Earlier this week, the indefatigable Charles Tan had a post up entitled “Publishing Favors the West”. I started replying to him but it got so long I thought I’d turn it into a separate post on this blog.

Charles starts off with a blunt question:

First, there’s the “Big Six” publishers. Guess where they’re based and who their primary audience is?

He talks about the issue that the flow of books is one-way; that is, away from the developed world towards the underdeveloped. (Not that the underdeveloped/developed divide is even true any more. As far as infrastructure goes, I’d much rather live in Malaysia than the United States. For a start, the roads are better. But, for simplicity, let’s stick to cliches for the moment.)

Charles talks about how the size of the North American market naturally lends itself to economies of scale, something that can’t be taken for granted in a lot of other countries:

If you’re wondering why local [Filipino, but also s-e Asian --kaz] publishers don’t have Advanced Reader Copies or ARCs, it’s because they can’t afford to do a separate print run.

There’s public perception:

Import books get their own diverse shelf categorization: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Romance, Horror, Science Fiction, etc. Local books get one shelf….

It’s true here in Malaysia too. We have a “Local writers” category that, in addition, is never at the front of the store. Fancy that. And we sure don’t have an Amazon with all that wonderful free shipping, gift wrapping, streaming video, and so on. Book Depository comes close but, while I love them to bits, they just don’t have the range of stuff that Amazon has.

Charles goes on to talk about ebooks and you really should go read his essay because it’s chock-full of home truths, but let me diverge at this point and talk about Amazon and my experiences with them as a self-publisher.

Together with hubby, J, we are running our own little publishing house called Sandal Press. And because I want to get my books in front of the widest audience possible, of course I’m going to sell them through Amazon. Here are the problems:

– Because I’m not in an “Amazon” country, I cannot install the Kindle tools that are available to content creators in countries where Amazon exists. When I pointed out that it was ridiculous inviting non-Western content providers to publish on Kindle but refusing to give them utilities available to their Western counterparts, the India-based Support team told me they’d “pass along” my suggestion to the Marketing team. Gee thanks.

– I’m not even allowed to download the Kindle reading app for my PC!

– I can’t see my own books after they’re published. This is not so bad for my Sandal Press books because I can get sideways access to the pages via my KDP Administrative panel but, for my books that are not published by Sandal, Amazon behaves as if they — and I — don’t even exist.

Charles’ essay bites especially deep because I’ve just finished uploading a book by my alter-ego Cara d’Bastian. Yes, the first book in The Check Your Luck series, The Check Your Luck Agency, is finally up and being processed. But do you know the kicker?

I won’t know what it looks like.

I know I passed through clean clean code (having been an ex-programmer) that’s been validated by every HTML engine I can find, but the fuzzy preview tells me that the first letter of each chapter (which I coded as an image, with its corresponding text character as an alternative display) isn’t appearing!

It’s driving me completely batshit because I can’t check to see if it’s my problem or the previewer software’s problem. And I can’t take a post-conversion copy and pass it along to an American friend to check because Amazon doesn’t allow any content provider to download a free Kindle copy of their own book.

Am I pissed? You bet I am. The deck is stacked so much against any person of initiative who happens to reside outside the Holy Western countries, that I’m completely wrung out — mentally and physically — whenever I hit the “Save and Continue” button.

Uploading to Amazon is nerve-wracking because it’s like baking a calzone for the first time. You’ve followed the recipe exactly, you’ve listened to all the advice available, the thing looks good when it comes out of the oven, but you can’t tell how it actually tastes because the calzone is for someone else. All you can do is guess and when it’s your own professionalism at stake, that is a terrible terrible thing.

Charles finishes with:

[W]ill eBooks be the great equalizer? They could be. Just not in the ecosystem of Apple or Amazon….

Damn straight. Apple is as much a restrictive closed-garden environment as Amazon is. I watch every day for news of successful competitors to these two arrogant behemoths, which is why I also publish with Kobo (they’re not without their own problems though), Smashwords and XinXii. (And don’t get me started with those poxy bastards at Nook, who even — amazingly — make Amazon seem tolerable at times.) With recent news in mind, I’m hopeful that Apple will repeat its history and disappear down the drain. Hopefully, this will open up the field a bit. I’m waiting.