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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
It also made it impossible for a lot of writers to make a living. I know of two favorites who had to stop writing and do other things because authors were and often are, last on the totem payment poll.
I'm not an Amazon gusher either, but I have to say that the articles have been rather one-sided. They are both big companies looking out for themselves. The articles do not reflect that.
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The one-sidedness has actually been so absurd as to be amusing.
For "balance" try this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...mazon/9761817/
Amazon is still, eee-vile (a given, by now) but at least the picture of the BPHs more closely resembles historical reality instead of the la-la-land of the "guardians of culture".
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Amazon, ever-more heavy-handed in its tactics, yet remains popular, if not beloved, among consumers — at least those who do not work in the book business — for its one-click efficiency and loss-leader prices.
The book business, on the other hand, is steeped in inefficiencies and illogic, with few fans among writers, whose books it generally fails to promote and sell, or readers, who, amid endless consolidation, long ago lost any sense of the meaning of once-vaunted publishing brands and imprints (it's hard to rally behind — say again? — Hachette books).
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The book business has tried to rally a sentimental hurrah based on book culture and literary pride, as well as dire warnings of the loss of same. This is, however, a difficult case because the industry has not just consolidated into a beast of no cultural distinction at all, but has become an outlet for among the lowest and most ignorant cultural products — books, by and large, are silly and dumb, a cultural wasteland. The industry has largely been supported in recent years by Fifty Shades of Gray titles.
And yet it should not be forgotten that Amazon is exclusively in the business of leverage and power. It offers no more taste and sensibility — or pity — than Walmart. It merely seeks more power in what is now called, cheerfully, the product funnel.
So, broadly, the fight is between, on the one hand, the incompetents, craven panderers and mid-level corporate bureaucrats in the book business and, on the other, the authoritarian creepos at Amazon.
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An equivalence theory of sorts: evil vs idiocy.
I do hope he doesn't drown the next time it rains.