Yesterday’s blog posting was the first one I scheduled to appear on my Amazon Author Page, and I’m happy to report it appeared their automatically via RSS without a hitch, so now I’m going to test whether or not I can embed a video into this WordPress blog from YouTube — which I know works fine on WordPress — to see if the Amazon blog accepts the video. I’m doing this for a number of reasons:
1) If it works, I’ll want to advise our authors how to “get around” the one-video limitation imposed by Amazon’s own Author Central functionality.
2) Not only do they limit the video uploads through their “Video” tab to one, but they prohibit .mp4 files entirely, which is the high-quality, high-def format that we use to provide our book video trailers and teasers to our authors. I guess it’s our fault for being MORE high-quality than Amazon allows. But if our authors can embed their videos into their blog, and then feed their blog into their Amazon Author Page via RSS, there’s the perfect solution. So, let’s see if it works…
So when this posting appears on my Amazon Author Page, we can see if the video appears.
I’m also doing this — and in such detail — because I’m nearly done with the Second Edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon – Newly Revised for 2010! My current Kindle edition has some formatting editions (Kindles don’t take too kindly to drop caps, sidebars, and the like), so rather than reformat the first edition, which was somewhat out of date, given that it was published in 2007, I just decided to crack out the new edition and then correct the Kindle edition all at the same time.
So, if you’re looking for instructions about HOW to create a blog post on Amazon, or how to pick up an RSS Feed from elsewhere so that is appears on Amazon, or how to upload a video, or book video trailer to your Amazon Author Page, the Second Edition of Sell Your Book on Amazon reveals it all. But here’s a hint: It all begins at http://amazon.com/authors
President of Outskirts Press 