Amazon to Cut E-Book Prices, Shaking Rivals (making Amazon a Monopoly)

[WeekendWarrior]

128. You've got it wrong, your tax dollars

are NOT going to help Amazon. Your tax dollars are being used to stop the Big 6 publishers from price fixing, which is illegal. The byproduct may be that it helps Amazon, but it also helps consumers, as well.

As for print books, I love them, too, and have shelves full of them in my house, but I can also see the writing on the wall. Print books will become more and more rare over the next few years, reserved only for the Big Names. The midlisters I've talked about—who write the majority of books—are already being squeezed out, which is why so many of them are moving to ebooks.

Ebooks are already outselling both hard and paperback books, so you might as well get used to the idea that print versions will be harder and harder to get as the decade wears on.

As for you being able to recognize publishers and their imprints, color me skeptical, unless you happen to be in the industry yourself. But most readers couldn't give a flying flip if a book is published by Random House, Little Brown or St. Martins. They just want a good book. And usually written by someone they've read before. Authors tend to jump from publisher to publisher (I've been with three myself), so I'm not sure what difference knowing the imprint makes.

And, trust me, all three of those houses I mentioned have put out quite a few clinkers—so their gatekeeping strategy isn't flawless. It also has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF THE BOOK. The books they choose are ultimately chosen based on whether or not they think they can make money from the book. There ARE exceptions to this rule, but they're rare. Which would explain why we have so many horribly written books getting snatched up. Fifty Shades of Gray comes immediately to mind.

The trend in traditional publishing right now is toward big blockbuster type novels. Many houses are even developing books the way movies are developed, coming up with an idea, hiring a writer and tweaking it until it's something they think they can put big money behind.

So I think you'll find, in the future, that the best books come from those authors who are self-publishing. I've certainly found quite a few gems over the last year.