A short thread about being a self-published author while I wait for something to render. A lot of people hate Amazon, and they do have some business practices that they really should change, but for me, their book publishing service allowed me to be an author (1)

Without Amazon's services, we would still be stuck in the old publishing dichotomy of traditional publishing (where an author has an agent and a publisher) and vanity press (where an author pays a publisher to print their book). (2)

Does it mean I'll never get my book sold in @Waterstones? Sure. Does that bother me? Not really. Waterstones and other traditional book stores carried my first novel for two years when I was signed by a small publisher in Edinburgh. I got zero sales. (3)

It was the worst mistake of my life, as the publisher marked the book up significantly, pricing it out of the market. In hindsight, I should have never signed the agreement, and thankfully was released from it in 2019. (4)

I recently got in touch with @Bookshop_Org on the back of an article I read about them. In theory, it sounds great, and I wish them every success in allowing small indie bookstores a better chance against corporate giants (5)