Amazon Ownage.

It occurred to me the other day that Amazon now owns me. They've become like the big supermarket chains – controlling every aspect of your life.

Amazon provide me with all my forms of entertainment, all my books/DVDs/CDs/MP3s/video games – they all come from amazon. They're most often my first port of call when sourcing birthday presents, too.

I sell the odd second-hand book through the Marketplace section, which has me queuing up in Post Offices to get them to the customer.

And now, courtesy of Kindle, I am starting to use them as way of creating a source of revenue by selling copies of my short story 'Unfamiliar Country'. This in itself is another source of obsession. Curse those 'Amazon Bestseller Rank' numbers displayed under the Product Details section! As a Kindle author, you get access to 'Author Central' and the 'KDP Bookshelf' where you can check the stats for your products. Neat graphs and data which are all updated hourly means I'm constantly 'just checking' for some evidence of overnight success and recognition. Thanks a bunch, Amazon.

While writing this, there could have been a whole slew of downloads and rankings climbing, so I better go and check…