When Amazon launched its Connect author-blog feature in 2006, chief executive Jeff Bezos hailed it as a new opportunity for authors to talk directly with readers.
Now, after a few million unfiltered blog posts, Amazon wishes authors would just shut up. The company has tucked the blogs away from direct view, and warned authors it may begin monitoring and censoring them.
What happened? Well, some authors have been referring Amazon customers to their personal Web sites, where they sold books as downloadable e-books or paper copies sent through the mail. Amazon received no fees for the sales.
Amazon’s “community rules” prohibit users from discussing prices or competing retailers. The company’s staff routinely deletes such details from customer book reviews, but author blogs weren’t closely monitored.
After debuting author blogs with a splash on its home page in 2006, Amazon has steadily reduced their visibility. Last year, the company began truncating new posts, then deleting them entirely from book product pages. Starting yesterday, authors who wanted to continue blogging were asked to agree to new terms, with Amazon reserving the right to monitor and delete certain content:
We … have no obligation to use, post or distribute your Submitted Materials. We may monitor and, in our discretion, remove your Submitted Materials at any time.
The agreement doesn’t specify what kind of materials Amazon might find objectionable. Amazon says future blog posts will appear at the bottom of a new section of its site, Author Central.
Not all authors were using AmazonConnect to intercept Amazon sales. Some were using the feature to post extended book descriptions and excerpts. Some authors found the process faster and more reliable than providing revised or corrected bibliographic data to Amazon’s cataloging department.
Amazon’s author blogging program is separate from Kindle publishing for blogs, which enabes bloggers to collect subscription fees via Amazon’s e-book reader.
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6 Comments
Hee hee. Yeah, well, I'd kind of expect that from Amazon. As far as I can tell, Amazon's corporate philosophy goes something like this: please send us all your product and web traffic so that we can make lots of money. It makes their store (and anything connected with it) an exceptionally poor direct-response platform.
-TimK
Hmmm, I thought Amazon's business model was more like this:
Please send us all your product and web traffic so that we can make lots of money. If you dare to oppose us or challenge our cost and discount demands we will crush you and all the independent stores out there…
Yeah, Amazon is a bully and book lovers need to STOP buying from them. Support the independent book store and publisher web sites directly!
Who should we use to buy from then? A few suggestions would be great.
Really interesting idea. I think the gesture area could be a nice compromise between the touch screen and the prehistoric Kindle joystick. Seems pointless to favor touch screen over readability in a device like this.
@Michael Clark: try IndieBound.org, the consortium of independent booksellers; they can connect buyers with their local bricks-and-mortar shop. If there are no real bookstores in your neighborhood, try Powell's; they've got as deep a catalog as Amazon without the monoculture baggage.
I think you are reading way too much into these changes. Amazon is creating individual pages to highlight each and every author and this is a bad thing? With a service like Author Central, can't you imagine the long-term possibilities to provide more and more content to your readers? Just because something was done one way, it doesn't mean that's the only–or best–approach.
It's amazing that so many of us authors are so quick to bite the hands that feed us. Without big sellers like Amazon, B&N;, and Powell's, many authors would not have a place for their books to be sold. Yes, they are all in business to make money, but generally I think they try to do what they think will help authors, because that's what will help sell books.