Should I sell my soul to Amazon for book sales?

After months of research, pondering, more research and more pondering, I've decided it is time to make all of the books I publish available on the Kindle.

Why does that decision make me feel icky?

Amazon.com sells the most books of any other book retailer anywhere, and that includes other on-line retailers. Part of the reason they sell so many books is because of their Kindle, which they've spent millions of dollars on developing and marketing. It paid off. According to Amazon, they sell over a million Kindles a week. That's a lot of readers hungry for new books they can read on their new toy. Stories of writers selling thousands of copies of Kindle versions of their book are all over the net, the most famous being Darcie Chan who sold 400,000 copies of her e-book via Amazon before she was picked up by a "traditional" publisher.

It makes logical sense to publish via the Amazon Kindle. E-books are the future, and the Kindle is the current leading device. Two-thirds of people in the US who buy e-books buy them from Amazon. Plus, I would save money on print costs. The books are already formatted to be turned into e-books because my book designer uses InDesign and the files are then sent to a digital printer. So all I have to do is contact Amazon, finish the submission process and upload the files.

I feel like I'm selling my soul to the devil in exchange for book sales.

Medusa's Muse is struggling to survive. I am determined that she will. We have a new book in development and our previous titles are selling well. The overall book sales aren't great, but the numbers are steady, with a few copies of each book being sold every month. However, the overhead costs of running a book publishing company have increased, so to help my press create quality books and then be able to market those books, I need to increase sales. E-books are potentially the best way to do that.

Okay, okay... I'll just have to get over the nausea I feel every time I start to submit a book to Kindle. I  wish Amazon wasn't such a backstabbing, money-grubbing, bastard of a company. If you want to stay in business, you have to deal with Amazon.

Don't tell them I said they are a bastard of a company; I shouldn't piss off the devil before I bargain for my soul.

Who Owns an Electronic Book?

Amazon.com electronically deleted copies of Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm from Kindles, even though those copies had been legitimately purchased by readers. There's irony for you: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four was deleted by Amazon without the knowledge or permission of the Kindle owners. Did you know Amazon could sneak onto your Kindle and erase what you have stored there? Me either.

Who owns an electronic book? When we purchase and download an ebook, are we buying the actual file, like we would a paper book, or are we leasing that file? Is it ours, or does it still belong to the publisher? Amazon's actions seem to say that we are merely borrowing the book for an extended amount of time but they can take the book back any time they want. And if we loan that ebook to someone else, or give it to a friend, we're violating our lease agreement.

These are the same questions the music industry has been struggling with for ten years. Music companies have responded by trying to lock down music files so they cannot be shared or passed from one computer to another. But they haven't been able to stop the proliferation of pirated music. Music companies aren't just fighting internet piracy, they are battling ideology. Millennium kids believe that music should be shared, period. They don't believe uploading songs to Pirate Bay is stealing. The harder the music industry tries to crack down on piracy, the more people resent the control placed on how and when their music is played.

The book industry is starting to deal with these same issues. Ebooks are popping up on pirate sites alongside bootlegged songs. As a publisher, I am forced to evaluate my own ideas of fair use and ownership. How much do I want to control the way the books I publish are read? How much am I willing to give away? Can I give away books and stay in business? Is there any way to stop people from uploading copies of my books for thousands of people to download for free? Should I care?

Amazon went too far and is now being sued for deleting those Kindle books. CEO Jeff Bezos apologized for the company's actions, saying "Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles."

But the reason Amazon.com decided to erase those files from Kindles in the first place is because those copies of Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm were illegal. The "publisher" uploaded those files via Amazon's third party distribution system and did not have the right to sell them. When Amazon found out, it deleted the files, then took the extra step of deleting them from Kindles.

Which is why I'm asking the question, "Who owns an ebook?" I understand the need for Amazon to shut down the illegal ebooks on their site, but do they also have the right to sneak onto your Kindle and delete what they want, without your knowledge or permission?

Is The I Phone Winning the Ebook War?

This just in from Forbes Magazine:

It's official: The iPhone is more popular than Amazon.com's Kindle. And not just in the obvious categories like listening to music, browsing the Web or the other applications where Kindle barely competes. Now, the iPhone is also muscling into Amazon's home turf: reading books.

Stanza, a book reading application offered in Apple's iPhone App Store since July, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software.

To read the rest of this article,written by Andy Greenberg and James Erik Abels, follow the link above. Note that the company is "working on deals with several major publishers." Could this be beneficial to a small, independent press like Medusa's Muse?

Regarding Medusa's Muse, I finished the final draft of What You Need To Know To Be A Pro and sent it to Jane, the Medusa's Muse Copy-Editor. Yesterday the Press designer, Rick, and I took a hundred photos to create several mock ups for the cover. As soon as we have a design, I'll post it here. I'll also write in more detail about how to decide on a good cover for your book, a process which is part scientific, part marketing, part art, and part "eeny-meeny-mineey-moe."

Today, I'm off to school. See you on Wednesday.