Here you'll find the rantings of a blogging fool and sometimes writer. My more personal posts, including progress reports on my various writing projects, are Friends Only. General posts on writing are Public. Please see my user profile for my other LJs and my friending policy, and browse through the sidebar for nifty goodies and useful info.

---oOo---
Writing only leads to more writing. (Colette)

---oOo---

Visitors from 1/30/05:

---

Not really. Not as we've come to understand blogs, anyway. These will be a way for authors to communicate with readers, via something called Amazon Connect. I'd meant to blog about this days ago, but I got lazy. And busy making icons. And uh, other less than constructive endeavors.

From Amazon:

" This program allows authors to post messages directly to their readers on a wide variety of subjects. Currently, messages will appear on the detail page of an author’s book as well as on her/his profile page. As part of the program, authors may create a profile page with personalized information."

MetaxuCafe, Tobias S. Buckell, and if:Book had good posts on the subject.

It's an interesting concept, but since I'm not a published author, I can view this only from the perspective of a reader. I read the blogs of a number of authors, and I don't spend much time on Amazon, maybe a dozen times in a year. I usually buy my books in brick and mortar stores and use Amazon almost solely as a backup to check a title not in the library's catalogs.

So, would any of you published and wannabe published writers want to join Amazon Connect? I'm not sure if I would, or if I'd stick to my own blog and hope my readers found me there.

According to Publishers Weekly, 4/4/05 issue, Amazon is pairing a known book with an unknown one. For ex, people purchasing Dan Brown's Angels and Demons will get a discount on Sheryl Jane Stafford's A Deadly Exchange. Never heard of Stafford? Neither have I. She had her book self-published with Writer's Showcase Press, a company known for its bestsellers, NOT. How did she manage this packaging feat? She paid for it.

Apparently, Amazon will pair any unknown author with a known one if the unknown is willing to pay a fee. And this can be a good thing because it can raise the awareness factor for small press books. A good author with a good book but no track record can get instant attention and reach a wider audience. Unfortunately, things are never that simple. Because along with the worthy books meeting the requirement (paid fee) will be a lot of drek, unedited atrocities of the sort PublishAmerica puts out (which isn't to say all PA books are drek, but when you have no standards, odds are the majority of your books are going to have serious problems).

According to PW, the program is known as BXGY for Buy X Get Y, and can be found on the site under "Best Value." The "Best Value" program has been around for a few years, but lately, it seems a lot of lesser knowns have figured out how to take advantage of the situation, by opening their wallets. And there's no way to tell on the site that this is different than the "Better Together" deals that are not sponsored and are book pairings made by Amazon, itself.

I already distrusted Amazon for its odd reviews (anyone can write them, including an author's family, without making mention of personal connections) and the often outright weird listings in "People who bought this book also bought these." Now I have yet another reason to be wary of what I find on Amazon.com.