Here we go again, an American Industry shoots itself in the fucking head.
Amazon Kicks Independent Presses From Its Kindle Store.
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 constitute the Research & Development arm of their respective industries. And they get it for nothing.
The corporate model denies this. Their illogic 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 is that rather than plum the field of small presses or small recording labels for product that might have some jump, what actually happens? They put their legal engines in gear and drive the smaller guys out of business, they don’t understand how the quality of their own product then goes flat, becomes uncompetitive, even with itself, and they topple, taking the entire 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 that would sell fewer than a million units. Why? Because record companies, like the current era in book publishing are greedy and lazy. Getting out and moving product is hard work. You have to have reps in the field who knock on doors, visit stores, and check on product placement, who constantly revamp the 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, there’s enough to go around for everyone to be happy. It’s much easier, however, when you have a jillion seller that everyone can identify with and catch their coat tails. 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 up all over the place, 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 work anymore. Because what we have now is unregulated monopoly capitalism.
Fuck’m.
Do it anyway.
You heard it here.
JJP