Amazon Kicks Independent Presses From Its Kindle Store!
Here We Go Again, An American Industry Shoots Itself In The…
So, Amazon wants a bigger piece of the Indy pie? First of all, Big Presses are pissed at Amazon because it’s Amazon who sets the price of a Press’s Kindle-ization of a book, not the publisher. . .That, in and of itself is odd. What makes it doubly bad for publishers large and small, is that the customer who buys a book, be it print or e-book, is construed as an Amazon customer, NOT a customer of the publisher. So, if you buy a book on Amazon, the publisher has no way of reaching you and bringing you into its family of customers. That is a fight that publishers, large and small, should take on. Repeat business is a lifeblood, and Amazon denies that to its suppliers, the publishers.
There’s a second battle however, which is always being waged in this era of American Giant Corporatism, and I can’t help but believe that it is this second battle, the one between Big and Small, that is responsible for this current controversy. Amazon isn’t kicking Indy presses to the curb because Amazon needs more money, or that the Indies somehow have the upper hand. LOL! If they needed more money Amazon could simply take ten cents more from every sale and their profits would soar even higher than they are. No, this has got to do with the sickening notion in the Unregulated Corporate Monopoly System that says there’s no room – no room at all – for the little guys. How are Amazon, and the giant publishing houses NOT partnered in this?
If business men and women (face it, mostly men) really believed the garbage they peddle about “entrepreneurialism,” (which they despise because it requires actual “competition” which is anathema to big business) they would understand that the small business, one that would find 10,000 sales and above just fine, basically constitutes the Research & Development arm of their respective industries. And they get it for nothing.
The corporate model denies this. Their illogical system says that, with all the units they must sell to make a BIG profit, any customer who is able to buy from a small independent is somehow depriving them of market share that is right-fully, somehow, theirs.
The key word here is BIG.
Big beats small, every time. What I’ve always found troubling is why big business doesn’t encourage small?
But the truth of the matter is that rather than plum the field of small presses for product that might have some jump, what actually happens is that huge companies put their legal engines in gear and drive the smaller guys out of business. Independent book retailers and publishers, they believe, wrongly, are stealing their customers.They don’t understand that when they destroy these businesses, how the quality of their own product then goes flat, becomes uncompetitive, even with itself, and they topple, taking entire support industries with them.
It’s happened before, too many times to count, and it’s happening now.

Whenever you hear a businessperson begin a sentence with “What people really want is…” you know their industry is doomed.
The collapse of the Recording Industry is a good case in point. Don’t believe that crap about iTunes and pirated recordings taking them down, they were already gone.
The record industry collapsed because no big label would take on an act selling fewer than a million units. I wonder how many artists right now are getting turned down because the labels are all hunting for the “Next Adele!” Just like writers now are being kicked aside while the big publishing houses piss themselves waiting for the “Next Harry Potter” the “Next Da Vinci Code!” We’ve all heard it, ad nauseum! Why? Because record companies, and their bretheren in book publishing, are greedy, stupid, and lazy. Getting out and moving product is hard work. You have to have reps in the field who knock on doors, visit retailers, offer incentives, and check on product placement, who constantly revamp publicity and sales materials, work the media, etc. You must also develop a – you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours – relationship with retailers and suppliers. It’s how you sell toothpaste. Books and recordings are really no different. And although profit margins are never huge, nor should they be, after all, books and recordings are small retail items, but there should be enough money to go around for everyone to be happy.
It’s much easier, and a lot more fun, however, to have a jillion seller that everyone can identify with, catch their coat tails, and ride the wave. Then you can get college girls to snort coke off your weenie and call in late for work in the morning. (Don’t you dare edit that last part out, believe me, it’s huge motivator in both the recording and publishing businesses.)
We all fell in love with Kindle, I did. But now, thinking about it, it should have gone the way of the Beta Max. When Amazon maneuvered into a position of exclusivity, like Sony did with the Beta Max video recorder way back when, alarms should have gone off all over the industry, and the VHS version of the Kindle, one that could accommodate all formats, and every kind of content, should have taken them to court, won, and put them under.
That’s regulated, free market capitalism, and it doesn’t exist anymore. Because what we have now is unregulated monopoly capitalism.
Fuck’m.
Do it anyway.
You heard it here.
JJP