To Amazon or not to Amazon?

 

To be read, or not to be read, that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous obscurity,

Or to take arms against a sea of gatekeepers

And by opposing end them. To dream—to hope,

No more; and by a rejection slip to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That writers are heir to: ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To self publish, to print;

To be in print, perchance to be read—ay, there’s the rub:

For in that print of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this old publishers way,

Must give us pause—there’s the respect

That makes calamity for those who wait acceptance.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of agents,

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d rejection, the publishers delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a Kindle Fire? Who would rejection slips hundreds bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary keyboard,

But that the dread of something after failure,

The undiscovere’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather print our self and sell

Than fly to booksellers that we know not of?

Thus rejection does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of endless waiting

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of Random House for the devil that is Amazon.

This was done for a friend who was worrying about publising wars that so many are fretting about now.

With only mild appologies to Will.