On Thursday the 5th, I made use of a new Kindle author’s feature called X-Ray. X-Ray links characters and terms in an author’s work to either links (written by the author) or to Wikipedia Articles about the character/term. It is very easy to use. An author goes to his/her KDP page for the work and selects a button to enable X-Ray. After a short time of a half-hour or longer, when the author comes back to that KDP book, a drop-down menu of characters and terms from the work are displayed. The author goes through each and decides whether to include that character/term among the links, choosing a radio button for his/her choice. He/she can then either write a short description of the character/term or select a Wikipedia article on it. After all characters and terms have been reviewed, the author can publish the ones chosen. Then, after about a half-hour or so, links will appear in the Kindle ebook, which a reader can click and which will take him/her to the author’s or the Wikipedia article.
I think this is a neat service to provide to readers. It is also something an author can advertise about his/her works, which may give an advantage over non-X-Ray-enabled works in the marketplace. Simply writing an article about it, as I have done here, will garner a little more publicity for the author.
I tested this on The Scent and Other Stories tonight. Get an e-copy when you can and check it out. You can purchase a copy from Amazon at anytime or you can wait until Christmas Eve, which, if I recall correctly, is the next time that The Scent and Other Stories is offered free.
If you are a Kindle author, be certain to check out this new feature.
I will be doing this for my other works as time permits.
Hasta luego.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 