Amazon Tags. Farewell?

Happy Tuesday, good people of the blogosphere! One day closer to Friday, we are! Ooooooh that sounded rather Yoda-ish, no? Today, I'd like to bring something to your attention that you might have missed.

Amazon has, apparently, done away with the tagging system on their website. I hadn't been able to tag anything for a while and was beginning to wonder if it was some sort of Amazonian conspiracy against me. Yesterday, as I'm browsing through recent news on Facebook, I see a status update where someone says the tags are gone from Amazon. Lookie!

I am simultaneously filled with glee and remorse. Glee because I finally saw it wasn't just me with the problem; remorse because they've taken away one of the ways we can boost our book in searches. For Indie authors, the tags were a portal into getting our new stuff in front of people searching for what we write. It's like a huge slap on the wrist. Right? Maybe...

What did we do wrong?

Maybe it wasn't us. Perhaps it was just a system that wasn't working the way Amazon intended. Of course, it could have been us. We'll never know. Maybe the tagging system went away because we embed tags in our books' descriptions when we upload them/make them available for purchase.

In the big bad world of Indie publishing, maybe this isn't such a terrible thing. Let's look at it from another angle, shall we? Say they do away with the like system as well:

If Stephen King's books have 5,000 likes and 40,000 tags with every word known to the English language on them, they're going to be more visible to people performing searches (more words mean more hits) and rank higher in the returns (more likes and you show up first). If all those likes and tags are gone, Mr. King's publishing company gets to choose up to seven descriptive tag words; just like the rest of us. He no longer hits first on a search because of his number of likes. Oh man, he's been forced into the ditches with the rest of us; struggling for air, grasping at mud, and sliding back down now and then because he loses his grip.

So is the loss of the tagging system really that big of a deal? I know if I've purchased the work of an author and they release a new book, I get an e-mail without ever having clicked the like button. So if they take that away as well, I'm in the running... maybe! Is Amazon trying to find a way to even the playing field?

We may never know.

What are your thoughts?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo