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.

I've got a story with an ending I now hate. I'd like the Buffistas to help me rehab it, but the piece is kinda long to post here,imo. But if I do, any formatting tips? I think I panic when stories get to a certain length and just sort of wrap them up "by any means neccessary"=cheesy endings

Are there any Buffistas who'd be intereseted in reading my college essays, or mind if I posted them here in the future? I mention y'all in one of them.