The article that popped up was titled
The Disastrous Decline in Author Incomes Isn’t Just Amazon’s Fault
The bookselling behemoth is making life harder for writers, but so is the public perception that art doesn’t need to be paid for
Again, I think we are missing a couple of key factors.
First, let me say that this author is right on a couple of parts. People today want things cheap or free. While I fully understand this as someone getting ready to put my second kid into college (both will be at private colleges in New York), there are a lot of angles to this we need to look at. And I am sorry to say, but some of this does fall into the hands of the authors.
Let's get the author fault out of the way first. I don't know if you have ever tried this search before, but next time you go into Amazon, look for a new book to read. Pick your genre, pick your sub-genre, and then, before you start looking, set it for the search criteria of lowest price to highest price. Ready for this? You will go through nearly 1000 people just giving their books away for free. I hate to break this
to you, but the majority of those authors are self-published authors. What they are thinking is that if we give Book #1 away for free, the people will come back for Book #2. But here is the catch... Book #1 needs to be beyond amazing. I have to honestly say, out of all the times I have looked for that "quick free read" I have found nothing but, for lack of a better word, garbage. And yes, I did look for some books from authors who I had recognized in the past.
The next level is again on the self-published authors shoulders. Setting books at cheaper costs is going to bring in less revenue. Thank you Captain Obvious. Again, I get that if we mark some things down, every now and then, we can get some buyers, but if we are doing this all the time, money is not going to be flowing in.
Now, before you think I am only going to throw authors under the bus, understand that they are not the only people to blame.
When e-books first came out, we had these things called , get this... E-READERS. These were devices designed to allow you to READ. That is all those darn things did. But for some reason, people wanted more, so the designers did just that. They provided devices that would:
- access the internet
- access your email
- stream movies
- let you get on social media
- play games...….
Get the idea? People quit reading.
If you have kids in school, you know exactly what I am talking about. Teachers are not having kids read any more. We have dumbed things down so much that now, we "watch videos". I have a friend who has a kid at one school who promotes, "putting the text on the screen in the classroom, and then having the audio reader read it to them." No reading there. IN the 1990's my students at a middle school level read 8 books a year. This year, barely 1.
Go to a large group activity and look around you. There will be no one reading a book around you. They have their Netflix. They have their Hulu. Not one person reading. I am sorry to say this, but even ask yourself. What do you do on your phone? While we would like to say we read, the odds are, if you really track your reading, it might not be a lot.
The author of the article also talked about their new approach for buying books. They were now going to buy more books. That's fine, but remember, buying books at a used bookstore, is not getting those profits back to the author UNLESS you are buying those books new and that used bookstore owner buys the books from the publishers.
Look, until we get back to being a literate society, this IS going to be a struggle. We need to read with our kids. We need to read instead of watching TV or streaming movies. We need to quit looking for the cheap way to get our books. And, as authors, the links you put up for your books need to be for the legitimately priced books. Quit giving away your hard work.
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