Good morning all! 
You’ve probably heard by now that Loose Id is closing. They were my very first publisher and I’ll always have a soft spot for them in my heart. I learned a lot from my editor, Kathleen Calhoun, and the people there were all great to me.
Loose Id is handling this well, and they definitely have a plan in place where no authors, editors or cover artists should be hurt in the closure. I appreciate they didn’t drag this on like Ellora’s Cave did (I was with them too, and that was painful) pretending everything was awesome when it wasn’t. Loose Id is going out with dignity.
But with each new indie publisher that throws in the towel, I become more nervous. Amazon is slowly driving them all out of business. It’s impossible to compete with Amazon. They’ve been very cunning in laying the ground work and readers find buying books on Amazon so easy it’s a challenge to change their thinking.
The only thing I know for sure is if Amazon succeeds in destroying all the other indie publishers, authors are screwed. There’s no question they will drop the royalty rate on us to 40% or less if they’re the only game in town. It’s a terrifying idea to think we would all be at the mercy of Amazon.
So, I guess wherever possible, support the indie houses that still exist. If you can, try and buy straight from the publishers site. They pay a better royalty to the author when you do that. I know it’s hard though, because I myself buy books from Amazon because of the convenience. I think I’ll try and branch out more.
We need to keep publishers like Dreamspinner and Riptide going. We need somewhere else to shop than just Amazon. We need to resist the urge to do what’s easy and think ahead to the future. I’m going to try and shop less at Amazon for my books. Because the idea of being a part of what destroys indie publishing just doesn’t sit right with me.
S.C.
I always try to go direct and avoid the big A where possible – having gift card options makes things easier now as I can buy one amount (with exch rates and commission costs) then pick up books when they are available, especially the lower priced offers (which werent practical as a one off). No need for long ‘next order’ lists anymore!!!
For all of the reasons you gave (plus they don”t do epub), I only buy professional (education) non-fiction from Amazon. I try to by directly from the publisher or author. Even though there are some mm romance authors that I would love to read, I don’t iif they only publish through Amazon. I also pray that Smashwords stays around for indie publishers,
Since I’ve learned about the monopoly that Amazon is creating I’ve started ordering from Riptide and Dreamspinner. I’m going to have to check on Smashwords!