Has anyone ever tried using Amazon Shorts as a way to sell content? I’ve heard of a couple of people recently who have been using it but don’t know how they’ve gone. Could be interesting – let me know if you’ve given it a go.
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Reading up on it and looks interesting (maybe more so for marketing yourself/website). Has some potential as the Amazon recognition brings with it many potential customers … although I’m not sure about the pricing “only for just $0.49 … hopefully it’s meant to be ‘from $0.49’
Nope, it’s .49 cents.
http://news.designtechnica.com/article8147.html
Could we now be seeing the return of the ‘penny dreadfuls’ of days gone by?
Actually I can see that they have some potential as a marketing tool if a writer were to publish an excerpt from a larger work as a promo of that bigger work but even so it does under-value the efforts of good writers.
This is classic, innovative Long Tail stuff and typical of Amazon. Chris Anderson does a lot on Amazon over on his exceptional Long Tail book blog. And no wonder, they do a great job, everything considered. OK you’re not going to become Jeffrey Archer through this scheme, you’d need a big trade publishing deal to do that. But this may be the first step on a journey of a thousand miles. More to the point, it’s excellent for niche writers to find their audience. The money isn’t important, but the viral effect is. I’m all in favour of it, but havn’t yet decided if I’ll use it .
Looking into it further I think it is perfect for the blogger-type who’s looking at becoming an author in their field of expertise (c’mon all, admit it – we’re all wannbe authors -;) Just by having your name/book associated with Amazon is worth it.
I think we should forget about it as being a potential revenue stream and use it to build that much needed credibility.
Pretty interesting concept. Many ‘How to make Web Income’ pundits use the concept of getting articles of some sort out into the mainstream, both to interest prospective customers directly and to get index links and traffic to a web site. This feature is a bit hidden in the huge conglomerate of Amazon, but it’s an excellent possibility for a place to launch ‘teasers’ to a larger work (works) on making money on the Net.
The technology and how to sections are not heavily populated, so there might be a scope here … a downside is the long lead-time from submission to publication.
Hopefully we’ll get some real-world performance reports soon.
Best regards
Dave
How much of the .49 does the author get? How much does Amazon take?
Seth Godin comments on this today at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/08/lots_of_publish.html
Now that Amazon has its “Connect” blogging feature rolling, I’m wondering if authors could use Shorts and Connect as cross-promotional tools to sell additional content.
Let’s say you have a nonfiction title for sale on Amazon. And you’re posting blog entries on your book’s Amazon product page through the “Connect” program. After a while it would not be too hard to generate 5,000 words of additional material on your book’s topic — perhaps directly from interaction you’ve had on the blog. You could publish this additional material as a Short, plug it on your Amazon blog, and get some additional sales.
Sure, you wouldn’t get rich doing this at 49 cents a pop, but the beauty is there might be lots of people who see the blog and haven’t bought your book. They buy the Short, and after reading it they’re convinced to buy your book.
Steve
I’m one of the authors on Amazon Shorts. It does seem to move my other e-book titles a little, It also is a venue for material which doesn’t really fit into the print world these days. Such as my novella “Sunday in the Park with George” which more than 24,000 words long and the serialization of my novel “The Shenandoah Spy” which will appear in 14 parts over the rest of 2006. The first two parts are up and selling very well, so this seems to be a very good way to build readership for new fiction.
Amazon thinks of this as a marketing tool to drive sales to print products they also sell, but I see the potential to change the very way that literature is published and distributed. Amazon adds a lot of value with cover design and internal links to attract more of their 50 million customers and authors get a big chunk of that 49 cents, which makes it worth doing. If you sell a thousand copies you’ll get more money than most little magazines can or will pay.