Tag: itunes

Short Links for Your Books

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.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/258702

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…

The Mac Taketh Away, but Giveth Back (Almost)

Nothing is perfect. Not even my Macbook Pro. Yes, I know, that is hard to believe. It has taken me several hours to just get used to the idea.

I got a music CD for Valentine’s. I put it in to rip it. The CD spins a few times and then ejects. WHen this happens, it gets a huge straight scratch along one side.

Now I already do not like or trust slot loading CD/DVD players in computers. Even in my Mac it seems to be the cheapest part of the who thing. My car, my Wii both have the same technology, but seem to excel where the Mac just barely meets standard.

Ok, so my CD has this huge scratch, which will not just wipe off. It skips in the player now. And I am not too happy.

So I put it back in, put ‘error correction on’ and started the import. what I got was better than nothing, but not perfect.

Tracks 1-4 were hit the hardest, and are not all there. The rest, however, was imported flawlessly. So iTunes was able to save 60% of what the slot loader took from me.

Not back. Not good, but not bad.

the CD is great, btw.