On the ethics of Amazon. I fairly quickly found this piece on their treatment of casuals:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle5337770.ece
Frankly I don't know of any other company operating in the UK that penalises you for being sick with a Doctor's note. And this piece on union busting behaviour:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006.../careers.work2
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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Well, what do you do if they become your main source of income, though? Pull your books? J.A. Konrath famously reported that his Amazon books were outselling iBooks 60-1. With numbers like that, I'm not sure what you do - cut 98% of your income?
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I'm not suggesting that. I'd say keep Amazon but diversify your sources of income (and I see from his blog etc that Konrath does this). List your book in other places/other other services/sell merchandise and books from your own site.
My own solution is not to give up the day job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Hard to argue with this, although I don't see many successful companies that aren't doing this. At least indie authors don't yet have to deal with competition from Chinese writers selling books for 20c.
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Amazon sets a minimum price of 99c although others like Smashwords let you list for free. It's a lot way off but I think the real competition will come in 20+ years when computers become as good (if not better) than humans at producing stories with mass appeal.