Death to Amazon.com

I am behind in my posts, two of which will mysteriously appear "back-filled" into their proper spot chronologically. This includes yesterday's post on Hebrews 7:1-10 and Friday's book review. It's unbelievable that I am this busy even though the semester is over!

May term began today. And quite unintentionally, I found myself talking hermeneutics to a New Testament survey class (this post started out to be about hermeneutics, but I got side tracked with Amazon). Not really appropriate, but I was presenting my signature issue, "Who Decides What the Bible Means?" By the way, I took it off my side list because I sent it off to Paulist Press to see if they would be interested in "officially" publishing it.

Also, since it's tangent day, I had a couple great ideas yesterday. Amazon.com is really killing not only publishers but it's killing the royalties book writers make. They are very demanding on publishers, not least of which is that they demand a 55% discounted price. That destroys royalties for authors. It's great for buyers, but devastating to those who do the work producing these things.

Why even write books any more? I made about $180 dollars last year off of two of my books that sell on Amazon. IWU doesn't put any emphasis on publication at all so why even bother? If I have a "grey thumb," I can write all I want for free here.

Here were my proposals to my publishers:

First, I wrote to three of my publishers yesterday and suggested that they create the kind of product widget that Amazon has. If they offer the same price as Amazon, who cares where the widget takes you. That way I can sell my books and actually get more like a dollar for every copy sold rather than pennies.

Second, publishers and or authors (How about it, google.com?) should form an Amazon-like "union" site that is linked to the actual publishers, offering the same price as Amazon. Man, I've heard that Amazon is even stopping to list self-published stuff (e.g., Lulu) unless you publish it through them. Maybe that's the way of the future, self-publish through Amazon and let someone else distinguish the good from the hack.

In the end we're in the middle of some massive paradigm shifts. The traditional publisher is on the way out and looking toward eventual death. Some sort of self-publishing may become the way of the future with credibility being a matter of some external "accrediting" bodies. So whether Schenck's book is considered a worthy book or not will depend on its external rating, not on whether a publisher was willing to take it.

Drury suggested before he left for hiking that perhaps in the future libraries will hire authors. Since everything will be available on the web, a library will not be judged by how many volumes it has but by what unique sources it contributes to the web, which would include what authors it has on its payroll.

Who knows? If I were a true prognosticator, I would be sitting on a beach somewhere writing this rather than about to return to the last hour of New Testament survey.