For many authors, creating an online listing for people to buy your book might be the hardest part of selling a book. Just figuring out what sites to use is hard enough, let alone navigating all the different menu options, figuring out the ISBN, and more. Putting up listings is a long and often convoluted process, one that AI sadly can’t do for you, but can at least help you with.
By asking ChatGPT “How do I list my book for sale online?“, it will give you detailed instructions on the different websites that you can list your book on, the different methods of selling your book online, and what services to use.
I put this to the test, and asked ChatGPT the question above. and it suggested that I sell through online retailers (e.g., Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books), Shopify, independent bookstore platforms, and aggregators. It also giving me a detailed list of instructions on how to use kdp.amazon.com to upload my book, with an overview of each step needed. At the end, it even gave me a list of the things that I need before being able to sell my book! I’ve provided a link here, in case you want to see the full result.
(Note that an ISBN is not required when uploading to amazon, as amazon provides on of them to you for free. However, it is recommended to register your own if you plan on uploading it to sites other than amazon.)
You can extrapolate this further and ask questions on how to fill out the form that sites like Amazon provide, especially if there’s an option that you are unsure of. For example, “How do I set up Shopify?“, “Are there any exclusivity requirements when using Amazon?“, or “Which is better: Apple Books or Barnes and Nobles?“.It can even guide you through the process of listing, telling you what options to click on and where.
Some sites, such as Amazon, also have different options on their listing services that can fill out select information for you. These options generally make the form process easier and take the form of AI assistance. I’ve found that the results can be pretty hit or miss doing this: when I publish a new book, it will often default to filling in the previous author’s name, which I will then have to retype. So make sure to double-check your answers whenever you use AI to fill out a form.
Next week, we will cover how you can use AI to market your book. The world of marketing is vast, and there are so many methods to getting the word out, and outlets that you can use, that It may or may not be a multi-part post of its own.
Written by Connor Mayhorn
ChatGPT was used for additional research for this article.