How to Link Print & E-books on Amazon

It pays to read instructions, never more so than when publishing books on Amazon.

I recently found that out the hard way after getting the rights back for seven Romancing the Guardians ebooks from my publisher. No problems with that, I’m happy to say.

It took several days to re-pub them under my own name on Amazon because I needed to update the front and back matter for each book. You know, the review excepts, list of books, preface, etc. that you find before and after the actual story. The re-publication process itself went smoothly with no serious issues.

However, I was very worried about previous customer reviews not showing up on the ebook detail pages for potential readers to view. What saved me was the fact that all seven books were also available in print, and the reviews are posted with them.

My former publisher, Craig A. Hart, bless his heart (pun intended) told me the ebooks should automatically link with the print books once they pubbed on Big A. He was right in most cases. Five of the ebooks did indeed link to the print versions, restoring the reviews, particularly important for the first book, Rescuing Lara, which has 47 reviews with a 4-star average. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QBXPZRJ

 

I waited and waited for the two other ebooks to link with their print counterparts, but they never did. Finally, I resorted to reading the instructions I’m passing on to you.

On your KDP Bookshelf you will see a “Link existing Kindle ebook” button. When clicked it opens a window where you can choose the ebook you want to link to your print edition.  (Do this in reverse if you publish your ebook edition first.) However, this only links the ebook with the print book on your bookshelf, not on their respective detail pages.

But good news! If you have an eBook and a paperback of the same title, their detail pages should link automatically if the following book details match.

• Title
• Subtitle
• Author
• Contributor
• Volume
• Edition
• Language

Amazon further instructs:

Contact us if the detail pages still aren’t linked and:

• Both books (eBook and paperback) have had detail pages for one week.
• All book information matches.

If you contact us, please tell us the ASIN of the eBook and the 10-digit ISBN number of the paperback.

So, little old me called KDP support for help. It required a couple call transfers and repeated explanations of my issues, but finally, the last person I spoke to solved the problem. Within minutes, the reviews showed up on the ebook detail pages and a while later a link to the print books also appeared. Hooray! From now on, I will Read Instructions!

NOTE: The eighth and final book in the Guardians series, A Mighty Chieftain, was never picked up by my publisher because I didn’t release it until late October of last year. Also, I put off formatting it for print, which I’m just now doing. My very excellent cover designer, Kim Killion, did the fantastic ebook cover and will handle the print cover.