7 Reasons Why All Authors Should Use Universal Book Links

Author tech is an under talked about part of the publishing industry, and I’m very excited to bring on Austin Tuwiner to talk about universal book links as part of the expansion of The Author Stack in 2024.

I recommend reading Where to invest your time and money when building an audience for your writing, How to find more readers for your books and get stacked with subs on Substack, to help round out this article.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.

I’m fascinated with author tech, and I want to have a lot more of it available on The Author Stack moving forward. After talking with Austin Tuwiner, lead growth and content officer for Geniuslink and Booklinker, at 20books this year, I was excited to invite them to do an article about universal book links (UBLS) for us.

What is a Universal Book Link? 

Universal book links do a lot of things, (many of which we’ll dive into today) but what they’re most known for is the ability to intelligently detect a reader's location and send them to the correct storefront for their country. 

You may also hear them called smart URLs or intelligent links, but their purpose remains the same: to provide a seamless, localized shopping experience for readers worldwide. 

Types of Universal Booklinks

There are two main types of universal book links, one that goes direct to Amazon, and the other that sends readers to a landing page. Which one is best for you will mostly depend on whether you’re publishing wide or exclusive to Amazon.

Amazon-Compatible Links

The first type of universal booklink we’ll cover is one that goes directly to Amazon. These smart links detect the reader’s location and redirect them to the appropriate Amazon storefront based on their geographic location. 

Using this type of link makes a lot of sense if you’re exclusive to Amazon, as there’s no need to give a reader a choice of retailers, as there are no other options.

Without the use of a universal book link, most authors send their readers only to the Amazon.com (US optimized) storefront. 

While this works great for Yankees, it leaves international readers stranded. 

By automatically sending readers to their local Amazon store, authors can expect a large liftoff in the conversion rate of their international traffic.

Multi-Retailer Links

The next type of universal book link is one that sends readers to what we call at Geniuslink a “Choice Page.” 

For authors who distribute their books across multiple platforms, these links lead to a landing page that showcases available retailers, allowing readers to choose their preferred store.

Geniuslink universal book link landing pages are fully customizable, allowing you to set buttons for any store. For authors that sell directly, including your website’s store button as the leftmost option makes a lot of sense to maximize the CTR.

From the research we’ve done at Geniuslink, we’ve found that by giving your users a choice in where to buy, you’re often rewarded with a much higher conversion rate (2.2 - 2.4X in our testing!). The Amazon button on these landing pages comes with all of the localization benefits mentioned above.

Why Use Universal Booklinks?

There are seven main reasons why we believe all authors should take advantage of universal book links, and we’ll jump into all of them now. 

International Reader Support

The first benefit of utilizing universal book links, which we touched on a little before, is overcoming the geo-fragmentation challenges that exist in today's internet economy. 

As retailers attempt to expand their global footprint, they end up creating different local storefronts with optimized shopping experiences. 

While this is great for readers around the world, it’s not so much for authors trying to market their books efficiently. 

By directing readers to the appropriate local storefronts, authors can easily overcome this issue. In an ideal situation, authors can have one link with the capability to send readers to the storefront optimized for them.

Convenience for Authors Who Go Wide

The next benefit of universal booklinks is the ability to easily market your widely-distributed books. Depending on the marketing channel, authors take different approaches in an attempt to give readers the options of all the different online bookstores. However, without a universal book link, it can be difficult to do so.

Below is an example of an advanced widget on the author Rupi Kaur’s website. It consists of a dropdown where readers first have to select which country they’re from (notice how there are only a few options listed), and then a list of supported retailers is shown.

Not only is this widget not intuitive, but it can be difficult for most authors to set up and maintain. On top of that, it’s only going to work on a website (and not on social media, inside an email newsletter, etc.).

With the use of universal book links, authors are able to provide one call to action that sends readers to a landing page with the different bookstores listed.

Below we have an example from the author Austin Kleon. On his author website and book sales page, he lists one simple call to action “Buy now in Hardcover” and then sends the reader to a Geniuslink universal book link landing page. 

The benefit of listing store options on a landing page rather than on an author website is that we’re building momentum and micro conversions towards a sale. Any time you’re marketing on the internet, we want to follow the mantra of “One Page, One Goal.”

Cleaner Marketing Copy

Similarly to the example we saw above, universal book links can also help clean up marketing copy. Take a look at this Tweet of D. K. Deters promoting her book. I love to see authors doing book marketing, but there are a few issues with this Tweet.

1. There’s a ton of blue, making it unclear where a reader interested in her book should click.

2. All of the book links look exactly the same unless you inspect the last two characters of the tweet.

3. What if a reader isn’t from the United States, Australia, Canada, or the UK?

Now, let’s take a look at an author promoting their book on Twitter while leveraging a universal book link.

See how clean the marketing copy is?

The different elements of the Tweet are clearly distinguished, with one clear call to action. Because Ken used only one shortened, book link, he’s able to fit many more characters into his Tweet, giving him extra hashtags + a reader testimonial.

In-Depth Analytics

Without the use of link management tools or other marketing technology, it can be difficult for an author to know how their book marketing is performing. 

The first data point that Geniuslink shares with authors is the number of clicks that pass through their links over time. Align this chart with your marketing efforts to view spikes and dips, or set it yearly to view trends.

Geniuslink also lets authors view the referrer data of incoming traffic, as long as it’s available. If an author shares the same book link on different marketing channels, they can view a pie chart breakdown of where the clicks are coming from. In the above chart, it’s clear that their Facebook marketing is working great, but not so much with Instagram.

The last data point provided by Geniuslink that we’ll cover here is a geographical map of where incoming clicks are coming from. This can be useful to gain insight into where to run ad campaigns or what language to translate your book into next.

Other information provided links include:

• Device data

• Browser data

• Destinations

• Preferred languages

• Operating systems

Readability and Trust

The fifth benefit of universal book links is the ability to create customizable, branded links that enhance trust and click-through rates.

If we were to search for a specific book on Amazon, and copy the book link, we’d get something like this:

Not only is this book link mind numbingly unreadable, but it also contains letters, numbers, and symbols making it nearly impossible to type out.

We could clean this up a little bit to look like:

This is a bit better in that it’s shorter, reduced to just letters and numbers, but it still would not be easy for a reader to type in.

Cutting the link down even further to just the ASIN, we can remove the book title, but now it’s not obvious where the end destination is. 

So again, still not optimal.

If we were to take advantage of just a link shortener, we could drastically reduce the length of the Tweet, at the cost of trust. 

https://mybook.to/creativecareer 

Above, is what we believe is the best book link possible. 

It’s short, simple, and easy to type with only letters, while also retaining the book title in the URL.

Future Proof Your Links

The next benefit of universal book links I want to speak about is the ability to future-proof your links. 

Link rot is where links that once pointed to active webpages decay over time. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but in the author world this is most commonly due to a change in publishing rights, book relaunches, and going from wide to exclusive. 

In order to protect yourself from link rot, the best practice is to use a link management tool such as Geniuslink and wrap your book link in a custom URL.

At any point in time, you can edit the end destination as needed, without the hassle of updating multiple URLs across various platforms.

This can be especially useful when your links exist in the physical world, such as inside your book or on a business card.

Bonus Benefit: Affiliate Commissions

The last benefit of Universal Book Links I’ll mention here is the ability to easily earn affiliate commissions.

All major online bookstores have an affiliate program that authors can sign up for and incorporate into their affiliate links. By doing so, authors will not only earn commissions on the sales of their own books, but anything purchased through them during the cookie window. 

Commission rates of major bookstores:

• Amazon: 4%-4.5% Commission Rate with a 24 Hour Cookie Window

• Apple Books: 7% Commission Rate with a 30 Day Cookie Window

• Barnes & Noble: 2% Commission Rate with a 24 Hour Cookie Window

• Kobo: 5% Commission Rate with a 14 Hour Cookie Window

Conclusion

Overall, implementing universal book links is a quick win that many authors can implement to become informed in their marketing and drive more sales to their books. The only real “downside” of using a universal book link would be the cost of the service. However, there are simpler free options such as Booklinker and Books2Read. 

Geniuslink starts at just $6 per month for 1,000 clicks and is the most advanced link management tool and comprehensive universal book link provider on the market.

If you have any questions for the Geniuslink team, feel free to drop them below or email me at [email protected], and I’ll be happy to answer promptly.

Austin Tuwiner is a growth marketer and leads growth efforts at Geniuslink and Booklinker. When he's not nerding out about internet marketing, you'll find him lifting something heavy, on the tennis courts, or scuba diving South Floridas reefs.

If you like this article, I recommend reading Where to invest your time and money when building an audience for your writing, How to find more readers for your books and get stacked with subs on Substack, to help round out this article.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.