The Book Hook developments and introducing Samantha Rosalia

When developing The Book Hook my first task was to establish the basic functionality of the site. After this I had to think about setting the meta data behind the pages to help discovery by search engines. My next consideration was ways of promoting the site and this is how I became acquainted with Samantha Rosalia.

I joined social media for the first time with Instagram being the most fruitful. This is where I first exchanged messages with some other self-published authors.

Samantha Rosalia was the first to respond to my request to include books by other self-published authors on the site. She now has her own category on the Book Categories page and is currently listed on New Releases. Please do check out her books as they appear to be culturally inspiring: https://thebookhook.online/book-categories/

To this point the links on the site had been generated by a third-party site which is able to translate an entry for a single local site, into multiple sites. I wanted to see how the site would be received in the self-published author community before signing up as an Amazon Affiliate.

One of the questions Samantha asked was would it be free to have her book listed. The answer was yes, but I hope in time to be able to gain commission as a result of people buying books from Amazon via the site links.

Having listed my first independent author, it was time to join the Amazon Affiliate program. It was at this point I realised that I could list any product available on Amazon. With this in mind I did two things, the first was to develop the Affiliate Products page. The second was to add the Lasso plugin to the site which helps connect the Amazon links to site pages. Initially I just added such a link to one of my own books to establish the technique. In time more products will be added as I realised this is a terrific way to keep the site free for self-published authors wanting to promote their books on The Book Hook. https://thebookhook.online/affiliate_products/

At the time of writing the Amazon Affiliate links are just for Amazon UK. I have to gain three sales using the Amazon links before gaining full approval as an Amazon Affiliate. When this is achieved, I can include Amazon links to link to local Amazon stores. It is through the link information on that commission can be earned for the site.