Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
I really do not believe they are increasing the availability of really good books. I think they are decreasing it. I do not care if the amount of mediocre to bad books are increasing.
|
I won't profess to like really good books, I love Fantasy and Science-Fiction and read these genres almost exclusively.
Where I am from, the publishers has started cooperating with supermarket chains to sell their books. The result is that mom and pop bookstores are pretty non existent. The chain bookstores try to survive by pushing bestsellers and not stocking books with limited popularity. That means the availability of physical books is very limited.
For e-books, the publishers have tried to establish their own web sales service. They only publish best sellers they are sure will sell, there are a lot of problems with the various services (with some you can only download the book once) and the prices are the same as physical books.
I would be unable to find books by a lot of my favorite authors if it were not for Amazon. So for me, Amazon provides access to authors I would not normally have access to, it also provides a benchmark for other sales services and presses them to provide a certain standard to even be relevant.
Don't get me wrong, I am not in favor of monopolies. But I think the publishing industry is way too comfortable and conservative and when they innovate they don't have the best interest of the authors and consumers at heart. I think it's good they are being challenged by someone doing it right. I wish the music industry was challenged as much.