Thank you, SFWA.

The Science fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has taken a (very practical and pragmatic) stand on Amazon’s bullying business tactics. Despite some of the comments immediately following, I am  thrilled to see them do this.

SFWA is redirecting Amazon.com links from the organization’s website to other booksellers because we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.

This clearly establishes SFWA’s relevance and importance to self-published, independent, and otherwise unassociated authors. This organization is taking action for the writers it represents – and in doing so, for the entire authorial community. They’re not boycotting or anything like that, but it is taking a stand:

It is worth noting, that if a book is only available on Amazon, we are leaving the link in place. Our goal is to make sure that it is possible to order our members’ fiction. Hurting authors to make a point about a publishing model is not a good practice, for anyone.

As I’ve already said here, Amazon is simply going to bully all of us more if they’re allowed to get away with it.

Unfortunately, EPIC (standing for “Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition”) has utterly failed to even address the issue. (I summed up the unofficial – and only – responses in this post and this one.) I cannot in good conscience recommend “EPIC, the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition” as anything other than a virtual water cooler you have to pay to get access to. (That is to say, I can’t recommend them at all.)

Which puts me in a bit of a pickle. The print versions of the books I publish are printed by an Amazon subsidiary (but are not published by Amazon). I will (finally) be fixing that bottleneck within the next week. If you need a Kindle-formatted eBook, I urge you to buy it directly from Alliteration Ink. Not only does it show solidarity with IPG, but that means more money goes in the author’s pockets. I’ll be revamping the “Steve’s Books” section as soon as I can as well.

Once again, SFWA, thanks for doing the right thing – and for doing it pragmatically.

3 thoughts on “Thank you, SFWA.

  1. Exactly. I have been led to believe that CS and Lightning Source use essentially the same templates; time to check that out. 🙂

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