Check the listing the way a stranger would
You proof the book. You proof the cover. Almost nobody proofs the page that sells them.
The listing is the final surface. Everything upstream of it — the years of writing, the editing, the design, the proof copy — is delivered to the reader through one screen they will look at for a few seconds. It is assembled out of fields you filled in months apart, some of them in a hurry, and once it is live you stop seeing it, because you only ever arrive there already knowing what the book is.
Arrive as a stranger
Open your own page on a phone, signed out of your own account, in a private window.
All three parts matter. The phone, because that is the screen most readers will use and it is far narrower than the one you filled the fields in on. Signed out, because your own view of your own book is decorated with things no reader sees. Private, because your browsing history quietly personalizes what the store shows you.
Then do not scroll straight to the part you are proud of. Start at the top and work down, in order, the way someone who has never heard of you would.
Work down the page
Does the cover read at that size? Not in your design window — at the size it appears on that phone, alongside the other books the store puts next to it. Title legible, one clear focal point, no detail that has turned to mush. If it does not survive, that is a cover problem, not a listing problem: The thumbnail test.
Is the title exactly what you intended? Character for character. The most common faults are a series number that has crept into the title itself, a subtitle that repeats a word already in the title, and a stray edition or format word appended by hand months ago and never removed.
Does the first line of the description work alone? Most of the description is behind a fold, and on a phone the fold comes early. Whatever shows before the reader has to tap is doing the entire job. A first line that is a setup for a second line is a first line that fails.
Is the description formatted, or is it a wall? Paragraph breaks, a short opening, no single block of two hundred words. Check it on the phone, because a description that looked airy in a wide field can arrive as a solid slab in a narrow column. How to write a blurb that sells the book covers what it should say; this is about whether it is readable at all.
Are the categories the ones you chose? They drift. A book gets placed somewhere generic at setup, or a later edit resets them, and nobody notices because you never browse to your own book. See Categories and keywords, without the folklore.
Is the price what you intended, in every market? Check more than your home country. Prices set by automatic conversion produce odd-looking numbers abroad, and a price you changed in one market often did not change in the others.
Is the page count and format right? The page count shown should be the count of the book you actually printed, and the format should say what the thing is. A hardcover described with the paperback's extent is a refund waiting to happen.
Does the author name link to a profile that exists? Tap it. It should lead to a real page with your other books on it, not to an empty shell or a second, slightly different spelling of your name that has quietly accumulated half your catalog.
In the Cover Maker. It checks your cover at thumbnail size while you are still designing, so you find out that the title vanishes at listing scale before the book is on sale rather than after. It also exports the 1600 × 2560 ebook cover the store shows beside it. Start a book → · about the Cover Maker
Is the series shown, and in order? Book three should not sit above book one, and a numbering scheme you changed halfway through the series should not still be visible in the old volumes. Series covers: the same shelf, three books along.
Does the preview start where it should? Open the sample. It should begin at the story, not at a title page followed by a copyright page and a dedication, which is how a reader spends their whole free sample on front matter.
Are the reviews on the right edition? Reviews attach to a specific version of a book. If you replaced an edition, check that the reviews came with it.
The faults that sit there for years
These four are quiet, so they last.
Two listings for the same book that never linked to each other. The paperback and the ebook exist as separate pages, each with its own reviews and its own audience, and a reader who lands on one never learns the other exists. This is the most expensive listing fault there is.
An old edition still on sale. You fixed the typos, uploaded a new interior, and the previous version is still buyable somewhere — often at a different price, sometimes with the better review count.
A pre-order that never turned into a book. The page is live, the date has passed, and the state was never advanced. See Pre-orders: what they buy you, and what they cost.
A format that exists but is invisible. You made a hardcover, or a large print edition, and the paperback page does not show it. The readers most likely to want the large print edition are exactly the ones least likely to go hunting for it: The large print edition most authors never make.
Check the page the week you launch, then again a month later, then whenever you change anything about the book. Edits do not always take, and nothing tells you when one has failed.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Checking an ebook before you publish it · More: Metadata: the fields that decide who ever sees your book · The thumbnail test · How to write a blurb that sells the book