Good Writers and Bad Business models

Every now and then I stumble across an author who makes me feel like the world’s biggest hack.

My spouse reads about three books a week. That’s how I “found” Sue Monk Kidd.

Kidd writes historical fiction. The first book I read of hers was “The Book of Longings.” It is the fictional autobiography of Jesus’ wife published in 2020.

I’m now reading “The Invention of Wings of Wings” (2014) -- which alternates between two points of view: a young black slave in Charleston, South Carolina -- and her same-age mistress who was given the slave as a present on her eleventh birthday. It is set in the early 1800s.

Both books are staggering in the amount of detail. Kidd must have done a tremendous amount of research for both novels.

Often people on BC ask how they can become better writers. I believe one of the best ways is to read good literature and emulate those authors’ efforts.

If I could write a tenth as good as Sue Monk Kidd I would be extremely pleased!

Another author I’ve recently enjoyed is Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and her stories about a young girl during WWII in England.

On a totally unrelated subject . . . be very careful with Amazon. They’ve reached a new low. About a week about I ordered about thirty reams of paper. I’ve ordered a lot of paper through Amazon for my business and did this as a matter of course. The price seemed extremely good. A day or two later I remembered I hadn’t printed out the invoice for my accountant. Imagine my shock when I noted an over $900 shipping and handling fee. I was able to get the order canceled and replaced with an order under Prime with no shipping fee.

I noticed a while ago that one of my books was selling on Amazon for over $800. I began to notice other items selling far above retail. It seems there are resellers preying on the unobservant.

I blame this on Amazon. They could use algorithms to find outliers on pricing and shipping and handling.

That’s all I’ve got. Good writers and bad business models.

Jill