Overweening Generalist

Thursday, June 30, 2011

A Note on My Links to Amazon Books

When I started blogging, a writer friend told me I could maybe make some money selling books for Amazon, since books tend to be my Thang.

So I signed up with Amazon; they made it all very easy.

What I really liked, but never said, was that even if no one buys any of the books I linked to, the Amazon site tends to have a lot of pretty good information about the books, including, quite often, some perspicacious reviews. So I saw that as an added value for readers of my blog.

Now, the Governor of my state, California, has decided he wants a piece of online sales from Amazon from sales in California. Amazon doesn't like the idea, and has terminated my contract. One wonders how successful states will be in trying to get revenue from online sales? It remains to be seen.

Anwyay:

Should I continue to link to books at the site, or do you not tend to click on the links anyway?

3 comments:

Eric Wagner said...

Do you have the Amazon link up right now? I didn't see it, but I may have missed it.

Reading lists fascinate me. As Pound pointed out, selection plays a vital role in our modern world since we have so many choices of what to read. The reading lists of Pound and Wilson, etc., have certainly played a vital role in my life.

icarus_23 said...

I'd suggest keeping the links there. One thing I learned is that the more relevant links a web page is, the higher it's rated on search engines. I haven't done much with my Amazon writer's page yet, but with the Fantomas stuff starting to take off, that's high on my list!

michael said...

@Royal Academy of Eric: Amazon sent me a notice saying Jerry Brown has just signed the bill, my account is terminated. The way I decided to do Amazon links was called the "in-line" method: when I mentioned a book it was usually hypertext-linked to Amazon, for more info, reviews, pages...and price if'n ya wanted to buy. And I'd get a (very) small % if you bought from my linkages. So that's over.

@icarus23: your thinking aligns with what two of my writer friends who are mucho mas savvy about SEO and all that noize. So I will continue...and you know? That's one of my favorite "time-wasting" things on the Internet: I read ABOUT books at places like Amazon. Porno is great too, but I do get all hot and bothered over reading about what others have to say about their reading...One of my chromosomes is totally dedicated to "crazy," I assume. And like RAW and Joyce and Einstein, I too literally have some very troubled genes in my lineage.