If you work with Amazon, you are working with the future.
If you work with anyone else, you are working with the past.
Amazon is the leading book distributor all over the world. Amazon sells significantly more books every year than any other publishing house or book distributor.
Amazon does not own a traditional publishing house (as of the printing of this book). Amazon’s monumental advanced approach in terms of future awareness of technology proves operating a traditional publishing house is a past, fleeting technology.
Traditional publishing houses are firmly rooted with past technology, and past ways of thinking and treating people. Amazon is shaping the future into a technology-filled world that retains the constant awareness that technology exists solely to benefit people. Amazon is devoted to utilizing constantly evolving future technology to help benefit people as the company’s driving goal.
People have read this book and told me that I’m starting a fight with the major publishing houses. I don’t agree. My opinions are my opinions, nothing more.
Major publishing houses are faceless entities that care only about money. I will gladly align with Amazon, because with Amazon, I’ll be current, and never alone.
Amazon owns and operates an online self-publishing service called CreateSpace. Right now, CreateSpace is the BEST choice for an author. CreateSpace provides products and services that are superior to any other book publishing or distributing company. I don’t see how any company will ever surpass CreateSpace.
Every traditional publishing house says that self-publishing authors do not find book publishing success. The facts disagree with the publishing houses. The publishing houses are not able to respond with facts, because a traditional publishing house is a financially sinking ship – they are doomed to fail. As the traditional publishing houses continue to lose commercial position and profit, self-publishing authors are gradually replacing traditional publishing house authors as the industry innovators.
All those authors that had to listen to ignorant, shortsighted people say, “self-publishing will never work,” but stood with CreateSpace, will become the focus of attention because they will become the commercially sought authors.
People told Amazon that e-book technology would never work. Amazon didn’t listen, and proved e-book technology is the future. Everyone tells self-publishing authors they will never find commercial success. If we (the self-publishing authors) don’t listen to the critics, and hold on tight to the reins of Amazon, we’ll prove self-publishing is the future.
Brief History
People that said e-books would never catch on with the public should shut up and get out of the way of the smart people that are making the world a better place to live...
I have been studying internet startup companies ever since the critics told Google that streamlining videos would never catch on with the public. The people that said streamlining videos would never work deserved dethroning, because those people were cave dwellers. History shows that Google didn’t listen, and successfully built an iconic search engine with that new streamlining video technology. In the process, Google etched a well-earned position as one of the greatest, influential companies all over the world.
I’ve always thought Google should build mock headquarters all over the world and charge people money to tour a scale replica of the real headquarters. Google could even have special product demonstrations of future technology. Google would make a fortune from admissions, food, and merchandise sales.
The evolution of Amazon seemed to rip a page right out of the Google manual for business success. Amazon offered products and services that the critics and commercial leading giants said would flop and die before a non-caring public. Everyone was wrong and the public eagerly invited Amazon into every facet of life.
If I’m holding a device, I’m utilizing an Amazon product. My Kindle is my go-to device for every online thing I need to accomplish. I always look up words and research facts on my Kindle as I type my books. I listen to my music through my Kindle (please support an artist – buy books and music). I only buy books and music through Amazon. Whenever I buy a random product online my very first search is on Amazon, and I have always found the product for a great price.
Amazon began as a humble, insignificant online bookstore armed with only a vision of a better future. Amazon had a crazy idea of printing a book after a customer purchased the book, called print on demand (POD). It was immediately clear that the public was highly interested in ordering books from an online bookstore.
Amazon decided to offer a fledgling product that didn’t really have a commercial name. The product was an electronic book. Previous attempts by other companies to produce and market a book that you didn’t hold in your hand, and wasn’t printed on tangible paper stripped from a tree failed.
How were people going to read these crazy electronic books? Amazon created an electronic book reader called a Kindle. The first edition Kindle was so far ahead of it’s time, Kindle will forever hold the spot as the first brick laid in the path to the success of e-reader and e-book technology.
The authors (like me) that didn’t fit in with traditional publishing houses for whatever reason suddenly found a home. A small handful of companies, such as CreateSpace and Lulu, offered superior self-publishing services. The companies offered the option to publish an electronic book formatted as a portable document format (PDF) file. Amazon charged under a dollar for the service. The authors retained the majority of the profits. The great part was authors had the option to offer an electronic book to the public free and Amazon didn’t charge the author anything.
Self-publishing authors were chomping at the bit to publish electronic books. The authors started calling the electronic books, e-books. The great thing about e-books when controlled by Amazon, and of no interest to traditional publishing houses, was that authors could provide the e-books free of charge to the public. The author could then link the e-book on a website that drew advertising income and suddenly the author was earning income for a book that was available free.
Early self-publishing authors proved that offering free e-books draws customers and helps earn increased revenue.
In the beginning Kindle was the sole mainstream e-reader, produced and distributed by Amazon. Kindle was not the sole e-reader because of a sinister plot to rule future technology. No one believed in Amazon’s desire to produce e-readers and promote e-books by self-published authors. Amazon trudged through the fog alone dodging constant criticism. A weaker company would collapse dead on the side of the road, but not Amazon.
Amazon’s e-reader and e-books began to cause traditional bookstores to fail and close. Traditional bookstores could not compete with Amazon’s flawless customer approach, and dedication to making future technology available to everyone, everywhere. The major publishing houses suddenly wanted a share of e-reader technology. Amazon already mastered e-reader technology by the time the large lethargic commercial publishing houses were interested in Amazon’s e-reader technology.
It was obvious Amazon brought a product to people that constantly improves people’s lives. The byproduct of Amazon’s invention was massive sales. After the bloated publishing houses realized Amazon was concurring the book publishing sales market the sluggish greedy publishing house moguls mobilized.
The publishing house kings slithered off their mountains of gold, and wobbled into action.
It is clear Amazon deserves the praise for bringing e-reader technology to the everyday lives of everyone. There is no argument. Amazon poured blood, sweat, and sacrifice into e-reader technology as critics and publishing houses threw flaming Molotov cocktails.
In 2007, Amazon released the e-reader Kindle. Barnes & Noble previously offered e-books, but quit prior to the release of the Kindle. Barnes & Noble felt e-books would never catch on with the public. In 2009, Barnes & Noble released the e-reader Nook.
Amazon constantly fought with the major publishing houses because Amazon utilizes a sales model that provides a great product at a low rate to the public. Amazon placed a cap on the profits publishing houses could earn from e-book sales. The major publishing houses (as I read) teamed up with Apple as an attempt to bypass Amazon and the way Amazon treats customer happiness like an essential necessity to a successful business. The major publishing houses began to utilize an alternate sales model that quickly escalated to illegally inflated sale prices and price fixing. It was the brief period of time when e-books were being sold (not by Amazon) for a price well over thirty dollars. Of course, the publishing houses lost in court and paid money to the public because of their illegal actions. The major publishing houses returned to following the Amazon sales model after the lawsuit.
Many people thought Amazon was part of the lawsuit because refunds came from Amazon. Amazon was not part of the lawsuit. If the major publishing houses followed Amazon’s sales model the entire time, the lawsuit never would have existed.
After every major publishing house leeched onto e-reader and e-book technology, every major publishing house provided some sort of e-reader. The price as an author to produce an e-book suddenly skyrocketed. Overnight the base price for an author to produce an e-book became over a dollar. Everything literally changed for the worse.
This was the official point when subsidiary (or vanity) publishing soared to an elevated level of insanity.
I quickly discovered Amazon operated a company that provided services for a self-publishing author. CreateSpace was my salvation when the publishing world that I knew went up in flames – the day commercial publishing infested the e-book scene.
Amazon sold more books than any other book publisher or distributor all over the world, as of the date I published this book, through Amazon.
