WOW! That’s all I could think when I saw the news that Avalon Books in New York has been bought by Amazon. I have five books with Avalon, a respected small publisher who produced books for the library market in the US.
I have to confess, it’s been hard to concentrate on writing for the last twenty four hours or so, although I did manage to get about 1,700 words done on my current book. The message boards were lit up with information and speculation about the sale. As you would imagine, for every ten of my fellow Avalon Authors, there are ten different opinions.
Now that the dust has settled a bit, I believe that it can only be a good thing. Amazon didn’t get where they are by sitting on their thumbs. I suspect that while their current authors (including me) are scrambling to keep up with changes in the publishing industry, Amazon is busy plotting ten steps ahead of us. I put up my first self-published book on Amazon almost exactly a year ago, and I’ve learned more in that year than I could have imagined. It’s been a fun ride and just when I thought it might be slowing down it looks like I’ll have to hang on. More changes are around the corner.
My author friend Sandra Carey Cody posted a picture of a Meadowlark today. I think I’ll take a deep breath and do what’s really important…go bird-watching.