Amazon.com Debuts Author Blogs With a Dozen Authors
Posted on December 27, 2005
The New York Times has an article about author blogs on Amazon.com. Apparently, Amazon.com has quietly launched an author blog service and has been trying out author blogs with about a dozen authors since late November.
The entries were part of a new program called Amazon Connect, begun late last month to enhance the connections between authors and their fans - and to sell more books - with author blogs and extended personal profile pages on the company's online bookstore site. So far, Amazon has recruited a group of about a dozen authors, including novelists, writers of child care manuals and experts on subjects as diverse as real estate investing, science, fishing and the lyrics of the Grateful Dead.Amazon.com's author blogs have permalinks but so far there are no comments. It is unclear whether Amazon will eventually offer blogs to all Amazon authors -- so far it sounds like they are being pitched just to major book publishers."The program gives people who are interested in a particular author a way to get new insights into them, and gives the authors a way to develop more of a one-on-one relationship with readers," said Jani Strand, a spokeswoman for Amazon. The authors write on "anything they'd like their readers to know about them," Ms. Strand said, including what inspired their books and details about their experiences. Authors are free to update their blogs as often or as little as they like, and a linked profile page has information about other books, reading recommendations, personal information and, in some cases, e-mail addresses.
Ms. Wolitzer, in an interview, said she welcomed the blog as an opportunity to address readers more often than she usually might - that is, every two or three years, when a new book comes out. "Anything that can get fiction on people's radar is good," she said.
Carolyn K. Reidy, president of the adult publishing group at Simon & Schuster, which has already signed up at least 10 authors for Amazon Connect, said that when Amazon approached her company this year with the idea of author blogs, she quickly embraced it.The Times article did not have links to the author blogs but we have rounded up a few of the links so you can see what the author blogs look like:"It enables the author to have a conversation with readers on an ongoing basis, easily and in an ongoing place," she said. "We hope that somebody who reads one of an author's books will go back and discover one of the rest."