Alex Conall, social justice bard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexconall) wrote2014-05-23 11:15 pm
alexconall) wrote2014-05-23 11:15 pm
Entry tags:
great. lovely. perfect.
So Amazon's being a bully. Again. This time it's the publisher Hachette that they're trying to strongarm. And frankly I am sick to death of Amazon's bull.
I think tomorrow I'm going down to the local indie bookstore with a list of the books I have on preorder at Amazon and going "hey do you do preorders". And assuming they can preorder them all for me, I am then cancelling my Amazon preorders saying "found cheaper somewhere else", comment to the tune of "I find that supporting bullying of publishers and the authors who depend on those publishers is a price I am unwilling to pay", on every single preorder. I have seven, counting only the hardcopy books, and I can maybe find the DVDs and the CD for preorder on BN.com. And then cancel my Amazon Prime membership into the bargain.
My problem is (as it has been since the Kindle Worlds nonsense started) that I'm a self-published author, and I like print books, and used books are a marvelous thing and they don't exist in electronic format. Neither do ebooks that can be read without an expensive piece of electronics, which provides a barrier to entry to reading for the sufficiently poor; used print books have a much lower price tag. Who the hell goes to lulu.com to browse for books? As far as I know, Lulu doesn't distribute to other booksellers, either. And as far as I know, my choices for self-publication in print are Lulu and Amazon CreateSpace. Also, if I don't have copies of my books available for sale on Amazon, I'm shooting myself in the foot sales-wise. (And I can't pull A Dinner of Herbs off Amazon without the consent of my co-conspirator, anyway.)
How do I resolve this? How do I as a self-pub author stop supporting Amazon without hurting myself a lot worse than I hurt them?
crossposted from conallpublications.com
I think tomorrow I'm going down to the local indie bookstore with a list of the books I have on preorder at Amazon and going "hey do you do preorders". And assuming they can preorder them all for me, I am then cancelling my Amazon preorders saying "found cheaper somewhere else", comment to the tune of "I find that supporting bullying of publishers and the authors who depend on those publishers is a price I am unwilling to pay", on every single preorder. I have seven, counting only the hardcopy books, and I can maybe find the DVDs and the CD for preorder on BN.com. And then cancel my Amazon Prime membership into the bargain.
My problem is (as it has been since the Kindle Worlds nonsense started) that I'm a self-published author, and I like print books, and used books are a marvelous thing and they don't exist in electronic format. Neither do ebooks that can be read without an expensive piece of electronics, which provides a barrier to entry to reading for the sufficiently poor; used print books have a much lower price tag. Who the hell goes to lulu.com to browse for books? As far as I know, Lulu doesn't distribute to other booksellers, either. And as far as I know, my choices for self-publication in print are Lulu and Amazon CreateSpace. Also, if I don't have copies of my books available for sale on Amazon, I'm shooting myself in the foot sales-wise. (And I can't pull A Dinner of Herbs off Amazon without the consent of my co-conspirator, anyway.)
How do I resolve this? How do I as a self-pub author stop supporting Amazon without hurting myself a lot worse than I hurt them?
crossposted from conallpublications.com
no subject
Yay, world-building! I hope it's cooperating with you! It's Leah Far-Sighted I remember you talking about. ^_^
Huzzah for alternatives!