Just a little reference post for those who deal with making links for books, like I, and many of my friends, do.
Each site has a long, complicated URL for your title… but most also have a short, nice looking one too.
Amazon
Amazon will add the entire text to the Magna Charta onto your URL if you don’t watch it.
LampLight, Volume 3, issue 1, Kindle:
http://smile.amazon.com/LampLight-3-Issue-Yvonne-Navarro-ebook/dp/B00NPJY10I/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411750626&sr=1-1
LampLight, Volume 3, issue 1, print:
http://smile.amazon.com/LampLight-3-Issue-Yvonne-Navarro/dp/1502431580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411744718&sr=8-1&keywords=1502431580
The easiest way to get a good link is to click the email link in the share option, and just copy the link from there. You can make it as such:
For Kindle:
amazon.com/dp/(ASIN)
Where you get your ASIN from the product details.
For Print:
amazon.com/dp/(ISBN 10)
In both cases, you’ll see the number you need in the URL, next to the DP.
so, for our examples, we have the following:
Kindle:
http://.amazon.com/dp/B00NPJY10I
Print:
http://amazon.com/dp/1502431580
Barnes and Noble
barnesandnoble.com is already a long URL, add on the remainder, and it gets a bit unwieldy.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lamplight-jacob-haddon/1118943137?ean=2940044832688
But that’s ok! There is also BN.com. Add on a short cut, and you can get nice, clean URLs for your books:
bn.com/s/(BN ID)
Which is that ean= number at the end of the URL, so for this example:
http://bn.com/s/2940044832688
For your print book, the formula is the same, just one detail is different—the EAN number is your ISBN-13, not the BN ID
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lamplight-volume-1-issue-1-jacob-haddon/1117505311?ean=9781493585915&itm=1&usri=9781493585915
reduces to:
http://bn.com/s/9781493585915
Kobo and Smashwords
Unfortunately, neither of these has a good way of doing links. For both, simply copy the link for the book.
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/lamplight-vol-i-issue-2
iBooks
Apple presents a few challenges for links with its iTunes store. Thankfully, they have a link maker—just search for your title and poof!
http://itunes.apple.com/linkmaker/
So, not nice and tidy, but they are easier to find, at least. These links will go direct to iTunes if installed, or show a web view if not.
Updated – 2024 Feb
removed references to AMZN.com as they no longer work. Now updating all my old websites…
