Dear Jeff,

Congratulations on the launch of Handmade at Amazon. This fills a small gap in Amazon’s broad offerings. In fact, Amazon is now positioned to provide nearly everything consumers need from household goods to nearly all forms of entertainment. Your acquisition last year of the comedy firm, Rooftop Media, even supplies your companies with laughs—let’s face it, something you could use after that nasty New York Times article. (I’m thinking the story was prompted by support from the big five.)

Looking at the vast Amazon countryside, I see but one area missing: coverage of murder mystery fiction. Americans devour mystery books. The top selling titles of all time are mysteries. And although Amazon does sell millions of mystery books—including mine for which I’m grateful—it appears you don’t have a separate website dedicated to the genre.

May I suggest Baconsmysteries.com. I’ve been writing about mysteries here for several years. I do reviews, include mystery flash fiction stories and occasionally discuss industry trends. Okay, so I do self-promotion, too. Every book writer does that. We have to. But that’s not a deal-breaker for me.

Acquisition would be simple as I’m the only employee. Certainly I would be glad to stay on for a short time to organize things. You can contact me at the email address listed on the “about” tab on my website.   I’m sure we can agree on a reasonable price.

Sincerely,

Mark S. Bacon

P.S. This really has nothing to do with the above, but I applaud your acquisition of the venerable Washington Post. Newspapers are far from money makers today, but keeping the fourth estate alive, if only for its government and business watchdog functions, is a noble project. And I see you’re working on its bottom line. I read the Post online regularly, but I’m now going to have to subscribe for the privilege. Good idea.