Hack: Amazon.com Author Central

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> Author Pages and Author Blogs
>
> Amazon now links to Author Pages from book detail pages on Amazon. > A new feature called “More About the Author” can be found right > under the Product Details section on book detail pages. Examples be> low: >
> http://www.amazon.com/Skeletons-at-Feast-Chris-Bohjalian/dp/> 0307394964/ >
> http://www.amazon.com/Family-Man-Elinor-Lipman/dp/0618644660 >
> http://www.amazon.com/Goth-Girl-Rising-Barry-Lyga/dp/0547076649 >
> This is a simple and perhaps obvious feature. But it’s also one tha> t many authors asked about, so we wanted to tell you the good news a> s we rolled it out. We thought it also might be a good opportunity > to share a bit about what we’ve been doing with Author Central and w> hat to expect from us in the coming weeks and months. >
> At Amazon, we’ve made our goal to give authors a more prominent > “customer-facing” role within our store. This will not only be > helpful and fun for Amazon customers, but we love the idea of enabli> ng authors to better promote themselves and their work and to reach > both fans and new readers. In pursuit of this goal, we think Author > Pages is a great new feature. They are further improved by the data> you contribute via Author Central. So why wait to launch “More Abo> ut the Author”? And what about features like Author Blogs? >
> When we build something new at Amazon, we often introduce it in a “s> oft” way at first, allowing us time to work out some kinks before we> increase its prominence within our store. Over the past few weeks,> we’ve had the chance to find and fix any number of bugs, many of wh> ich you told us about (We’re not done, of course, so please keep the> feedback coming!) >
> As we’ve improved Author Pages, we’ve steadily made it easier to > find them. For example, a few weeks ago we made them easier to find> in search. We also added a link from author names on detail pages > (take a look right under the book title on a detail page – hovering > over a hyperlinked author name will yield a link to the relevant Aut> hor Page). “More About the Author” is another step forward as we > methodically increase the prominence of author information across ou> r store. >
> Of course, there’s still so much to do – we have many new > features in the works, including improvements to what you see alread> y. For example, we want to allow customers to navigate from Kindle > detail pages to Author Pages the same way they do from detail pages > for physical books. Also, the current “More About the Author” > feature is extremely simple — it doesn’t yet do “smart” things > like link directly to fresh Author Blog content. We expect to add b> oth of these features in the coming weeks. (If you’re wondering abou> t the change from the “old” Author Blog feature, the simple > explanation is that the previous implementation proved a relatively > inefficient use of detail page space. We want those pages to be as > tuned as possible to selling your books –we think our new implementa> tion will not detract from that goal while still exposing your Autho> r Blog content for interested customers.) >
> So stay tuned and thanks for your patience and support while we keep > improving the beta version of Author Central. Contact us any time > at: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us. >
>
> Best regards,
>
> The Amazon Author Central Team
> http://authorcentral.amazon.com