Amazon, in addition to having its best Christmas season ever this past year, is now set to capitalize heavily on big-name author branding and proactive author self-marketing: the online retailer has launched a beta version of a new feature called Author Stores—touted as “new corners of our bookstore dedicated to offering customers a new way to browse and shop favorite authors, discover new books, and more.” The new area features an A-Z list of authors, which links to individual author pages that include a bibliography, a biography, author photo, video streaming, and discussion board. All which can be modified and augmented by the author him or herself—or publishing house on the author’s behalf. And Amazon promises enhancements and greater functionality in the months to come. The beta release currently has about 2,500 of these mini author-sites, and according to Publishers Weekly interview with Amazon publicity manager Andrew Herdener, Amazon's long-term goal is to have an Author Store for every author whose books are available through Amazon. Herderner noted that Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and James Patteron were among the first experimental wave of writers in Author Stores’ development.

On the whole, this sounds like a smart move by Amazon, leveraging the cult-of-personality around popular authors and empowering lesser-known authors to take a greater role in promoting their books—all for the benefit of moving more units through Amazon cyberspace. Of course the proof of the pudding is in the execution, so I'm reserving judment until we can see how these pages and their interface are developed over the next year.