Audit every retailer listing
Audit Amazon listing for each format
Check the Amazon product page for every format of your book, confirm the details and the format links are correct, and connect the book to your Author Central profile.
Why it matters
Amazon is where most readers first see the book and where most online orders happen. Errors on the page cost sales silently, and format pages that are not linked split reviews and confuse buyers. Because the page is built from feeds, nobody at the publisher is looking at it for you.
Your part
- What you do
- Do it. You normally do this yourself.
- Who normally owns it
- Author and Publisher. Author audits and controls Author Central; publisher or platform controls the listing data
- When
- 30 to 60 days before launch, and again at launch (Audit every retailer listing: three months before publication, in launch week, and at each later audit)Checked September 13, 2026 (opens in a new tab)
Your part changes with your publishing route.
How to do it
The full walkthrough
Amazon builds a product page for each format from the metadata it receives, then links the formats together on one page with format buttons. Because the data arrives from several sources (the publisher's feed, a distributor, a print-on-demand platform, an audiobook producer), the formats often disagree with each other or with the book. A wrong price, an old cover, a missing subtitle, a description with broken formatting, an author name that does not match your other books: all common, all fixable, and all invisible until someone looks.
An audit is a slow, deliberate read of each format's page. Check the title and subtitle, the author and contributor names, the cover image, the description, the publication date, the price, the page count, the series information if any, and whether every format is linked to the same page. Then confirm that the book appears on your Amazon Author Central profile, which is the author's own claimable page and is how the book gets associated with your name and bio.
Who fixes what depends on where the data comes from. The title record (price, availability, cover, formats) comes from whoever supplies Amazon's feed, which is your publisher, the press or its platform, or your own self-publishing dashboard, and corrections go back through that route. Author Central is yours either way, and a verified Author Central account can update the book's product description and editorial reviews directly, so a stale description is often yours to fix.
Do the audit 30 to 60 days before launch, when there is time to fix things, and again at launch, when preorders convert and the page changes.
Common mistakes
- Checking the paperback page and assuming the ebook and audiobook match.
- Reporting a feed error to Amazon when the fix has to come from the publisher, or waiting on the publisher for a description you could update yourself in Author Central.
- Never claiming Author Central, so the book floats unattached to your name.
- Fixing the description on one platform and forgetting Amazon pulls from a different source.
- Auditing once and not again at launch.
Identifiers for Audit Amazon listing for each format
Set a status on any record and it joins this step. All author identifiers.
| My status | Identifier | Why this matters | Yours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Author Central The free Amazon page where you claim your author name, attach every edition of your books, and write your biography. | Unclaimed, the author page a reader sees is whatever Amazon assembled, and any edition listed under a different spelling of your name sits apart from the rest of your work. Only you can fix that: a publisher cannot claim your author page for you, and the platform account a self-publisher publishes through is a separate login, so the job is identical on all three routes. Amazon's help says author pages are not removed once created, so use exactly the name that appears on your books rather than creating a second page you would rather not have. You're done when one author page carries the right name and every edition and format is attached to it. | Add your Amazon author page link |
A template for this
Retailer listing correction requestA clear request to a retailer's support team to fix one error on a product page, with the exact field, current value, correct value, and who supplies the listing data.
When to use it: Use this when a retailer's product page shows something wrong that you cannot change yourself, and you have already told the party that controls the metadata feed. Paste it into the retailer's author or publisher support form where one exists. Do not use this when you control the listing through a self-publishing dashboard. Change it there first; support can only help with what the dashboard will not let you edit.
What done looks like
- Every format's page checked against your Book Identity Sheet: title, subtitle, contributors, cover, description, date, price, page count, series.
- All formats linked on one page with working format buttons.
- The book listed on your Author Central profile with the correct bio.
- Errors reported to the party that controls the feed, with the date, and logged in your corrections record.
- The audit repeated at launch.
Ask your publisher
Copy this into an email. Replace the bracketed parts with your details.
Sources and last checked
- Official source
- Official source (opens in a new tab)
- Last checked
- September 13, 2026
- How confident we are
- Verified
Rules and deadlines change. We last checked this information on September 13, 2026. If you see something that needs updating, please tell us.