Other than being the largest warehouse of books in the history of literate societies, does Amazon actually help writers sell books? Or are Amazon algorithms designed to maximize their profits regardless of the effect on individual authors and publishers?
I hear both from other authors. And there’s nothing wrong with maximizing profits. That’s how Amazon gets the cash to provide its services.
But, how well do they serve authors?
One author says, “The DAY I launched both titles there was someone selling paperback new and used copies of my books below my price. I had not sold or printed a copy (other than my own proof copies … which are still in my possession). There were simply no copies in existence.”
Now, how does that happen? Seems to me that copying and selling an author’s new book without paying the author is or should be illegal.
Other authors love Amazon. What has been your experience?
[Disclaimer. My own book, still available at retailers linked from ThePhoenixDiary.com, was on Amazon until they quarreled with my publisher.]
Severely beaten as a child by a WWII hero and combat-induced-PTSD stepfather, the author, as a teen, faced the old man down with a shotgun and earned his blessing to join the military at the time Americans were learning about a country called Vietnam. The “lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch” opted out of combat and hard labor by becoming an Air Force medic, stamping out suffering and misery on Freedom’s Frontier at Clark Airbase in S.E. Asia and earning some kind of medal pinned on him personally by then Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown, for “Saving lives, etc.”
There followed a summer in Europe ending in the first of happy marriages. Then graduation with University Honors, kids worth dying for and a career in business. Life is good.
Author, The Phoenix Diary, Penguin, 2015.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-diary-g-d-deckard/1122175645
Founding Member, Writers Co-op.
https://WritersCo-op.com
Co-Editor, The Rabbit Hole anthologies.
https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Hole-Weird-Stories/dp/1691225355/ref=sr_1_1
Founder, SciFi Lampoon Magazine.
http://scifilampoon.com/
Contributing Editor, A Celebration of Storytelling
https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Storytelling-GD-Deckard/dp/1951716167
Current WIP: Code Blue and Little Deaths, stories from Clark during the Vietnam War.
Recipient of the Psi Young award for Creative Biography.