There have been conversations all over the blogosphere about the price war between Macmillan and Amazon a couple of weeks ago.
Chip MacGregor, Literary Agent, had an interesting perspective about it on his February 2 blog.
Galley Cat also reported this about authors getting caught in the middle of this price war.
What this comes down to for authors is the changing face of publishing. As old alliances are broken and new forms of distribution formed there are significant growing pains experienced in the world of publishing. When you add to that the economy that is down overall it can be a shaky time.
One thing that writers need to remember during times like this is that our primary goal is our reader. When we are putting the word to paper we are focusing on a quality product that readers will enjoy, demand and be willing to pay for. Even as Amazon tries to hold costs down and the debate about the influence of big box retailers rage, the reality is that a reader will pay $20 for a novel by an author they love-no matter what.
That is not to say that we should be completely passive about our role in this market, however. We are business people and as such, we need to have people we trust advising us so we can capitalize on these changes in the marketplace. At Writing Career Coach I am doing a series of teachings on your writing business team. In that I talk about Agents. One thing a good agent provides is knowledge of trends in the marketplace and strategies to best capitalize on opportunities.
As we see with all that is happening with Amazon.com and the publishing world, having people who know what is going on will be essential to making a living as a writer.
And if you’d like to know more about making a living as a writer you’ll want to check out this interview done recently on author haven where Jim Rubart, Chip MacGregor and I talked about Branding, taking advantage of social networking and other questions posed to us by writers.
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