If I Owned a Big Publishing House

First of all this is Nikki filling in for Amber today. I'm so glad to be back. Be sure to tell me hello in the comments. I've missed posting so much! My first matter of business is to tell you who won the contest Amner announced last Tuesday. And the winner of "The Most Important Catch" by Jaclyn M. Hawkes is ... ARIELL LARSON! Congratulations! Email us at mormonmommwriters at gmail dot com. Now comes my blog post where I ramble about my ridiculous thoughts. (I'm sure you've missed that! LOL!) If I owned a big publishing house... If I owned a big publishing house I wouldn't be afraid of Amazon one little bit.  Why?  Because fear is a debilitating emotion that undermines success.  But instead I would be determined to show them just who they are dealing with.  First of all, I wouldn't be contracting less authors and books, I would be publishing more books!  This means that every writer I sign is one less writer that Amazon can make a profit off of.  Also, if I can't beat Amazon at their game, I would join them.  Instead of turning my nose up at self-publishing, I would open my own department.  If writers had the choice of self-publishing (publishing on demand) through Amazon or through a division of someone like Simon & Schuster, I'm pretty sure Amazon would lose every time.   I would also start a partnership division where writers can purchase publishing services like covers, and editing.  Again, if writers have the choice between buying services from a reputable publishing company like Random House, the number of scammers posing as publishers would go down because no one would want to use them!   For e-books, I would give the readers what they want.  I would have ebooks available in all varieties of prices.  Since I have two new divisions of self-publishing and partnership publishing, I would have a variety of books to put into different price ranges, in most cases, allowing the author to choose a price range based off my projections of where they would do best in the market.   For agents, this would mean they could sign more writers and help them find the publisher with the best services for their book.  Plus, agents could find writers on places like Wattpad and Authonomy finding those gems that could make it in traditional publishing but I would also give agents a small finders fee for sending me writers that would be a good fit for my partnership publishing.   For book stores like Barnes & Nobles, I would suggest computers or screens on the wall dedicated to POD books that they can order through the website and pick up in store without shipping fees.  I would also suggest having a bigger online review page like Amazon.  The way to make it big is to offer free e-books to readers to write a certain number of reviews and ratings.  Then taking these reviews, the book stores can stock a certain number of POD books on their shelves based on the ratings received.   For readers, this means having more choices and more power in the publishing world.   For writers, this means being able to have more doors open allowing more avenues for your creative stories to blossom.   Now I am just a normal working mom who writes on the side and my notions and thoughts may be a bit on the naive side.  But it seems to me that the first big publishing house to adopt some of these ideas will leave Amazon shaking in their boots.  Why?  Because right now, writers and readers would rather deal with publishers and bookstores whose whole focus are books.  Not a company that also sells toilet cleaners on the side.