Fear Is Unattractive

For quite a while now, various book-related entities have been painting Amazon as a monopolistic monster. There have been pages-long screeds and responses and counter responses and so forth. I'm gonna keep this blog post as short as possible.

Bottom line of what's happened: Publishers had their comfortable way of doing business for many years, then Amazon came into the picture with a new way of doing business. In the process, Amazon has threatened publishers' ways of doing business.

Let's look at this. A company comes along, offers what looks like a much better deal for everyone involved. What's wrong with that? Nothing, really. This is the free market. It's competition. So why is Amazon the bad guy here?

My advice to publishers: stop whining about Amazon. Fear is unattractive. Use that energy you've been spending whining and use it to focus on how YOU can compete with Amazon. I recommend raising author royalties, for one, and realizing that many customers prefer ebook. Stop pricing ebooks higher than print books and release them at the same time.

I am very thankful for Barnes and Noble's Nook and for Smashwords. They are awesome Amazon competitors, and I believe competition is healthy. Amazon has flaws and warts, yes. Amazon probably needs BN and Smashwords to keep it in line.

Healthy competition is good! Whining isn't. ;-)