Does Amazon make books better or worse?

The NYT debated whether their burgeoning publishing arm hurts or helps publishers this morning. It might be simplistic, but I'm more interested in the above question than whether they are helping to drive a possibly-on-the-verge-of-irrelevant industry out of business.

I'm not sure, actually. As a confessed historical fiction addict, I've downloaded a handful of novels self-published on Kindle, and I haven't necessarily been wild about them. I'm more of a fan of established authors like Diana Gabaldon, Philippa Gregory and Elizabeth Chadwick.

But if I read a fabulous book, I certainly wouldn't care who had published it. As Michael Wolf writes:

Traditional publishers, unfortunately, don’t have a relationship with the reader -- or if they do, it’s extremely tenuous. Ask most consumers what publishers their favorite authors are aligned with, and 9 out of 10 couldn’t tell you. If you don’t have a relationship, you can be cut out, and this is what Amazon knows and what writers are learning.

Pin It