Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools [Paperback]

Paul Bausch (Author)

Book Description

Series: Hacks | Publication Date: August 27, 2003

Amazon Hacks is a collection of tips and tools for getting the most out of Amazon.com, whether you're an avid Amazon shopper, Amazon Associate developing your online storefront and honing your recommendations for better linking and more referral fees, seller listing your own products for sale on Amazon.com, or a programmer building your own application on the foundation provided by the rich Amazon Web Services API.

Shoppers will learn how to make the most of Amazon.com's deep functionality and become part of the Amazon community, maintain wishlists, tune recommendations, "share the love" with friends and family, etc. Amazon Associates will find tips for how best to list their titles, how to promote their offerings by fine tuning search criteria and related titles information, and even how to make their store fronts more attractive. And the real power users will use the Amazon API to build Amazon-enabled applications, create store fronts and populate them with items to be picked, packed and shipped by Amazon. And just about anyone can become a seller on Amazon.com, listing items, deciding on pricing, and fulfilling orders for products new and used.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

At its core, Amazon.com is a great big database concerned with lots of stuff--books, of course, but also tools, clothing, films on DVD, kitchen equipment, and lots and lots (and lots) of Harry Potter paraphernalia. Want to wear an Anna Kournikova exercise brassiere while juicing celery (presumably with considerable vigor)? Amazon can help. Need a cricket bat, radar gun, dietary fiber supplement, or vibrasonic molechaser? Amazon has what you need. Which is all great, but the real value of Amazon.com isn't that these things are in the database. The real value of this site lies in the information about all that stuff--reviews, sales rankings, recommendations, and the like--and the large number of ways to access it. Amazon Hacks explains how to get the most out of Amazon.com as an ordinary customer with a Web browser and as a software developer interested in the site's considerable collection of Web Services.

In Amazon Hacks, Paul Bausch documents most of the avenues Amazon.com has opened up for exploration of the database. A lot of his coverage borders on the obvious: Sections on how to "Power-Search for Books" and "Put an Item Up for Bid at Amazon Auctions" aren't too different from Amazon's own explanatory articles. Coverage of how to add an Amazon search box to your own site, and add Amazon Associates item links to various kinds of Weblogs (including Blosxom and Moveable Type) are much handier. Bausch really shines when explaining Amazon.com's Web Services (AWS), the remotely accessible software interfaces that enables programs to search the database. He includes AWS-enabled programs in PHP, Python, and Perl. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to use Amazon.com as a Web surfer, Web site publisher, and software developer. Detailed coverage goes to advanced product search techniques, managing the characteristics associated with your Amazon login, selling through Amazon Auctions and zShops, and the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API for Perl, PHP, and Python.

Review

"The ultimate guide for searching for, and selling goods on Amazon." PC Plus, April

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 27, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596005423
• ISBN-13: 978-0596005429
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,133,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome collection of, August 30, 2003

By 

Todd Hawley (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

Having posted over 200 reviews on Amazon over the past three years, I thought I was reasonably familiar with what Amazon had to offer on its site. While I was familiar with wish lists, posting reviews and the like, this book proved me wrong, as I learned about numerous other features (especially movie show times!) that Amazon offers. Among the features are finding individual ASIN's (Amazon Standard Item Number) for each product listed on Amazon, switching to a text-only Amazon (good if you want Amazon's site to load quickly), "power searching" on books, linking to personal Amazon reviews from your own web site, and countless others. There are also hacks designed to make it more convenient to sell items through Amazon, or participate in the Amazon community, even some hacks designed to let you use Amazon's Web Services. I'm not a programmer, so I'm not interested in those hacks specifically, but they do show how Amazon's Web Services can be used to create alternative interfaces that may be of use to Amazon or other fellow programmers.

Amazon Hacks shows how by using some "tricks," you can make your own use of Amazon and its numerous services that much more enjoyable and useful. This book is a wonderful "guide" to some interesting "hacks" that can be used while browsing the Amazon.com site.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interested in Web Services?, September 8, 2003

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

There are 3 types of people who might benefit from this book. The first is someone who wants to use Amazon in a non-technical context. Suppose you are interested in posting reviews of your favourite books, or in selling via Amazon's fixed price Marketplace or using its auctions. You can directly follow the instructions on their website. But maybe you want an independent assessment that is easy to understand? If so, here is the book.

The second case is someone who runs a website and knows some programming and is interested in perhaps earning some extra income by directing traffic from her site to Amazon. Or maybe using the gigabytes of data that Amazon makes available via its Web Services [AWS] in some fashion that adds value to her site. The beauty of this book is that for a given task [which the author calls a "tip"], 2 key things are supplied. Most importantly, Bausch shows that the task is possible. The proof of concept, if you will. Experienced analysts know that this is often the hardest step. Next, he shows a way to do that task. He has carefully written these in various languages, like perl, JavaScript and ASP. If he wrote a particular task in, say, perl, and you don't particularly care for perl, you can easily recode it in C, C++ or whatever. Straightforward.

The third type of reader is someone who has no interest in Amazon, per se. Rather, you are acutely interested in learning and writing Web Services. This is such a nascent field that there is a paucity of real life applications that an arbitrary user on the net can experiment with. Amazon is one of the few companies that currently makes available Web Services with a rich pool of data. If you are keen, Bausch has several tasks where he integrates AWS with those of Google, USPS and other sites. Well worth studying carefully for inspiration. Of course, ten years from now, we will all laugh at how primitive the current Web Services are. But perhaps you can take some ideas gleaned from this book to bring about that very outcome. The whole field of Web Services is so inchoate that maybe just as Jeff Bezos came up with the idea of selling books online several years ago, you might do likewise with an innovative service.

57 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A super "hacker" guide to getting the most out of Amazon.com, September 19, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Amazon Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools (Paperback)

Mention the word "Amazon" today and most people will not necessarily think of the largest river in the world, especially the very young. The common perception of Amazon.com is that it is a web-based bookstore, but like its namesake river, Amazon.com is much more than merely a place to buy books.

Today, Amazon.com is really a complex web application. Instead of just a place to buy various items, Amazon.com is a tool you can customize and adapt to your own uses. This includes participating in the Amazon community, earning money through Amazon's Marketplace and Associates Programs, as well as improving the way you interact with the site.

This latest addition to O'Reilly's very successful Hacks series shows readers of every level how to tap into the power that Amazon offers. Through these industrial-strength tips and tools, readers will learn how to get the most out of Amazon.com.

Over Amazon's lifetime, the company has invested $900 million in technology. Though Amazon.com is more often thought of as an online "shop," today the company is really a highly advanced technology company. More and more, Amazon.com is in the business of providing technology to other businesses, as well as their customers. For example, 30% of Amazon's business is from third-party sales. This means other businesses, and sometimes even competitors are making money through Amazon.com.

In this super new "Hacks" title, we have a call to all true hackers out there to innovate on the platform. By lowering barriers to entry and experimentation on top of the Amazon platform, true hackers are invited to extend and enhance the platform for all to enjoy.

There are tools and tips here that will appeal to a wide variety of audiences, including online shoppers, web site owners, sellers of products, and software developers. Readers are also encouraged to remember that some of the hacks in the book will continue to evolve. You can always find the current ingredients for any serious software development, the Amazon.com API, at www.amazon.com/webservices.

When Amazon.com first opened its virtual doors on July 16, 1995, it was one of several online booksellers. As Amazon embraced the technology to categorize and display millions of books in one space, people embraced the ability to search for and purchase books in a new way. The experience of building a successful business based on an open system like the Web has influenced Amazon throughout its history.

Amazon has consistently pushed the technology envelope in their quest to provide a satisfying, personalized experience for their customers. What started as a human-edited list of product recommendations has morphed into a sophisticated computer-generated recommendation engine that tailors product choices for tens of millions of individuals by analyzing their purchase history and the patterns of other Amazon customers. As the Web evolved into a two-way space for discussion and community, Amazon developed features that let anyone post information and advice about products.

With this intriguing history, it should not have been a surprise when on July 16, 2002 Amazon released a free Web Services interface that gave developers programmatic access to Amazon's vast collection of product and customer data. With this interface, Amazon combined their core features of recommendations, affiliate marketing, and marketplace commerce into a single technology platform that can be used to build applications and businesses.

"Amazon Hacks" is not intended to be merely an exhaustive explanation of Amazon's features. Instead it's intended to highlight some lesser-known features, show some tricks for working with Amazon efficiently, and document ways to access Amazon programmatically. Developers are already creating new features for Amazon through the Amazon API, and it is this book's intent to convey some of their creativity and excitement, inspiring the hacker in you.

Summary of Table of Contents

The 100 Amazon hacks are organized into 6 chapters, including the following:

1 - Browsing and Searching
2 - Controlling Your Information
3 - Participating in the Amazon Community
4 - Selling Through Amazon
5 - Associates Program
6 - Amazon Web Services

Key Topics Covered

This book will show you how to do the following:

Find just the product you are after among the millions available at Amazon

Access, control, and fine-tune your Amazon preferences, recommendations, and information

Participate in the growing Amazon community and integrate Amazon features into your own Web site

Become and Amazon Associate, develop your own online storefront, and hone your recommendations for better linking and higher referral fees

Sell products online using Amazon's billing, inventory, and marketing infrastructure

Build full-scale desktop and server applications on Amazon's Web Services API

Book Contents

304 pages; foreword by the Amazon technology team; preface; figures; tips; sample scripts; index; cover colophon

Author

Paul Bausch

About the Author

Paul Bausch is an accomplished Web Application Developer, and is a co-creator of the popular weblog software Blogger (www.blogger.com). He co-wrote "We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs" (John Wiley & Sons), and posts thoughts and photos almost daily to his personal weblog onfocus (www.onfocus.com).

ISBN

August 2003 First Edition
0-596-00542-3