"The Amazon Connect program, in beta for the past month, aims to increase the engagement between readers and authors, and between readers and Amazon.com. It provides authors with a channel to market new products to consumers who bought their books in the past, and gives them a reason to visit Amazon.com," reports ClickZ news.
But ClickZ's headline, Amazon Hosting Author Blogs, looks misleading if not downright wrong.
Amazon Connect is a new program currently open to a select group of authors. This program allows authors to post messages directly to their readers on a wide variety of subjects. Currently, messages will appear on the detail page of an author's book as well as on her/his profile page. As part of the program, authors may create a profile page with personalized information.
From the Amazon demo page, it seems the "blog" is the users' Amazon home page, not the authors'. The users' home page then displays messages (or posts) from various authors, as and when they create them.
It could be a good idea for Amazon to host authors' blogs, but this ain't it.
