name, book title, or ISBN. Once you find the right title, click This is my book to submit the claim. Verification after sign-up takes up to seven days. For pen names, Amazon may contact the publisher to confirm identity, which can also take three to seven days. Book claims themselves are confirmed faster — typically within 24 hours of submission. Do not be alarmed if your profile is not immediately live; the verification window is normal.
Claiming Your Books
After your account is verified, claiming additional books is straightforward. Go to the Books tab, select Add more books, then search by your author name, book title, or ISBN. When the correct title appears, click This is my book. The claim confirms within 24 hours.
A few things worth knowing: you can claim co-authored books through Author Central, so collaborative projects do not get missed. Also, if you write under multiple names, each Author Central account supports up to three pen names. If you need a fourth, you will have to create a separate account using a different email address. That is the hard limit Amazon imposes.
One limitation to be aware of: physical books cannot be completely removed from Amazon, because third-party sellers may have inventory. Even if you unpublish, those listings can persist. This is a platform-level constraint, not something Author Central can override.
Setting Up Your Author Profile
Your bio and photo are the two most important elements of your author page. For the bio, the minimum length is 100 characters — but treat that as a floor, not a target. Write something that tells readers who you are and what you write. Keep it relevant to your genre or niche.
There are firm formatting rules. The bio must be plain text only — no bold, no italics, no HTML formatting. As of 2025, URLs are also banned from author bios. That policy change was confirmed earlier this year, so if you previously included a website link, it needs to come out.
For your photo, the minimum size is 300 x 300 pixels, and the accepted formats are JPG, GIF, and PNG. Use a clear, professional headshot. Readers do look at this.
One feature that used to exist but no longer does: custom vanity URLs. Amazon removed this feature as of November 2025, and as of that date, there is no timeline for whether it will return. Your author page URL will be an auto-generated Amazon URL for now.
Adding Editorial Reviews
Editorial reviews are quotes from reviewers, publications, or other authors that appear on your book's product page. They add social proof and can genuinely help conversion. To add one, go to the Books tab, select the specific book, click Edit book details, find the Your Editorial Reviews section, click Add review, then preview and submit.
The limits differ by format. Kindle books can have only one editorial review. Print books can have up to five. Audiobooks can have up to three. Work within those limits and prioritise your strongest quotes. What you cannot include: profanity, promotional language, links, or addresses. Keep the quotes clean and attributed to a credible source. These are not the same as reader reviews — they are curated endorsements you control.
If you are still working on your book strategy and want to understand what formats and niches perform best, the KDP niche pages on Pubscout break down category-level data worth knowing before you publish.
Book Recommendations and the Follow Feature
The December 2022 Author Central redesign added a book recommendations feature. You can recommend books to your readers — your own or others' — directly from your author page. This is a useful tool for positioning yourself within a genre or showing readers what you read.
There is a specific threshold to be aware of: you need a minimum of three book recommendations to trigger email notifications to your followers. If you have fewer than three, followers will not receive those emails. It is a small thing to get right, but it matters if you are using Author Central to build an audience.
The +Follow button on your author page lets readers opt in to updates about your new releases. Growing your follower count is worth the effort — it is one of the few direct reader-to-author communication channels Amazon provides.
What Was Removed from U.S. Pages in 2022
If you have read older guides to Author Central, some of what they describe no longer applies to the U.S. marketplace. In December 2022, Amazon removed photos, videos, and blog feeds from U.S. author pages. These features are no longer displayed on Amazon.com.
They do still exist on international Amazon sites. If you have an audience in the UK, Germany, France, or Japan, those pages still support richer media. That said, the U.S. profile is now text-forward — your bio and books are doing the heavy lifting.
International Author Pages
Your U.S. Author Central profile does not automatically sync to other markets. Each international page is separate and needs its own setup.
Four markets require manual setup with their own dedicated logins:
- UK: author.amazon.co.uk
- Germany: author.amazon.de
- France: author.amazon.fr
- Japan: author.amazon.co.jp
Seven other markets — Brazil, India, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada, and Mexico — are auto-generated. Amazon creates author pages in those markets without you doing anything, so no action is needed there.
On international pages that still support media, video files must be under 500MB and under ten minutes long. Accepted formats include MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, MOV, and MPG. Videos can take up to 24 hours to process after upload. If you are selling significantly in any of the four manual-setup markets, it is worth spending the time to fill those profiles in properly.
What You Can Track Through Author Central
Beyond the public-facing profile, Author Central gives you some useful monitoring tools. You can track reader reviews across your entire catalogue in one place, which is significantly easier than checking each book listing individually. You can also monitor bestseller rank and sales rank data for your titles.
For a deeper view of what those rankings actually mean in terms of estimated sales volume, the BSR Sales Calculator translates rank into monthly sales estimates. Pair that with the KDP Royalty Calculator to model out what your revenue looks like at different price points and rank levels.
If you want live BSR data, estimated monthly sales, and niche insights while you are browsing Amazon directly, the Pubscout Chrome Extension surfaces that data on any Amazon book page without leaving your browser.
A Few Key Policies to Know
Author Central is completely free — there is no subscription, no paid tier, and no cost to set up or maintain your account. That is worth stating plainly because some tools in the KDP ecosystem do carry costs.
Author pages cannot be deleted, but any information on them can be removed or edited. If you want to clear your page, you can strip it back — you just cannot delete the page itself. Similarly, physical book listings cannot be fully removed from Amazon if third-party sellers hold inventory, so do not expect complete takedowns to be straightforward.
For more on the KDP publishing process and how to make the most of your books on Amazon, the KDP how-to guides cover everything from formatting to category selection in practical detail.