Michelle's corner

I happen to be in one or two author chat groups.

There tends to be a trend from Apple and Amazon to mess around with the recommendation engines and reject submissions based on keywords. One of them was complaining about the word, "forced," causing a submission to be rejected from Apple.

Well, they're using automated submission systems, not human beings.

Kobo, however, is being celebrated for its ease of use and not being such a pain for authors to try and actually use.

The lesson I'm drawing from this, is that with one book published every minute just in the UK and US publishing spaces, the desire for the likes of Amazon and Apple, etc. to get books on board means that, to handle bulk, they're having to use automated systems which is screwing things up.

If I was interested in book buying, I'd be creating a community which shared authors and publishers web sites; keep bookmarks and do a general internet search for reviews instead of relying on the big guns.

One of the problems is that Amazon has many of the reviewers by the coat tails; they get kick backs if their readers go on to buy the books they recommend ... which skews the whole thing.

You know ... it really is starting to look like the only way forward, is to go to book shops again. :-(

...but having experienced the chaos that is politics behind the traditional publishing world, that's got its drawbacks also.

I've got the sinking feeling that this is going to get worse before it gets better.