Tuesday 1 July 2014

Up the Amazon?



Okay, here's the thing. It's been put to me (not for the first time) that ST ought to be available on Amazon.

I have dodged this issue rather often down the years, partly due to techno-fear (yet another thing to mess up), but also because of Amazon's questionable influence on the field of publishing. And yet, precisely because Amazon is such a hugely successful business, publishing ST there would almost certainly increase sales, and the profile of contributing authors would rise accordingly.

What do you think, gentle reader? I'm grateful for any input, from general opinions to specifics on your own Amazon experiences, especially with regard to Createspace. Thanks, in anticipation.

2 comments:

James Everington said...

Well, there's lots of different views on Amazon (I have concerns) but my take on it is that, it's for the readers to exercise that moral choice of where to shop or not shop - you can't force people to support local bookshops and the like, but why should that mean ST isn't available to them where they would most like it to be?

Of course, you might quite easily accuse me of passing the buck here.

Aonghus Fallon said...

Although they've recommended a variety of different formats over the last year or so (prc, html, etc) I think Amazon actually prefer a standard word document these days. The most technical part would be an active TOC (essential for a magazine) which is a word feature anyway. I don't know anything about createspace, I'm afraid!

LET YOUR HINGED JAW DO THE TALKING by Tom Johnstone (Alchemy Press)

ST 55 features a tale by Brighton's finest purveyor of contemporary horror, Tom Johnstone. And it just so happens that Alchemy Press is...