HOWEVER, today there is a thread that is baffling me. It is about what they’re referring to as the "evil big A company," and a boycott of it.
Amazon has done more for the book industry, and authors, than any other company, entity, or PUBLISHER . . . EVER.
Amazon has made it possible for me as a writer, to bring you my books myself. Not just ebooks, paperbacks too. And the other thing it has allowed me to do, is sell those books MYSELF to independent book stores, who can carry it quickly and easily. I don’t have to worry about how long it might take them to get the books through their normal distribution chains, and a myriad of other issues that come into play with a distribution channel that can be described as archaic at best.
And traditional publishing? What does that even mean anymore? To me, and many other authors, it means that even if you do get a book deal, you still have to do much of the marketing for your book or books yourself. And they get the lion’s share of the profits for those books.
Until such time as you are a mega-best-selling author who NEEDS a big publisher to allow you to go mass market, there isn’t a lot of benefit to smaller authors. The wheels of publishing turn painfully slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. Mind-bogglingly slowly. In the meantime there are hundreds if not thousands of really good books written. There are also books written that are crap. It’s up to the readers to differentiate. I’ve read plenty of mass market, traditionally published mass market books that have been utter crap.
Here is the other thing, Amazon allows authors to make some money from their books. The perception is that if you’ve got an agent, and/or a publisher, you’re making big bucks. What you’re really making is pennies on the dollar, because the rest of that dollar goes to feed the publisher and their NYC address, and/or the agent, and the book distributor, oh, and with paperbacks, the book printer . . . leaving next to nothing for the author.
Amazon does away with the majority of that. There is much Amazon cannot do for an author. They can’t negotiate deals, get books in front of publishers, or developers based on years-long relationships . . . but there is so much more they can do.
Writing a book(s) is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It is also one of the most rewarding. Selling those books is far more difficult than writing them. If I believed based on years of experience, that my only hope for getting my books to the masses would be to get a big publisher to pick it up, then I would be working diligently to make it happen. That doesn’t mean it ever would, it just means that is where I would base my concentrated efforts.
Instead, I’ve read books, articles, and blogs, attended webinars, listened and listened and listened, and what I’ve learned is that you have to work your ass off as an author to promote your book. Period. Big publisher or no publisher. You have to get in the trenches, pound the pavement, burn up social media in a way that is effective . . . YOU.
So boycott the evil big A? Not me. To me that would be the same as saying I’m not going to read J.K. Rowling’s books because . . . the reason doesn’t matter. J.K. Rowling, like her books or not, inspired an entire generation (my son’s generation) to read voraciously. Her books inspired them to line up at midnight for the next book’s release, something that I hadn’t seen or heard of as it relates to that generation.
Others in that YA category have picked up the gauntlet and continued what she started, but to say you’d boycott her books . . . or say you’d boycott a distribution channel who has revolutionized the way readers read books, and gotten books in front of billions more people is as short-sighted as I can imagine for an author or a reader.
I feel the same way about iTunes. Good Lord, iTunes changed the way I listen to music, and as a music fanatic, it changed my life. So would I boycott them because it isn’t what I might think of as a traditional way to buy music? Not a chance in hell. What iTunes has done to the independent music stores is beyond sad, but Amazon has not necessarily done the same thing to independent bookstores. It has hurt them, certainly, but in adding READERS, it hasn’t hurt them in the same way.
The new news is in distribution. Self-publishing used to be a sad thing. Oh, how sad, she had to self-publish. Amazon has made it possible for me to self-publish and hold my head up high about it. It allows me to drive to my local bookstore, which I LOVE, and sell them my books so they in turn can sell them to you. It even allows me to self-publish and then make my book available to the big distributors . . . something that even two years ago was unheard of.
Clearly I have a strong opinion about this. The group with the email thread is having a conference this month, that I am attending. As I always do, I will sit and listen. It is unlikely that I will share my opinions because I am new to this group and never go into anything thinking I know more than those who have been doing something years long than I have. I’ll even listen to see if there are things in my beliefs about publishing that I’m wrong about. But in the meantime, I am shaking my head.
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