Thursday, December 31, 2009

Amazon's response regarding anthologies and contributor listings

Amazon's response to this issue:

"Hello Win,

I understand the frustration you've experienced in attempting to add your title's contributors to the author byline. Author bylines on detail pages will not include contributors to anthologies at this time. However, contributors to anthologies may include anthologies in their bibliographies. I took a moment to review the list of contributors in your message. I have added this title to bibliographies for those contributors with existing Author Pages, and have created new Author Pages for those without. These changes will appear on the website in 24-48 hours.

This information may also be included in the Product Description of your book. We are working to allow authors to submit updates to the Editorial Reviews section from within Author Central. Because this ability is not yet available to you, I have added the names of your title's contributors to the Product Description. This change will appear on the website in 24-48 hours.

We hope to see you again soon.

Did we answer your question?

Best regards,

Sarah B"

I am not completely satisfied, as it still makes no sense to not list anthology contributors' names as hyperlinks at the top of every book listing, and allow those names to be searched upon. Books listed on someone's Author Central page, therefore, don't necessarily come up on a search by that author's name. (For instance, The Avenger Chronicles
is on my Author Central page, but does not come up when you search in Books by my name. Likewise
Tales of the Shadowmen 6: Grand Guignol.)

It's inconsistent.

Adding the contributor names to the Editorial Description of Myths for the Modern Age was a nice touch, but they didn't list everyone. Any Myths contributors who want to be listed, I suggest you copy Sarah B's note above and attach to your own request to Amazon to be added to the Editorial Description (I can't tilt at all the windmills by myself. ;-)

I appreciate Amazon's response here... but they still have some work to do.

2 comments:

Brad Mengel said...

At least Amazon has gotten back to you. I'm still waiting for my reply.

Win Scott Eckert said...

Well, I'm grateful you spoke up. The more voices we add to this, the better. Fingers crossed they'll reply soon.