I read an article earlier today (see link below) about Amazon’s latest idea to boost sales of books.
While I can understand that they want to shift the vast stocks of ‘physical’ books they have by lowering the book price even more, thereby making it impossible for the other book retailers to compete, what about the hard working writers who authored those books?
Amazon’s market share of the world of e-books is already the largest there is. Yet for something which takes up no physical space on their shelves, merely megabytes on a computer buried somewhere within Amazon’s vast number of storehouses or offices across the planet, they seem to think that every title they have on offer needs to be either simply given away, or offered at US$0.99.
As for the actual printed books they are planning on virtually giving away next month, I say again, what about the authors of those books.
We, the writers, have spent many months, often years, sweating over our pencils, pens, computers, to produce that tale you the reader are about to be given for virtually nothing, mostly earning zero for our effort until it is finally published – in some cases, not even then. But that is another story.
Is this a case of a company getting too darned big for its own boots?
You decide…
I’ve never really liked Amazon and the aggressive way they’ve been trying to muscle into the publishing industry. To me, it borders on hostile and if they treat people in the industry like that, I don’t have any confidence that they’ll treat authors with any consideration, especially since they seem to view us all like self-publishers. Not to say that there aren’t talented self-publishers out there, but the reality is that most of them really shouldn’t be published, and that is one of the detractions about the ease of self-publishing now, the increasing lack of respect for the writing profession because anyone can publish a book as long as you have the money, not because people recognize you have the talent.
It certainly makes it difficult to poke your head above the vast stack of garbage Elizabeth – I agree. 🙂
Too big, too quickly. Blame the age we live in.
JM
Which publishing concern will Amazon swallow next I ask myself Judy? 😉