I thought I’d start a new feature here called Technobabble Tuesday. Namely a way to share some of my knowledge about some of the technical aspects that come along with being an author. Today I’m going to talk about cleaning up clunky-looking Amazon links. While my aim is toward books, it can be applied to anything for sale on their site. Which, let’s face it, is just about anything. LOL

In my dealings around the internet, I see a lot of authors posting links to their book for sale on Amazon. For example, I did a basic search for “Chasing Sin Sara Brookes” and this is what it returned in the address bar:

http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Sin-ebo...

Functionality wise, it works, there’s nothing wrong with it. But the code string is…not pretty. As someone familiar with website code, I cringe at the thought of using something that looks that way. Or maybe I’m just anal about it (not out of the question). If someone else takes the link and posts it elsewhere just as it is, it can be clunky looking. In reality, all that you really need for a link to the book is a few bits in the early part of the information. For example, everything in red in the link below can be deleted.

http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-Sin-ebo...

And you’re left with a code that looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Y6B0UC

IMHO, that’s a much cleaner link to provide to other and to use for your own promotional purposes.