My book is a mythic philosophical fantasy novel, a quaint old-fashioned book written in a style reminiscent of the 19th century, a book for dreamers and lovers of fiction of the imagination.

This sounds awful. Really, really awful. Ten bucks says that Mary Sues lurk within.

If she took herself less seriously, I think I'd be more inclined to think kindly of her.

Actually I know Vera Nazarian somewhat, from online at SFF.Net, and she's quite a nice person. I haven't found her stories outstanding, but they don't suck either -- in past decades, she would have been able to make a respectable living as a pulp/paperback writer. She's a bit of a self-promoter, but in the honorable sense -- she'll show up at a convention, push her latest publications at all the panels she's on, but also tries to make informed and non-self-serving contributions at those same panels, and works hard on giving her best performance at a reading. She also does her best to 'pay forward' to other writers.

She may well be a very nice person, but she's ranting in public, and she's badgering the wrong persons -- the readers. It isn't the reader's fault advances have been static for 20 years, for instance. And she's yelling at people who visit Amazon -- who are presumably book-buyers!

I can sympathize with her frustration. Did you know when you go into a Barnes & Nobels or a Borders that most of the books face out in the high-profile displays near the front are there because the publisher paid a bribe purchased a display slot, and that in fact, a lot of the "Featured Selections" that Amazon Recommends or features on the front page are also paid promotions? The book market is seriously out of whack because of it.

Darn -- what's the quick-edit for strikethrough text? I thought it was 's' but I see I'm wrong.

I make a point of facing books by my favorite authors whenever I'm at a bookstore. Guerrilla marketing.

I can more than sympathize with her frustration; I find her manner of expressing it unwise. There are horrible things going on in publishing. But the book reader has no control over any of those decisions except whether to buy, and, as I said earlier, Amazon browsers are probably likelier to buy than most.

[There doesn't seem to be a quickedit for strikethrough. You'll have to say t strike explicitly.

She also does her best to 'pay forward' to other writers.

That does cast her rant in a more positive light, IMHO.

I do agree that the current atmosphere in the book selling/publishing atmosphere is not author-friendly. It's also not very nice for smaller publishers, as they can't afford the deep discounts and higher level of organization that book resellers (Baker & Taylor) want.

Amazon is interesting in that while they accept paid promotional placement (say that three times fast!) they also encourage buyers to create Lists, recommendation pages, let the user followup on what people "like you" bought, let you peek at what circles of interest are buying. So they're rather kind of Spike-with-a-soul grey.

I'm pretty shocked that her POD book is $39.95, that seems way out of whack for pricing.

If it's a smaller publisher that can't count on the bulk sales to make up revenues and can't afford a large enough print run to keep the unit price of the book down, the pricing sounds about right to me.