I recently went to the AWP Conference (https://www.awpwriter.org/). It was very interesting to walk around the exhibition hall and talk with all these small independent book publishers and presses. I bought a couple of books, one is a poetry book, which I confess, I have never bought a book of poetry before, but the author was there and signed it and I sort of fell in love with her and her poems.

I asked a number of the people from these independent publishers what they thought about Amazon. I was surprised at their answers, it varied of course but they agreed it was somewhat of a love hate relationship. On the one hand, Amazon gave them a marketplace, but on the other hand, they could be a bit of a malevolent master. There were also a number of literary magazines there and they had similar feelings.

I wish Amazon could find a way to do more to support the literary world, seeing all these brilliant little presses often who specialize in various genres that give new authors opportunities.