In 2006 Amazon launched its Connect feature, enabling authors to send blog posts directly to readers on Amazon's site. Your posts appear in several places--on your book's detail page, your Amazon profile--and buyers of your book receive an alert on Amazon's home page in a box called a plog.
Your Amazon Connect blog is a unique opportunity to communicate with new readers, and requires a different approach than you'd use with longtime readers on your own Web site. Visitors at your Amazon blog will include mostly first-time readers, who might feel as if they're butting into the middle of a conversation.
Your Amazon blog provides a great opportunity to introduce yourself to readers, says literary agent Matt Wagner, founder of Fresh Books:
Amazon Connect is your chance to stand next to your reader at the bookstore. The key is to be polite and not screw it up!
The key to writing an Amazon blog is not overdoing it. Understand that your readers are here to buy a book, not read a blog. This is not the place for long, drawn-out entries about your personal life or about the process of writing your next book. This is the place to put your book in context for readers who might be looking at your competition. A great place to start is: "Why I wrote this book."
Amazon Connect blogs also provide a way for you to stay in touch with readers who haven't yet committed to buying your book--or people who might be interested in your next book. Readers can subscribe to your Amazon blog in three ways:
Browsing the directory, # Amazon.com/gp/arms/directory#.
Clicking the yellow button labeled #Add to your Plog# from the Amazon Connect portion of your book's detail page.
Visiting your author Profile page and clicking Add posts to my plog in the blue box on the top right of the page.
You can also use your Amazon blog to refer visitors to your own Web site. Some authors do this by posting only the first paragraph of their post at Amazon, and asking readers to click through to their own site to continue reading.
You can get more information and apply for an Amazon blog here: