Amazon renames 'Search Suggestion' feature to emphasize 'tags'

Amazon has renamed its user-generated search term feature called "Search Suggestions." Now the feature is called "Tags for Amazon Search."

Now a link appears on each book detail page labeled "Help others find this product - tag it for Amazon search." Clicking the link takes users to a form like this.

For the past year, Search Suggestions has enabled any Amazon user -- customers, authors, or publishers -- to suggest new search terms for a book or other product. For example, the Beatles' 1968 album with a plain white cover is popularly known as "The White Album," even though that's not the title. Using a Search Suggestion, Amazon users can suggest keywords (such as "White Album") to ensure the product shows up in search results, even though the keywords might not appear in the title or text.

By adding the word "tag" to its Search Suggestion feature, Amazon runs the risk of confusing this feature with a different feature known simply as "tags." It appears the two features will remain separate.

For about 18 months, Amazon has allowed users to assign tags to books, such as "mystery novel," "Sherlock" or "birthday present." Users can search their own tags to locate items, or consult all the tags used by Amazon's customer base. By default, Amazon tags are publicly viewable.
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Q&A: Should I syndicate articles in one niche, or add more topics?

QUESTION: I am promoting my book by writing articles about my book's topic on article syndication sites like EzineArticles and Associated Content. So far, I've only written on topics related directly to my book.

Now I'm thinking about writing on some other topics, unrelated to my book. Would this make me seem like less of a professional? Would it be best if I stick to writing about my book's topic?

ANSWER: If you have the time, it certainly wouldn't hurt to spread your wings. Would I do it myself? No, not unless I thought I'd exhausted all the benefit I was getting about writing about my books. And I don't think that's possible.

Like you, writing articles and blog posts is a primary way I market my books. I'm never satisfied with the sales, so there's always more to do. With only 24 hours in each day, there are always lots of people I haven't reached.

I guess I have a few hobbies that I could probably blog about or write articles about. It would be enjoyable, but I don't feel I have the time.

But you might be writing for totally different reasons. You may have other passions that you want to write about, and doing it may be extremely fulfilling. It never hurts to have your name out there in a positive light. The act of writing about other things may clear your head. It might be just a refreshing diversion, or it might, of course, help you develop ideas for new books.

So as long as you're motivated, go ahead and do it.

However, don't forget that your content will probably do you the most good on your own domain -- your own Web site or blog. It's fine to syndicate some content, but beware of the duplicate content penalty.
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Are Amazon's book recommendations getting spammy?

I'm a big fan of Amazon's book recommendations. For years, I've relied on them because they're the collective judgment of people like me -- people who have bought similar books.

So when Amazon asks me to consider a new book, I listen. In fact, I buy most of my new books this way. And believe me, I buy tons of books. Literally.

Sure, sometimes Amazon spits out a wacky recommendation. Like last year, when they asked me to buy a book about hysterectomies. Being a guy, I just wasn't interested. But hey, nothing's perfect, not even Amazon's computers.

Recently, though, I feel something has gone seriously wrong. What got my attention was this book recommendation I received in an Amazon e-mail last week:

As someone who has purchased or rated books by Robert A. Wilson, you might like to know that Mexico And Its Religion: With Incidents Of Travel In That Country During Parts Of Years 1861-64 And Historical Notices Of Events Connected With Places Visited is now available. You can order yours for just $34.95 by following the link below.

Mexico And Its Religion: With Incidents Of Travel In That Country During Parts Of Years 1861-64 And Historical Notices Of Events Connected With Places Visited

Huh? I've never bought or rated a book by Robert A. Wilson. In fact, I've never bought a book on Amazon by anyone named Wilson. And I've never bought a book about Mexico or religious history, either.

But here's what's really strange: Normally, Amazon recommends new books. But this isn't a new book at all. In fact, it seems this book isn't even being marketed by the publisher.

What am I talking about? Look at the book's product page on Amazon. There's no cover image, excerpts, or even a description of the book. No reviews, no page count, no blurbs, nothing! Why not? My hunch is the publisher figures it's so unlikely that anyone will buy this book, it's not worth the trouble. Even the publisher doesn't trust the book. But it's good enough for my Amazon recommendations?

What's going on? According to this account, (thanks, Denny) the publisher is systematically "swiping copyrights." He says it's reprinting old books without even asking permission from copyright owners. Sounds like a great business model. You get your content free by scanning an old book. You use print-on-demand publishing, so you have no printing costs. At least, no printing costs until some poor schmuck orders a copy.

But what really irks me is how Amazon is involved. How can I trust their recommendations anymore? Their whole value was unbiased recommendations based on other shoppers. Now it seems Amazon's recommendations aren't only advertising, they're random, irrelevant advertising. In a word, spam.

For all I know, this publisher is paying Amazon to send out zillions of these spam book recommendations, or perhaps Amazon has a stake in this outfit. I don't know. All I know is, something that was truly special about Amazon -- book recommendations based on what other people like me bought -- has been corrupted.
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Q&A: What's the best way to market my book?

QUESTION: I'm looking for new ways to market my book. I published through Lulu Press and then did some nationwide radio interviews. I had some sales, but when I'm not marketing, the sales stop.

ANSWER: There aren't any new ways to market books. Old-fashioned word of mouth is the only thing that works.

If you have a good book and enough people discover it, you'll have word of mouth. Then your readers will market your book for you.

How do you get to first base? Look for marketing tools that are free or very low cost, as opposed to things you must pay for. Grassroots marketing doesn't require much money.

I recommend Internet marketing as a first step for any author who isn't already famous. It's virtually free, and it not only enables word of mouth, but amplifies and accelerates word of mouth.

So how, exactly, should you market your book on the Internet? Basically, three things:

• Blogging.
• Participating on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Gather.
• Getting people to read and review your book on Amazon.
  

Driving sales to Amazon is particularly effective when you're building buzz for a book because Amazon will recommend your book to many people who've bought similar books in the past. For authors, it's free advertising.

Internet marketing isn't the only way to market books, but it's usually more efficient and effective. There's nothing wrong with paying for marketing (or anything else) that works as promised. If advertising really helped sell books, that's all we authors would have to do: take out an ad in the New York Times Book Review section, our local newspaper, or buy a bunch of Google ads. But advertising -- and most of the solutions offered by book publicists rely on advertising -- doesn't really create word of mouth for your book.

If you want to read more about Internet book publicity techniques, read my book.
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Are book readers moving from MySpace to Facebook?

It seems the conventional wisdom these days is that MySpace is tanking, and Facebook is the place to be.

U.S. MySpace visitors under 18 dropped 30 percent over the past year, while Facebook’s nearly tripled.” It was inevitable that Facebook’s strategy of open enrollment would appeal to high school kids. After all, Facebook began as a college student-only site, and was something that high school students would have to wait for (to the extent that high school students were aware of Facebook at all).

I think it's inevitable that the growth of MySpace has slowed, while Facebook has gained steam since they opened membership to non-students.

However, there's a fascinating discussion underway about the "class divisions" being exposed on MySpace. The argument is that younger, less affluent, less educated people are staying with MySpace, while the upwardly mobile crowd is flocking to Facebook.

MySpace remains a valuable network for authors who understand how to use it. And I suspect that Facebook can provide a valuable platform too.

Here's more from Forbes Magazine.
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Borders claims bigger book sales from social networking

Borders Group says it's seeing increased sales of books that are discussed on Gather.com.

Borders formed a partnership with Gather six months ago. Recently when Borders e-mailed customers to ask who was the biggest Harry Potter fan, about 1,000 commented on Gather, according to this article in Internet Retailer magazine.

Titles talked up on Gather produce sharp increases in sales of those titles on Borders.com as chat room participants link back to the bookseller's site, Borders CMO Michael Tam says.

"Titles that we feature on Gather.com immediately climb in sales," Tam says.

Every week, Borders e-mails a list of suggested books to 15 million registered members of its Borders Rewards loyalty program, asking recipients to click through to a related chat site on Gather. Some of the participants link back to BordersStores.com for more information on featured titles.

However, Borders is still figuring out what to do about e-commerce. Borders.com is still basically a front end for Amazon. Meanwhile, the BordersStores.com site refers visitors to the nearest brick-and-mortar Borders store. Last November, Borders said it planned to drop its longstanding partnership with Amazon and build its own online store.
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Amazon's book recommendation misfires

I buy lots of books Amazon recommends, even though some of the suggestions are wacky. For example, last year I got a recommendation for a book about hysterectomies. Here's another nutty one I just got this morning:

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Antique Trader Book Collector's Price Guide by Richard Russell have also purchased The Journalists' Privilege not to Disclose Their Sources in Court- A comparative Study by Valentina Bratu. For this reason, you might like to know that The Journalists' Privilege not to Disclose Their Sources in Court- A comparative Study is now available. You can order yours for just $64.00 by following the link below.

The Journalists' Privilege not to Disclose Their Sources in Court- A comparative Study Valentina Bratu Price: $64.00

Thanks, Ammy, but I'll take the Fifth Amendment on this one.
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Gaining readers from social bookmarking sites

If your blog or Web site has ever been mentioned on Digg, StumbleUpon, or another big social bookmarking site, you know the flood of traffic this can bring. But Internet users are notoriously fickle, and yesterday's hot sites aren't the best sources of traffic.

Last week I conducted a little experiment and posted a link to one of my blog posts to some of the popular social bookmarking sites.

Over the next 48 hours, my blog post received lots of traffic, but nearly all of it came from a single site. Sure, this is a random anecdote. But here are the results, along with my commentary based on watching these sites closely for two years.

Fark.com. 1,806 hits. Fark is on the upswing, though not nearly as popular as Digg. My post was greenlit for the business section within 10 minutes. But if you look at the comments, there's not one serious or thoughtful remark in the whole thread. Does it even matter if you're mentioned here? Compare it to the rigorous discussion that followed a link I posted to Slashdot.

Digg. 2 hits. I think Digg has gotten too popular for its own good; it's been 16 months since I got this post on the front page, which brought 6,000 visitors. Now it's virtually impossible to get noticed on Digg unless you have a network of friends on standby to vote for your story. What about the rest of us, the people who are working for a living?

Reddit. 0 hits. The last couple of links I've submitted to Reddit have gone straight into a black hole. I've heard that submitting links to your own content is now considered impolite on Reddit. Perhaps this is related to Reddit's acquisition by Wired Magazine and its flat performance over the past year.

This time I didn't submit to StumbleUpon; it's a different type of site and can't be compared over a short time frame with those mentioned above. StumbleUpon is already delivering several hundred visitors a day to my domain, and is running a close second to Google keyword searches for bringing new visitors. And StumbleUpon is the only one of the big bookmarking sites that seems to be gaining share:


I didn't include Digg in this graph because its traffic is on a much higher level. Let's hope that eBay, which acquired StumbleUpon several months ago, doesn't screw it up too bad.

The downside with traffic from these social bookmarking sites is that most of the visitors are merely surfing, so the resulting book sales are probably negligible. The average visitor from one of these bookmarking sites spends less than a minute on my domain and looks at an average of 1.3 pages. Overall, visitors spend nearly seven minutes here and view 2.4 pages.

But when it comes to book sales, every little bit helps. Even though 99.8 percent of these social-bookmarking visitors don't engage, the traffic can help your blog break through the glass ceiling. Each big score I've had on these sites has resulted in links from high-PageRank sites, which brings in more qualified traffic over time.
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Publishers reject Jane Austen manuscripts

Well, isn't this just classic: A Jane Austen fan submitted samples of her writing to publishers and agents, but got nothing but rejections and a bit of ill-informed commentary.

David Lassman typed up chapters of three Austen novels, changing only the titles and character names. Only one publisher recognized Austen's words.

"It was unbelievable," Lassman said. "If the major publishers can't recognize great literature, who knows what might be slipping through the net?"

One agent pronounced Austen's words as "a really original read" but said he was "not confident of placing this material with a publisher."

Here's more from the Daily Mail.
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Q&A: Which social network is best for plugging my book?

QUESTION: I want to start promoting my academic book online. But how do older adults get involved in Web social networking? I have joined a couple of small groups populated with professionals from my field. But MySpace? Isn't that for kids?

ANSWER: I agree that MySpace might not be the most productive place for generating awareness of an academic book. Internet social networks are developing at a dizzying pace. In just the past few months, I have seen a lot of activity at three places:

• Gather.com. The membership here is older and more "bookish." The company is trying to make itself the "MySpace for books." I have published some articles there and gotten a lot of response. How many book sales have resulted from this is hard to say, of course. Experiment here. If Gather doesn't have a Group specific to the topic(s) of your book, you can start the group yourself and be the administrator.

• Ning.com. This site enables anyone to create their own social network without having any special skills or Web hosting. So a lot of niche networks are popping up here. You might want to search there and see if there's an appropriate network, or consider starting your own. It's free.

• Perhaps most important, Facebook has been growing like crazy. Originally the site was a network for college students but has opened up membership to the public. Supposedly they are growing much faster than MySpace and have a demographic much more suited to book buying. I haven't gotten around to opening an account at Facebook, but it's getting more tempting every day.
  

And remember, it's preferable to have exposure among a smaller, well-targeted audience than to have a bigger presence with a fragmented audience that isn't really paying attention.
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Google offers $1,000 credits for newspaper print ads

Google is offering AdWords publishers credits of up to $1,000 for trying out Google Print Ads, a new extension of Google AdWords that appear in U.S. newspapers.

In AdWords accounts, Google has added a "Print Ads" tab where publishers can choose from over 200 daily newspapers, ranging from small local papers to nationwide papers. Advertisers set their own price, upload their ads, and manage multiple campaigns in one interface.

Google makes about 95 percent of its earnings from Internet ads, but has been quietly testing the waters with print ads for two years.

The credits were offered in e-mails sent July 19 to existing AdWords accounts. If advertisers publish a newspaper ad by August 31, they receive a credit of $500. If the advertiser uses a participating ad creation specialist, they receive a $1,000 credit.

Here's a demo of Google Print Ads.

All credits will be applied to Google Print Ads account within 30 days of the end of the promotion on August 31, 2007. Since advertisers will receive the promotional credit after they've been charged for the newspaper ads, the $500 or $1,000 credit will be applied toward future costs.
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Building an 'open library' on the Internet

Here's an idea: A library with every book in the world. Not just every book book that's in-print and out-of-print, but every book. Metadata about every book ever written, and direct access to its content when possible.

Organizers of The Open Library say it will be:

A product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data. In an era where library data and Internet databases are being run by money-seeking companies behind closed doors, it's more important than ever to be open.

Builders of The Open Library have been working with a copy of the Library of Congress card catalog, data from publishers, and a new database system for dynamic records. They wrote a wiki to let users input data and search through everything.

Here's more information and a site demo.

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Q&A: How effective is YouTube for book marketing?

QUESTION: I'm hearing an awful lot about YouTube as an avenue for book marketing. I've gotten some quotes from companies who offer to produce a book trailer for $2,000 and up. Is this an effective way of marketing a book?

ANSWER: My philosophy is to try everything. You've got to get your book out there every which way you can, and hope that one-fifth of your efforts pay off.

But there are only 24 hours in a day, and if you're like me, your marketing budget is finite, too. I haven't felt compelled to produce an Internet video yet, for the simple reason that videos generally get far fewer eyeballs than blogs and Web sites.

For example, take my niche, book marketing. Search on YouTube for "book marketing," and one of the top results is this video from self-publishing guru Dan Poynter:



This video was uploaded to YouTube one year ago, and it's been viewed about 2,900 times -- about eight times per day.

How many unique visitors have viewed Dan's Web site during the same time? I'd estimate it's between 5,000 and 10,000 per month.

Conservatively, that's about 175 visitors a day for the Web site versus eight daily views of the video. Also, Dan's Web site is a virtual cash register -- he's selling hundreds of special reports, mailing lists, and e-books there. What is the video doing for him?

So if you're setting your priorities, this is a no-brainer. Get written content on your Web site and everywhere else on the Web. Remember, we're marketing to people who read.

I'm not suggesting that book marketers should ignore multimedia, just keep things in perspective. Don't blow your budget on some newfangled thing just because it's new. Of course if you've already got some video, it certainly won't hurt to upload it to YouTube.

But here's something that's a lot more realistic: podcasting. If you have any recordings of yourself, get them online with a podcast, and get transcripts on your blog or Web site. That way, all those readers can find your audio content.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, plans to give away digital audiobooks of his next title to everyone who buys the physical book. An even better idea might be to make the audiobook a free podcast and upload it to every file-sharing service out there.
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How to save newspaper book review sections

There's been much whining and complaining lately about cutbacks at newspaper book review sections. But the only thing that will help is to get more people to read reviews.

At least one newspaper, The Raleigh News Observer, has a plan to revitalize its book review pages. Under new literary editor Marcy Smith, the paper is adopting a "reader-based" approach as opposed to a "books-based" approach. That means shorter reviews on a broader variety of books.

To that end, she has lined up a dozen writers to do regular columns on "niche" genres: among others, children's and young adult books, food, poetry, race, women's issues, science fiction and mysteries.

Well, it's a start. Here are three more ways the News Observer and other papers can prevent their book pages from becoming totally obsolete:

• Focus on local writers.
• Run reviews from local readers instead of syndicated reviews of bestsellers.
• Enable comments of the book reviews on the paper's Web site.
  

  
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Q&A: How reliable are Amazon Sales Ranks?

QUESTION: I have noticed some dramatic, puzzling shifts in Amazon Sales Ranks lately. I have noticed many of my titles moving both up and down in large increments -- hundreds of thousands of places within a day or two. It makes me question the reliability of Amazon's rankings.

I purchased eight copies of a new title this past weekend. It had a sales rank of around 150,000. Now, three days later, this title is ranked around 750,000. It seems the rank should be much better.

ANSWER: Like everything else on Amazon, the sales rankings have plagued by periodic glitches. Amazon Sales Ranks get stuck sometimes, then move erratically, as if Amazon is making up for lost time. However, I haven't seen this technical problem for the past few weeks.

A title with very slow sales does typically have a rank exceeding 200,000, and a single sale can move that title with a rank of 200,000 to about 70,000. And then it falls with increasing velocity until it has another sale.

To give a recent example that I've watched this new book, which has come on the market in the past few weeks. When first listed, this book had an Amazon Sales Rank of 0. After a while, it apparently had one sale, which brought its rank to 60,000. For the past 10 days it hasn't had a sale, and the rank is falling every hour with increasing velocity, and already exceeds a million.

When you say you purchased eight copies of a book and didn't see an appropriate movement in the rank: Amazon counts a single order for multiple copies of a book as only one sale in terms of Amazon Sales Rank. In other words, to have the effect of eight sales, there would need to be eight separate orders -- not necessarily by different customers or to different shipping addresses, but eight separate orders nonetheless.

On the other hand, I've heard that Barnes & Noble does it the other way -- they count each copy sold toward the sales rank displayed on its Web site, even if those copies are sold in a single order. This is why some practitioners of the online "bestseller campaigns" do it on BN.com instead of Amazon, since each copy is counted in the sales rank.

Also, because Barnes & Noble's online sales volume is much lower than Amazon's its sales rankings are more volatile (or more easily manipulated). And some marketers believe that a huge spike in sales on BN.com will prompt the chain to stock or display the book in its brick-and-mortar stores.

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Are Squidoo lenses good marketing vehicles for books?

Author Dee Power posted about her efforts with Squidoo lenses, which serve as marketing vehicles for her books. You can see Dee's lenses here:

Dog Friendly Vacations
How to Get a Book Published

Dee was especially pleased that she managed to get one of her lenses into the top 100. Unfortunately, this didn't generate many book sales:

There was one sale from How to Get a Book Published and none from Dog Friendly Vacations. It doesn't seem that a Squidoo lens is effective in generating sales, at least not for me.

Coincidentally, I've seen anecdotal reports about Google penalizing Squidoo lenses in search rankings. According to the reports, Google downgraded Squidoo pages because of too many spam lenses. The SEO crowd even has a name for it: The Squidoo Slap.

Squidoo is an easy way for people to aggregate good links about a specific topic. But like any good tool, it's attracted spammers, especially blog comment spammers.

I'm not an expert on search engine optimization, but I think all this just reinforces one basic idea that authors should remember about online marketing: If you're going to invest a lot of time creating content on the Internet, keep your best stuff on your own domain. It's fine to have a presence on these social-networking sites, but keep your crown jewels at home.

A plug for SmallPress Blog, a guide to independent publishing

If you're looking for new ideas in book publishing, check out Thomas Nixon's SmallPress Blog. In addition to publishing his own books, Tom somehow finds the time to posts lots of valuable content for other independent publishers and self-publishers.

Tom was gracious enough to feature me this week, and we discussed Plug Your Book. In the interview, I explain why it's a good idea to maintain a blog if you're an author (or plan to become one):

Instead of trying to beat people over the head with an advertisement for your book, a blog enables your audience to discover you, and they get involved.

Blogging does take time, but the payoff can be huge. The more you blog, the more readers will find you, and contribute new ideas you can use in your books.

Yahoo launches 'suggest search' feature

If you're familiar with Amazon's Search Suggestions feature, you know it's a valuable tool for authors and publishers who want to add a bit more human intelligence to the retailer's search results.

Now Yahoo is upgrading its search technology from a different direction. Its new suggest search feature prompts you with suggested search queries as you type. It's supposed to limit the number of words you need to type into a query, and it can present similar queries to shorten your searching time and find what you're looking for quicker.

It's interesting that this tool seems to be more helpful with certain kinds of queries, and the results are usually much different than Google's search suggest feature.

Q&A: Why is my book being sold below wholesale on Amazon?

QUESTION: On Amazon Marketplace, "new" copies of the book I wrote are for sale at 50 percent off the list price. This seller claims to have their orders fulfilled by Amazon. How can this seller make any money, and why would Amazon team with them?

ANSWER: Any third-party seller can sign up for Fulfillment by Amazon. These sellers send their books (or other products) to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon handles shipping and customer service. Amazon is signing up anyone who is willing to pay the monthly storage and service fees for this program. These fees are in addition to the 15-percent commission Amazon charges sellers for Marketplace sales.

The vast majority of Marketplace sellers are reputable, and I can think of four explanations for why your book is priced incorrectly:

• The seller is using automatic repricing software and has forgotten to account for the cost of your book, so they've mistakenly priced too low.
  

• The seller obtained some remainder or review copies of your book at little or no cost.
  

• The seller might be offering a used copy of your book, and the condition is mistakenly described as "new" instead of used.
  

• Amazon still has some kinks in with "Fulfillment by Amazon," which is just coming out of beta testing. Amazon may have introduced this error.
  

The easiest way for you to get to the bottom of this is to order a copy of your book from this Marketplace vendor. They may cancel your order and say the book is "out of stock." Then you
can contact them and ask for an explanation. You'll have leverage because you can rate the transaction using Amazon's Marketplace feedback system.

Facebook connects with Shelfari, Amazon.com

Shelfari, the social-networking site for bibliophiles, now enables Facebook members to rate, review and share books without leaving the site.

Unlike most Facebook applications built by independent developers, the new application was built by Shelfari, which received financing from Amazon.com in February. Some of the bibliographic and user-generated content on Shelfari is piped in from Amazon.

Facebook members can view their library on a virtual bookshelf, import books already added on Shelfari, and rate and review books and share those ratings and reviews automatically using Facebook personal newsfeeds.

The connection should boost activity on Shelfari. Facebook has grown tremendously over the past year after it began offering memberships to non-students. According to a report from Comscore, Facebook saw an 89 percent jump in unique visitors and a 143 percent increase in page views. Facebook had 26.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. during May 2007.

Q&A: Can authors really build an audience on MySpace?

QUESTION: I'm getting sick and tired of all the junk that I see on MySpace. I'm there to market my book. But it's devolved into a place to say, "happy birthday," "good morning," or "have a great weekend."

Pleeeze! I am very protective of MySpace. My purpose in being there is to exchange information about the written word. And if I get a request to add a friend, I go to that person's profile and check out their friends. If I see a naked body or a person with a limited vocabulary (can't get above 4 letter words), I deny their request.

Authors on MySpace should remember, we need to market to our base -- our particular readers. I try to stay as close to literary work as possible. I don't market to urban lit, chick lit, and don't buy into the fad-du-jour. Yes, I'm a snob, I can't afford trash.

ANSWER: There's no denying it, there's a lot of frivolity on social networks, especially MySpace. Like you, I go through my friend invitations and try to screen out the ones that are clearly inappropriate. It takes time, but considering how many readers MySpace has brought me, it's well worth it.

Plugging your book on social networks is a chore, and no matter how you try to manage it, it's still going to be a chore. For example, after I'd been using MySpace several weeks, I grew tired of the several friend requests I got every day from bands and musicians. These weren't legitimate friend requests in my opinion. There was no interest in my writings on MySpace, these were bulk invites. So I changed my MySpace preferences to block invites from MySpace Music accounts.

But this brought me a new problem. Almost immediately, I got a message from a songwriter/author who was very irritated that I had blocked her invitation. So I changed my preferences back to the default. I didn't want to snub people with MySpace music accounts who were truly interested in my work -- I'm trying to make friends, not enemies.

So I agree, whether you're writing a blog or networking on MySpace, you need to walk a fine line. Inundate your audience with too much fluff, and they will delete you, unsubscribe, stop paying attention.

One big improvement I've noticed recently on MySpace: A dramatic reduction in the amount of spam friend invitations that are advertisements for pornography. These had been getting more prevalent throughout the spring, to the point where I was receiving one or two dozen a day. But thanks to a new option in the in-box allowing members to flag incoming invites as "spam," these porn spammers have been nearly eradicated.

Now, back to our original question of where we draw the lines between purposefulness vs. frivolity, and commercial use versus pure education ... I'm afraid it's simply a matter of taste. Choose your friends wisely. And don't forget to visit my profile here and add me as a friend.

Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Amazon tags now available in RSS feeds

There's a new RSS feed system for Amazon tags. You can aggregate Amazon feeds in a news reader.

On most tag pages you'll find an orange RSS icon and the label "RSS feed." That means you can subscribe to track new products added to the tag or new discussions posted on Amazon's site.

For example, you can subscribe to the tag murder mystery to be notified of new books given that tag. The interesting thing is the feeds pass an Amazon Associates ID, giving a revenue opportunity to bloggers.

Three other things you can do:

1. Embed a widget on your site to show an updated list of the most popular products for that tag, such as wii game, and earn referral credit through the Associates program
2. Create special tags for your books or book club and publish feeds of recommended books to your members
3. Export products and tags into another application, creating your own mashup

You can also limit the RSS feed to tags used by a single person -- yourself or any other Amazon customer.

For step-by-step instructions on building the links to these feeds, see this Amazon Associates blog post.

Should I market my book with an Amazon Bestseller Campaign?

QUESTION: My book has just been launched and I'm trying to market it online. I've seen advertisements for "Amazon Bestseller Campaigns." Should I spend more than $1,000 on a bestseller campaign?

ANSWER: A lot of people dismiss Amazon Sales Ranks as meaningless but I think the ranks provide valuable intelligence for lots of people. The ranks are useful for authors, publishers and booksellers who want to gauge the success of competing books, to research the market for book concepts, etc.

Amazon recalculates its ranks every hour -- the No. 1 bestseller has a rank of 1, and the worse seller is ranked 4,000,000 and change.

Amazon Bestseller Campaigns, however, are the dark side of this technology. It's a technique used by certain marketing consultants to push a book to an artificially high rank for a short period. Because Amazon re-ranks books every hour, a burst of two dozen sales all at once can propel a book to Amazon's top 1,000. A few hundred sales can get you in the top 20.

The dishonesty of these campaigns becomes apparent when the book is later advertised as an "Amazon Bestseller" even though it's not selling anymore and its Amazon Sales Rank is back in the toilet. That's because these campaigns don't generate sustained demand for the book.

Even so, the consultants who promote these programs are getting lots of clients due to the explosion in the ranks of self-published authors who want help marketing their books, and don't know where to turn.

I believe the consultants who sell these campaigns are preying on the insecurities of hopeful authors, and it's a terrible disservice. The danger for authors is, they might get a reputation as a "spammer."

Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Q&A: Can I post an Amazon Associates link on MySpace?

QUESTION: How can I post an Amazon Associates link for my book on MySpace? Whenever I try it, only the code appears, not my book cover.

ANSWER: MySpace doesn't allow the Javascript used with the enhanced Amazon Associates links, and that's why your usual method for posting an affiliate link doesn't work.

But you'll notice that my profile at MySpace has a big, fat Amazon Associates link in my "about me" section.

How did I do it? By using plain old HTML. Instead of using Amazon's Javascript, I posted an image of an Amazon Associates link embedded with an affiliate text link.

Here's the code, select and copy it in case there are some obscured characters:

<a target="popup" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/YOUR-ISBN/YOUR-ID/ref=nosim"><img
src="http://www.yourdomain.com/picture.jpg" border="0" /></a><p>

You'll just need to replace three pieces of my sample code:

• Replace "Your-ISBN" with your book's ISBN.

• Replace "YOUR-ID" with your Amazon Associates ID.

• Replace "yourdomain.com/picture.jpg" with the address of an image of an Amazon Associates link for your book.
  

If you don't have an Amazon Associates ID yet, you can apply here does make it easy for you to post an enhanced Amazon link to your book from within your . In the meantime, MySpaceMySpace blog. At the bottom of the "Post a new Blog Entry" form, there's an option to "Tell us what you're reading..." and you can input your ISBN there. But with this method, MySpace is using its own affiliate ID, so you won't receive any commissions from the sales.