Woah. Now isn’t that a tad extreme?

It’s like saying I won’t get my food at the local grocers because a lot of people overate his delicious food and died from heart attack!

Amazon has no fault in this; progress hasn’t been bad- nor will ever be!

Another analogy: shall be ban IT automation because sweatshop workers lose their jobs?

Let them find better jobs elsewhere!

You raise an interesting point that I wanted to comment on. My understanding of author discounts is quite different than the way you’ve posed it here. I’m wondering about my logic.

My understanding is that authors are welcome to sell books purchased with an author discount. For one thing, booksellers get a discount, too–possibly more than the author (depending on the contract). For another, author-purchased books aren’t eligible for royalty payments, so either way the publisher isn’t losing out. They are still gaining a sale, perhaps even at a higher profit. Plus, this motives the author to help push sales, increasing profits for everyone. Finally, it boosts overall sales numbers. Why would any of that upset the publisher?

If I’m way off base here, someone feel free to correct me.

Even though–as you point out, Rosina–it means worrying about details that authors who sign with publishing houses don’t have to worry about, I like the control I have over my work. And I’ve found that I really enjoy book layout and design.

I belong to an e-mail group of self-publishing knitting designers and I shared this discussion with them. It has set off some brainstorming about how we can get our products into the marketplace through Amazon in addition to the usual distribution channels we’re already using.

This is certainly an interesting discussion, but it’s moot for most authors. My publisher makes decisions about how to get the books out there, and their attitude seems to be, the more coverage, the better. Which makes sense to me. Amazon, B&N, front table displays, anything that puts the book in the public eye.

My contract (and it’s not unusual) also makes it clear that I earn the same amount on every sale, a percentage of the suggested retail, no matter who sells it and at what discount. Further: I am not allowed to resell books myself. I do know of one author who buys tons of his/her books at the author discount and then sells them to the public at full retail through the web, but I’m pretty sure that his/her publisher would be very, very unhappy if they knew about that.

I am in a position where I don’t have to worry about the details of publishing, marketing or sales — but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Janet, way cool that you found a way to harness Amazon’s power to work in a better way for you. That’s the way to do it!

I’m glad to see that you found a solution that works, Janet. One thing I was going to mention about seven comments back is that the husband, who bought me the greatest knitting bag ever (apparently, my former solution…aka sheer disaster…was driving him crazy) and a cool book of patterns for Christmas, wouldn’t have the savvy to look anywhere but Amazon. He tried hanging out at a few knitting blogs, but, you know, they’re not geared toward the person who is just looking for something cool and fun as a gift.

SG, crystal ball is in the shop — it needs serious polishing. In the meantime, I’m going to focus all my love and attention on the Top Secret Project. Part one is done, now for the wrapping!

I’ll stop commenting now. 🙂

If nothing else, this discussion stimulated some “thinking outside the box” and I certainly appreciate that!