viewBook.at and viewAuthor.at change their Terms of Use
As of about 3a EST on 31 January 2013, viewBook.at finally added, to their Terms of Use, that they “earn a small commission when somebody purchases one of your books after following one of [their] links.”
They go on to mention that author royalties aren’t diminished in any way.
This is true.
However…
Keep in mind, authors and sites that provide affiliate/referral links to eBooks on Amazon US and UK, that if you’ve set up an Amazon Associate account to try to recoup some of the fees you’re charged while selling through Amazon or to help finance the running of your site(s), then you’re going to lose those commissions if you use the viewBook.at and viewAuthor.at services.
For many authors, this isn’t an issue, because they’re not set up as Amazon Associates. If you, however, happen to be an author who is also an Amazon Associate, then please be aware of what using the viewBook.at and viewAuthor.at short links does.
Another thing that viewBook.at claims is that using their services keeps customers from ending up on the wrong Amazon site.
In reality, this is a non-issue because Amazon has big and bold verbiage to let you know you’re on the wrong site to purchase Kindle books, and it’s just one click to get moved over to the right site.
There are plenty of other link shorteners that don’t add affiliate/referral tags to your links, so if you have an issue with what viewBook.at does then use one of those.
