I am turning on Amazon, it just feels fundamentally unfair that they destroyed the brick and mortar book industry precisely because they operate on the principal of never having to turn a profit. Its almost a monopolist abuse of the market...
Funny, Amazon is becoming quite like Wal-Mart, but we don't complain. When Wal-Mart comes to a town, the stampede away from the old shopping areas to the new Wal-Mart is alarmingly clear. However, with Amazon, their brick and mortar competitors are slowing fading away like apparitions as they are outmoded by new technology and trends.
Further, with Amazon we don't have to notice the low paid hordes that run the machination as these Morlocks are now in some unknown warehouse out of view toiling away to mail me my case of toilet paper so that I don't have to leave work early to purchase it through direct human contact.
What's the added value of a human giving you toilet paper? Now both you and the hypothetical toilet paper merchant can go and do more interesting things, maybe you'll meet at a gym, bar or social event instead of the random and sometimes awkward social experience of a commercial transaction.
The human gets replaced by a robot doing the menial task, win for everyone (as long as the pie expands and he gets another more meaningful job).
Most new jobs are basically service jobs, so maybe now instead of handling toilet paper he'll give you a Starbucks coffee..
Ehhhhh, honestly I am not fundamentally opposed to the concept but realistically our whole economic model that the US has run off of the last 100 years. If every job that is not directly producing a tangible good is eliminated frankly their wont be enough consumers to make producing economically viable.
Beyond that, one could argue a brick and mortar provides ample oppurtunity for discovery, previewing, and discussion that amazon doesnt support as directly... and these brick and mortars are dying in part not because of true competition, but because of competition against someone who hasn't had to turn a profit for the last 15 years.
You mean, it's almost as though a few humans working with machines and genetically modified crops are able to provide for most of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for all of human kind, thus making labor completely irrelevant, while the people who own the machines and the corporations that run them are profiting?
And almost like the people who want to operate and maintain those machines have to take out huge student loans and gamble on being employable?
Amazon is a wasting disease. It is shuttering small businesses, putting thousands out of work, and filling a fraction of those jobs it destroys with sweatshop warehouse jobs. And in return, the president of the United States praises them for creating those jobs.
To say nothing of the negative impact they are having on authors. As with the music industry, it is becoming a superstar machine: either you quickly become a superstar, or you find yourself without a publisher.
What is the negative affect they are having on authors? Isn't Amazon the reason we have access to such amazing new talents as Hugh Howey (Wool series)?
The ability to independently publish into an established marketplace is a pretty great boon for aspiring authors.
That's like saying that the iOS App Store provides us with amazing games at a cheap price, so it hasn't been a net negative to the games industry on the whole.
It has. A handful of creators can make a living from that model, but most can't, because the glut of games drives down the prices substantially. It's a race to the bottom. And the App Store pays out 70% of the proceeds to creators. Amazon's Kindle publishing pays just 35% unless you agree to various conditions.
Aspiring authors aren't really the ones who are experiencing problems. If success is a bell curve, either end of the curve is fine, but the middle of the curve--those authors who are published but who have seen only moderate success--are getting cut by publishers in favor of a kind of VC model. Publishers bet on new talent, but only continue to invest in authors that achieve wide appeal.
This may seem fine, even optimal, to you, but there are lots of authors historically who did not achieve popularity until several books in, and many authors who were not successes in their own time but became successful after their deaths.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, would not have made it today. He was an author whose first novel sold well but every novel thereafter sold poorly (including The Great Gatsby). Today, he would have been dropped long before he wrote Gatsby.
The publishing industry now is experiencing the same transformation that movies and games have already gone through. Sequels, for example, are favored over original stories. Heck, look at the author you cited. Sequel after sequel.
Then again, the iOS App Store has also allowed a huge number of amateur developers to produce apps, and has basically instantiated an entire industry around App development. Sure, it sucks for the incumbents like Nintendo, whose Gameboy devices are now a tough sell. But essentially this democratisation of the publishing chain has led to a widespread increase in publishing of creative works(apps, books, art & craft via etsy), and a better cut for the creators, whilst also increasing the size of the markets they sell to.
Creators who are dropped by publishers have the ability to then self-publish. Hugh Howey is not publishing sequels, just completing (IMO) a series which is now done. His other works are receiving a lot of interest on Amazon as well. Not seeing a lot of downsides here, except to traditional publishing models, and frankly good riddance to them.
Yes, more people are publishing, but the glut means nobody can make any money. Prices have crashed; apps hover around $0.99, and $2.99 is now considered a tough sell. It's had a negative overall impact to the industry, both creators and publishers.
Anyway, I've said my piece. Long threads tend not to be terribly interesting to anyone except the participants. ;-)
Borders and Barnes & Noble killed the independent bookstore long before Amazon became a force in the publishing industry. I shed no tears for their defeat of the big box 'book stores.'
