The Amazon Current: Writing into the Sunset

If it is not imposing, I wonder whether I may ask about your experience publishing with Amazon.  Well, okay, to be completely honest, what keeps bouncing off my cerebral sidewalls is probably a little more involved than that, because I'm trying to figure something out about myself.  I always do that better on paper than in my head.  But it doesn't work unless I am actually writing to someone.    

I stopped writing.  It was a process that took about a dozen years.

During my early twenties, I wanted to be Stephen King when I grew up, and I kept steam by clutching onto two delusions.  I honestly believed this was a unique dream compared to his few million other fans.  Writing was fun but it involved many painful activities like forming original ideas and actually finishing stories.  Why would anyone want to do that?  Also, I told myself King's success highlighted the typical novelist's evolution, and that making a living writing was nothing like making a living trying to win the lottery.

My writing machine broke a little at a time.  Bits chipped away whenever I thought about -- and resisted answering -- whether I wanted to write or merely wanted to have written.  Then, it broke hard when I finally understood that magazines were not merely fading and midlist authors were not merely becoming extinct.  Almost everyone I knew seemed to enjoy saying, "I hate to read."  They said it with a smirk, because it was now something to be proud of, like perfect teeth.  The new attitude had grown from potential to ubiquitous.  It was here and spoiled and close enough to inhale. 

At that point, I stopped getting annoyed when friends called this a hobby.

Then came Kindle.  I bought one, paid too much, and didn't much like reading on it.  A few months later at Christmas, Amazon announced that Kindle was their best selling product of all time.  Really?  The consumer realizes this thing is for reading, right?  I read an article a couple of days ago that said not only are people reading more but also Amazon's ebook sales were out-performing hardcover sales.  Wow.  That means people are willing to fork over a month's subscription to Netflix just to own the copy of the data of a single book.  There is nothing to thump and smell musty.  Just words. 

Another report said that people were reading more.  Hmm.  Come to think of it, I have been seeing more paperbacks lying around in the break room at work, and on Facebook a whole bunch of my friends now list reading among their activities.  (I hope they have done so with pride and a smirk.)  I think it is more than that, though.  The new delivery system makes reading easier.  I know that whenever I am standing in line at the grocery store or sitting in the doctor's office, I pull out my iPhone and launch the Kindle app.  It's almost instinctive.  In fact, I feel uncomfortable if I don't. 

Today, riding the final leg of the orbit toward my 41st birthday, I have done two things.  I paid the $2.99 to download Stephen King's new novella "Mile 81" onto my Kindle.  Buying short, stand-alone fiction like this makes me wonder whether Amazon has created for new writers a new opportunity filling the space left by all the dead magazines.  The other thing is that I keep looking over all the unfinished purple prose I used to call My Writing.  My hands sit on my lap, fingers drum occasionally and always come to rest at the same angle they do over a keyboard.  Is there really a new appetite for books, something sustainable, do you think?  I feel like Fox Mulder concerning UFOs:  I want to believe.

Yes, of course, I am trying to talk myself into writing again.  I am afraid that there is just a good possibility that I'm wasting my time.  I hope that I am hearing a heartbeat, but the good news might in reality be driven by Stephen King and J.K. Rowling numbers.  The deck is already stacked in their favor.  Maybe the average writer's story, released into the wild, becomes just another bit in a database, an orphan whose creator occasionally looks in on it.

As I said, it doesn't work unless I am writing to someone.  Never has. 

Because then it is just a hobby.

So, have you tried to publish with Amazon?  If so, what was your experience? 

And, more importantly, would you be likely to download a short story or novel by an author you have never heard of?