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Originally Posted by tomsem
Which begs the question: what is the WaPo writer complaining about?...
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I’m guessing he took his cue from the libraries/associations and maybe Overdrive, and just didn’t do a comprehensive job of putting across the issue. To me, the flashy names cited are negligible but the Amazon publishing catalogue does actually encompass quite a lot now, leaving aside the self-published crowd, and if the libraries are getting hammered by customers for content they can’t deliver, and in turn are pushing Overdrive and the other distributors for that content, that creates a problem for them. We know the romance community is huge and a lot of the Montlake or Lake Union audience may be bugging their libraries why they can’t find their favorite authors. There are also a fair amount of midlist crime fiction authors with a loyal following under the Amazon imprints - the James Bond books are all under Amazon and as far as I can tell not available for libraries. Then there’s Amazon Crossing, which several articles have shown has come to be the leading house for translated fiction in the US now (hard to believe...) That’s a big chunk of specialist literature cut off from the check out counter. There are a lot of subtleties to the issue, I just think he grabbed onto the star names to get attention.