…and the earth trembles. Okay, just kidding–but it feels that way sometimes! Amazon.com, the Godzilla of the book retail world!

Amazon has finally added the Search Inside This Book feature to the detail page for Mortal Touch. I uploaded the PDF files to them on August 12th, so it took them nearly six weeks to get the material up and online–whether that’s typical, or they were slower than usual for some reason I have no idea. There has been some sort of corporate mitosis going on with Borders.com terminating its arrangement with Amazon and launching as an independent online e-tailer. Their Beta website includes Mortal Touch, so we’ll see what happens with sales. If you have a Borders Rewards card, you need to register it with the new Borders.com Beta website.

Amazon still hasn’t added some of the other features that I thought (perhaps erroneously) came along with the Search Inside, such as more subject links, the “statistically improbable phrases” and so on. Whether those have to be implemented separately or will show up in time, again, I have no idea. I’m not happy that Mortal Touch won’t come up on a general search for “vampire” by subject or title (the subtitle, or series title, “Vampires of New England Series” doesn’t register with Amazon’s search engine). It will come up as a tag search from another vampire book’s detail page. But I want it to have “vampires” as a subject and I can’t figure out how to manage that. Suggestions welcomed from anyone who has solved this problem!

I’m getting a direct mailing to independent bookstores ready to go out–I just bought a roll of 100 stamps. $41.00, ouch!