#41:  What’s the deal with Amazon’s new lending program?  For readers, as near as I can tell, you have to be an Amazon premium member, so right away that’s a limitation.  I can’t figure out what it means for authors, if anything.  As near as I can tell, Amazon chooses which authors to put into the program.  This means indie authors will get crumbs, if anything—but then again, the Big Six are not going along with the program just yet, so maybe Amazon won’t have any legacy authors in the lending list.

The Amazon site is so hard to negotiate.  It seems impossible to get to Author Central via the usual amazon.com—I have to google amazon author central and go in that way.  When I do, I find nothing about the lending library for indie authors.  Let me know about any gossip you might have.

#42:  I just read a blog post that my FB friend Dixon Rice shared.  It was written by an agent (name not clear to me) on an agency’s website ( http://www.dystel.com ).  The details aren’t important but the agent points out some publisher foolishness that is good for a laugh.  An editor liked a book she was pushing but told her that it came down from on high that the publisher only wanted “sure things.”  One can only assume the publisher is talking about the next Stephen King or John Grisham novel, for example.  In short, new writers, like Clancy, Grisham, Rohling, and so forth, when they started, need NOT apply.

My take on this is that this myopic publisher’s view, if prevalent in the industry, will hasten the death of the legacy publishing paradigm.  Publishers (1) cannot determine what is a sure thing and (2) need a backlog of new or relatively unknown writers to receive the baton from the old guard.  Moreover, a “sure thing” might become not so sure if the publisher gets greedy and tries to get rich off those tried and true authors.  I, for one, refuse to buy any author’s eBook if it costs more than $10.  For example, David Baldacci’s Zero Day at $14.99 is priced too high—his publisher should know better.

Another thing the Dystel post indicates is that some agents are willing to think outside the box.  These will be the ones who survive and find a niche within the new digital paradigm.  They have served the wrong masters for years (there are only readers and writers) yet they have a wealth of experience that can be more productively oriented, thus ensuring a new livelihood (like helping readers find writers and vice versa).  Maybe the competition will even become so ferocious that the cost of editors, publicists, and so forth will finally reach a level that poor slobs like me can actually afford them!

#43:  I’ve been asked to write some posts on my writing experiences for Donna and Alex Carrick’s website.  This is an honor for me.  Look for my enlightened words in the very near future.  Both Donna and Alex are FB friends and fellow writers.  Donna has also formatted several of my eBooks.  Here’s the URL for future reference:  http://www.carrickpublishing.com.  I will list it again after Donna puts up my posts.

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In libris libertas…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 4:00 am and is filed under News and Notices from the Writing Trenches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.