Saturday, December 29, 2007

Discover Amazon Daily

I am not at all surprised that my newest find in the blogosphere has a tradition steeped in books and showcasing people with something to say and share: Amazon Daily has quickly become a very addictive favorite for me.

I discovered it when fooling with my own author's/seller's account there and making a long-overdue update to my profile page. There was a new (well, new to me) field that asked if I had any feed to add to their blogger's aggregator. I did, and voila, my own Managing with Aloha Coaching now shows up on both Amazon Daily and on my own profile page.

  • A side note on this if you are interested: You need an Amazon Advantage sellers account to start with, and there is an extra step where Amazon will verify your status as a published author with a third-party agent or publisher - you can specify who they can contact. If you are an author and a prospective reader happens upon your book title, this is a great way for them to know more about you. The program is called AmazonConnect- search for the link via your Advantage account.

In addition to the authors feeds, Amazon Daily is fed by a contingent of their own editors from all over the company. From their About Page:
Whether you're a die-hard fiction lover, a gadget geek, an avid collector of classic films or just a fan of what we sell, you'll find all sorts of entries that will interest you. Amazon Daily's home page contains all editorial posts (sorted so the most recent entries appear at the top); in the sidebar, they're sorted by topic, so you can browse one concept at a time instead of taking all of it in at once! Each post gives you the opportunity to provide private feedback to the editor as well as leave public comments for other customers to see.
However take note that the non-editor, independent authors feeds are not automatic: As a reader, you customize which authors you want aggregated for you, using a link at the top of the far right column of the blog's home page. You can scroll through their very lengthy address book, but I've found that tedious, and instead have added those authors whose books I have already read and am now following; a recent one for me is Marshall Goldsmith, author of What Got You Here Won't Get You There. When I add them, I delete the dupe from my other feed reader.

In that respect I have been somewhat disappointed by the authors who are not taking advantage of this with Amazon (happily, Goldsmith does!) for I'd love to hear more from them, but I can certainly empathize, for look how long it took me to catch on!

The very pleasant surprise: My addiction to Amazon Daily is coming from their company of editors. Over this past Christmas season some terrific holiday recipes were shared by Amazon Al Dente and I learned about the latest and greatest gadgets and gear from Amazon Current's Bloggers. As you would hope, Omnivoracious is "hungry for the next good book" and regularly contributes book reviews. (Each of those last three links feature group blogs by at least a half dozen writers.)

Check it out: Whether you regularly order from Amazon or not (and it's no secret that's why they have Amazon Daily in the first place) you'll really open your horizons to different writer's interests with this single feed.
~ Rosa Say

Feed for Amazon Daily.
Lemme see the blog first.

1 comment:

Steve Sherlock said...

Rosa, how ironic that it took you some time to realize the value of Amazon Daily and it took me until now to realize that you had shared this. Mahalo!