Times are a Changing

2013 is the turning point for me as it refers to the 21st century. I have been a published author for 20 years. My first published book, "The Grapevine: A Contemporary Short Story" was published in 1993. I remember getting a quote in 1993 from the printer that the least amount that could be printed was a 1,000 copies, I had no choice but to accept the terrible offer. When the books were printed I had to find a distributor, offer consignments to book stores and had no hope of reaching an international market. I also had to organize collections et al. Back then I thought that "Literary Agents" were Gods. How things have changed, now Amazon publishes all my books: "The Olympian and "The Grapevine." I started publishing "The Grapevine" with Create Space, an Amazon Company, and followed it up with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP.)Now my books are available as paperbacks or Kindle to the whole world due to the internet and Amazon's distribution platform. Yes, I don't need to print a thousand copies, everything is "Print on Demand" for my paperback publications. And, with my customers shopping in the Kindle Store they can download the books in a minute from nearly anywhere in the world. My royalty cheque goes straight to the bank. I put a price of 3.00 on the the Kindle Books first, I make up my own prices, under some restrictions, when dealing with Amazon but the actual cost of downloading a book to a customer is near zero, running the cloud does cost Amazon something, but a very small percentage of the retail price of a Kindle, so I really don't have to sell at 3.00 so now I put the books up for .99 cents and everyone is happy. I sit in front of my computer and I swear that sometimes I feel like I am the CEO at Time Warner, I am so empowered. The 21st century is here and "Things are a changing." To read Sean Tarquini's much loved novel "The Grapevine:A Contemporary Short Story" see: http://www.amazon.com