Once upon a time, a man named Jeff Bezos decided to jump aboard the Internet business boom. He looked for a product he could sell easily online– something not too large, not too pricey, of which various kinds existed and for which there was plenty of demand. He considered CDs, computer hardware and software and videos. But he finally settled on books. Not, it may be noted, because he loved books; his deputy explained: ‘It was totally based on the property of books as a product.’In July 1994 Bezos incorporated his company, Cadabra. Then he realised that sounded a lot like ‘cadaver’, so he changed the name. Amazon.com was born in Bezos’s garage, and the face of publishing was changed forever.

Fast-forward 20 years, and Amazon is in the news daily. Currently, the hot topic of conversation is the ongoing ‘war of the words’ between Amazon and major publisher Hachette. Hachette refuses to accept the discounts that Amazon.com demands, and Amazon.com refuses to alter its contract in Hachette’s favour. The consequence: you may struggle to find Hachette books available to buy on the Amazon website.

Take the new novel from JK Rowling a.k.a Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm. In the US, it was not available for pre-order from Amazon, forcing Rowling to direct fans to other outlets. So, Amazon loses money on Rowling sales; and if readers aren’t willing to go elsewhere, then Hachette loses money on Rowling sales, and readers are frustrated and bookless. And in all of this, the author suffers: Rowling sells fewer books.

The author angle really interests me. We know that self-published authors can use Amazon as a platform on which to build their careers (whether Amazon profits too handsomely from indie published is a subject for another day). But what of the traditionally published authors on Amazon? How do we fare?

There are negatives, about which plenty of authors have been vocal. Your books are heavily discounted, first and foremost (up to sixty per cent of the list price of a book goes to Amazon), so your royalty drops against that which you may receive for a bricks-and-mortar-bookstore purchase. But I think most authors accept that: what riles many is how corporate Amazon can be, and the fact that it puts the consumer (read: getting him/her to spend as much money as possible on the site) ahead of the beneficiary of a sale. Author JeffereyDeaver, for example, wrote on his Facebook page recently: ‘Amazon has added banner ads on my page for novels of other authors in the same genre, with the none-too-subtle headline: “Similar items for a lower price”.’

But on the positive side, there’s no denying that being on Amazon makes your book available to some 30 million customers (if your publisher isn’t in dispute with Amazon, that is!), and the site offers plenty to aid marketability. Authors can promote themselves with author pages, and work to build reviews of their books to drive sales. Publishers can adjust prices for marketing campaigns, and include lots of ‘selling’ info on the book’s page. And of course it may just be your book that Amazon is suggesting to a buyer on another author’s page. Put simply, Amazon drives forward the ‘business’ of publishing in a corporate world, raises the stakes and makes it not only possible but also essential for authors and publishers to compete for readers.

Twenty years ago, when Jeff Bezos decided to change his business name from Cadabra.com, he fleetingly settled on Relentless.com (type it into your browser and you’ll find it redirects to Amazon). ‘Relentless’ really encapsulates the essence of Amazon. For now, even though it’s just reported a $126 million quarterly loss, it shows no signs of slowing its growth and power. Barnes and Noble once sued Amazon for calling itself ‘the world’s largest bookstore’. Perhaps, strictly speaking, it’s not; but it’s surely the biggest force to be reckoned with in publishing. So authors may have all kinds of opinions on this giant, but ultimately – unless your publisher takes the route of OR Books, and sells directly to customers without allowing Amazon to stand as middleman – we must find ways to work with it and continue on, relentlessy.