Ex Amazonian who worked in their publishing space. Having not been to Campfire, but knowing the publishing space there won't be business deals done at the conf

Ex Amazonian who worked in their publishing space. Having not been to Campfire, but knowing the publishing space there won't be business deals done at the conference it just won't happen. The culture of publishing is one where people don't do deal making anywhere in public, even a very exclusive party. Personal relationships are very important when it comes to deal making in publishing. What Amazon will likely do is show authors some very persuasive presentations with data that can't be crosschecked because it is Amazon's own data. But even more importantly they can show actual human beings authors could work with which is a necessary part of doing deals aka the golf course deal making method. In terms of threatening people with "you won't have a career" I don't think Amazon would ever actually say that to anyone. But you can be sure they won't go out of their way to talk someone out of that impression. Overall Amazon only speaks to the world at large when they want to world to know something. I think the bigger thing is most of their authors have longstanding deep relationships with their publishers. Amazon is poaching on these and doing it in secret. Campfire is the perfect place to have someone break their existing relationships in a small way. A few top authors make up the majority of a publishing houses profits, lose some of them to self publishing or even Amazon and publisher economics start to crumble.