Amazon has a new program called Amazon Connect that lets authors interact with their fans/book buyers.
It says that it’s only open to a select group of authors to launch the program, but I signed up and was verified immediately without any delay.
If you are an author who has a book for sale on Amazon, you might want to check it out. It will give you direct access to communicate with your Amazon readership and let them know when you have news, author events, and other info you might want to post to them directly on the site.
And yes, it’s FREE. Leave it to Amazon to be on the cutting edge.
Is there a charge for the service at Amazon Connect?
I read that it was free. Who knows if they’ll charge us, or the publisher later. For now, it’s free.
I don’t think there’s any danger of Amazon charging for Amazon Connect. It lets you create content that increases their sales, so it’s a win/win situation for both.
It works best if you’ve written several books on a particular topic. Because it lets you post messages to previous buyers and on the detail page of your published books, each book helps leverage the sale of other books. It’s one reason why recently I’ve been concentrating on G. K. Chesterton books.
And if you write fiction or short stories, you might look into Amazon Shorts. It lets you serialize an electronic version a chapter or story at a time, making twenty some cents a sale. And when enough for a book is done, you can put the entire series out as a print book through the publisher of your choice. It’s a way to keep fans happy and earn a little between books. The main downside, that Amazon gets a 6-month exclusive right, isn’t usually that significant. Most publishers take longer than that from the manuscript to publication anyway.
You do have to be an author listed on Amazon to participate in Amazon Shorts. I’ve thought of joining and reversing the process, developing some of the chronological issues in The Lord of the Rings that I touch on in my book length chronology into short articles released as Amazon Shorts. I’d leave them on Amazon under the assumption they’d help sell the book.
–Mike Perry, Seattle, Untangling Tolkien