After a year of experimentation, Amazon.com has killed the “Plogs” that featured author blog posts directly on its home page. In its place is Amazon Daily, which buries author-generated content under an avalanche of marketing blurbs written by Amazon employees.
Amazon launched the Plogs feature with great fanfare in February 2006. Its mission was enabling authors to “post messages directly to their readers via the Amazon.com home page.” Alas, it seems Amazon decided this wasn’t such a great idea after all.
With Plogs, customers who bought a book from a participating author were automatically subscribed to that author’s AmazonConnect blog. The new Daily also appears at the top of Amazon’s home page, but author content is as hard to find as a needle in a haystack. In its place are pitches for DVDs, electronics, liquor dispensers, reality TV shows, and occasionally a book or two.
Amazon calls the changes an “upgrade,” a classic example of corporate double-talk. It’s not an “upgrade” to replace authentic writing on a blog with schlock, spin and thinly disguised advertising. Undoubtedly this will kill any customer interest in reading author posts. I don’t use my Tivo to record commercials, and people don’t read blogs to find advertising.
Amazon Daily, unlike Plogs, is available to all Amazon visitors, whether you’re signed in or recognized as a customer or not. You can customize the feature to delete content you don’t want and to add content you’re interested in. But no author-generated content has found its way into my Amazon Daily yet, even though I’ve added authors. All I get is the junk. Perhaps this is a glitch, or maybe Amazon prefers it this way.
The Plog feature was a combination of the words “product” and “blog.” Each Amazon customer received a unique Plog based on their purchasing history. If Amazon received complaints from customers about receiving irrelevant posts from authors, it’s not saying.
Related posts:
5 Comments
Steve,
My posts came back last Friday, and are right on my book pages where they were before.
They were totally gone for a while before that.
Dear Steve:
Heard about your blog on our print-on-demand listserve and I understand that you also belong to the self-publishing@yahoogroups.com listserv which I also find useful.
As the author of THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T, I was naturally interested in your blog.
I sent out a letter on the disappearing plogs to the subscribers of my newsletter "Sharing with Writers," sort of an emegency edition because author were panicing that their plogs had disappeared.
I see that on Ted's post, he was concerned, too. However, I also get the sense that the disappearing act and your column may be related but are really about two different things. Maybe another blog with clarification for, I admit, at first that's what I thought you were talking about, too.
At any rate, it is nice to meet you. Naturally, I signed up to get your blog retularly. You might want to check mine. It's at http://www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com. I talk about Amazon frequently, too. I do that because it is so important to authors and, yes, I worry if it loses that edge for us.
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Award-winning author of THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER and THE FRUGAL EDITOR
Learn more at http://www.HowToDoItFrugally.com
Information and news about products does not equal advertising.
I've had to start avoiding amazon–it takes FOREVER to load the home page and FOREVER to go to a book listing. I get so frustrated with the load times, it's easier for me to do my research elsewhere. I firmly believe the time to load is due to the numerous ads and garbage they are loading. In addition, they have to track where I've been (I can tell because when I come back it shows me "recently viewed" and "recently purchased.) Alll the data swapping is making the site unusable and annoying.
It's a shame too because I like to read the reviews posted as well as the ability to compare prices. Too bad it's becoming Very Avoidable.
And to anon–info and news IS OFTEN advertising. It's definitely advertising if I did NOT ask to receive the info. Then it is direct solicitation and I say, NO thanks.