Amazon Adds Cool Features To Product Listings

Amazon.com just added several new features to their product listings

As most of you know, my book "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" is listed for sale on Amazon.com and has done quite well, too, among similar weight loss success books out there thanks to so many of you who have not only bought the book for yourself, but have also purchased extra copies for friends and family members who need some encouragement in their weight loss efforts.

That is EXACTLY why I wrote my book and I am so pleased to hear others tell me how much it inspired and motivated them to finally do something about their weight. Even if you are not on a low-carb diet, I think you'll find some stuff in my book that will help you along in your weight loss journey as you seek to make yourself the healthy person you dream of becoming.

Anyway, getting back to Amazon.com for a moment, they have really done a lot of enhance the product listings in just the past few weeks if you haven't noticed.

Last week they added a Customer Discussion page to each of the products for people to share their comments about the subject matter of the book being featured. As you will see on my book page, I started a discussion called "Is Low-Carb Dead?" inviting others to share their thoughts on that subject related to my book. Feel free to join the discussion and add your own discussion topics, too.

Another new feature is the creation of an Amazon blog for me and my book. Of course, I already have a blog and don't really need one to be housed on Amazon.com. But I wrote a short blog post there inviting people to join me at my "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog to learn more about me and the low-carb lifestyle. I like this feature because it allows you to directly relate with the authors of books you have read and enjoy. Low-carb cooking genius George Stella, for example, has a great Amazon.com blog.

As part of the Search Inside The Book feature at Amazon.com, my book now gets the luxury of enjoying several other exclusive features:

1. You can browse through "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" by first looking at the front cover and then read the back cover as well. You will also be able to see a listing of all 10 chapters in the Table of Contents and a complimentary excerpt of the first few pages of Chapter 1 on "Becoming Carb Conscious." Pretty neat stuff, huh?

2. There's also a listing of Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs) which would be otherwise impossible to find otherwise and are unique to the book. For example, in my book some of the SIPs include "goal pants," "planned splurge" and "sugar addiction." While these SIPs certainly aren't exclusive to my book, they are considered too improbable for people to come up with on their own so they list them. A related category to SIPs is the Capitalized Phrases (CAPs) that show up in the book as well. These are interesting features indeed!

3. This next feature was just added this week and it is a Concordance of the top 100 words used in "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" including a listing of how many times certain words are used in the book. This feature was very revealing about those words that I felt were most important based on the number of times I repeated them. The number one word used the book is WEIGHT used a whopping 437 times. You can see every single time the word was referenced and which page number by clicking here. Other popular words include "sugar," "people," "lifestyle," "foods," and "carb." Check out the entire list of the top 100 words here.

4. Finally, the other neat feature added this week is the Text Stats. I was most intrigued by this one because it showed me how readable my book is according to various scales of measurement. Apparently, if you have an 11th grade education you should be able to read "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" and understand everything in it. It's not too complex and difficult to understand and yet it isn't so elementary that you are easily bored with it. And that's JUST the way I wanted it to be when I wrote it. This feature also shows the complexity of the words and sentence structure used, the number of characters, words and sentences, as well as how many words you get per dollar and per ounce that the book weighs. It's not all useful information, but it is neat to take a look at.

THANK YOU to each of you who have supported me and my book in the past few months. I cannot express enough how much I have been so blessed knowing that my story of weight loss success is helping so many others find their way to success, too. It is gratifying to know all those grueling months of preparation and time devoted to writing it were not in vain. I am so proud of that little book and pray it will continue to touch the hearts of many others who want to lose weight and keep it off forever like me.

In another month or so, I'll begin writing the sequel to "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" featuring the stories of other low-carb weight loss success stories out there. If you would be interested in being one of those success stories, then click here to learn more about this opportunity.

I appreciate and value the support and readership you so faithfully have given me by purchasing my book and reading my blog. Who could have ever thought that something as seemingly uneventful and mundane as weight loss would avail me the opportunity to interact literally with tens of thousands of people each and every month? WOW! What an honor and awesome responsibility this is! Thank you for entrusting me with just a few minutes of your day and allowing me to share with you what livin' la vida low-carb has done for me.

Write to me anytime with your comments, questions, and feedback at livinlowcarbman@charter.net. I read and respond to EVERY e-mail I receive. :)