The extraordinary good will Amazon has engendered for itself in the publishing community recently (kidding! kidding!) has spread into the writing community: As a Publishers Weekly story reports, the Authors Guild has launched a program on its website that “allows authors to track the buy button status of their books on Amazon.”

To use WhoMovedMyBuyButton.com, “authors need to register their ISBNs with the Guild for monitoring. According to the Guild, authors will get an e-mail alert if their Amazon buy button is removed.”

As the Guild explains on the site,

It happens without warning, always. Just ask the authors in the U.K., well published by major houses, who woke up to find their Buy Buttons had gone missing. No “pardon the inconvenience” e-note from Seattle, just a quiet severing of ties with a few million customers. It’s happened here in the U.S., too, more times than you know. See, the folks at Amazon have a headlock on the online book world, and they tend to get carried away.