The exact paragraph is as follows (with italicisation and bold highlights added by me)

Product Links: You may select one or more Products to list on your site. A "Product" is any product listed on the Amazon.com Site that is fulfilled by us or on our behalf, or any product sold by a third party seller on the Amazon.com Site other than: (a) products sold through our "Auctions" and "zShops" services (or any successors thereto); (b) products sold by Circuit City, Crabtree & Evelyn, Elisabeth, eLuxury, Godiva, Lands' End, Liz Claiborne, Lucky Brand Jeans, Nordstrom, Sears Craftsman, or Sephora ("Excluded Merchants"); (c) products sold by a third party through a site linked to from the Amazon.com Site (e.g. CarsDirect.com products); and (d) any wireless service plan offered through the Amazon.com Site and not sold and fulfilled by us. For each selected Product, you will display on your site a short description, review, or other reference. You will be responsible for the content, style, and placement of these references. You will provide a Special Link (as defined below) from each Product reference on your site to the corresponding Amazon.com Site online catalog entry. Each such link will connect directly to a single item in our online catalog. You may add or delete Products (and related links) from your site at any time without our approval. Special Links that individually link to specific Products as described above are referred to as "Product Links." You may not use Special Links to link to the Amazon.com Site from references to products on your site that are not "Products" as defined above.

I think reading this as you have "That means that every time somebody mentions a book, we "will" make it into a link." is not correct. It clearly states that we select which products we wish to endorse, and that we are allowed to change that decision at any time. IMO if this is the reason we aren't using Amazon links then we might as well bring them back.

Ah, sorry. We can't provide links without an accomponing review, such as in the CB, or otherwise as a "mention" rather then a review. BTW, we were never involved in Amazon's affiliate program, only in that of FatBrain.com, which no longer exists.

---

Warning: Unless otherwise stated, code is untested. Do not use without understanding. Code is posted in the hopes it is useful, but without warranty. All copyrights are relinquished into the public domain unless otherwise stated. I am not an angel. I am capable of error, and err on a fairly regular basis. If I made a mistake, please let me know (such as by replying to this node).

I think reading this as you have "That means that every time somebody mentions a book, we "will" make it into a link." is not correct.

I strongly agree with demerphq's sensible reading.

They say that the product references can contain and look like whatever you want -- they don't have to have a review or description.

I would be pretty confident that placing product references and links on the for-sale page managed by the PM editors (or whichever PM group) does not oblige you to also put a link up every single time any user mentions a book or album title in the chatterbox.

(Surely some of Amazon's other affiliates also have chat or forum areas; I bet Amazon doesn't patrol them looking for book titles that weren't linked and accompanied by a cover photo and short review.)

The only thing you *must* do is include Amazon links for all of the relevant products on the for-sale page. From a corporate point of view, those are the "products you selected to list on your site" and every other node and comment is just community conversation, rather than an official selection of a product for inclusion on the for-sale page.