![Get The Right POV. (Image by By Taken by Shmuel Spiegelman using a Canon 10D [CC BY-SA 1.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0], via Wikimedia Commons)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/NYC-Skyline-1.jpg)
It’s all about degree. Perspective. Point of view. Intent.
I’m just me…trying to make my own dent in the world of books and short stories. But I just read an article (once again) about the Evil Empire Amazon’s “monopoly” on the world of publishing. Good points were made to be sure.
But we seem to forget something here, or maybe I’m just too naive and not plugged in anymore, but we all railed on and on about TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING, too, remember that?
Yeah, how those “Gatekeepers” (we used to call them) were so Ivory Towered and incestuous and so looking for that Quick Buck that all this “crap” was getting published. Or the Same Old Thing. That “They” Talked-the-Talk-but-Didn’t-Walk-the-Walk.
Remember?
How they screwed over authors with crappy covers and even shittier terms.
Remember?
Well…comes along a New Gorilla and—whoa!—the guns are quickly swung over to them as the newly painted target.
Pourquoi?
Because they’re kicking the snot out of traditional publishing.
(my enemy’s enemy…)
And I’m not saying all their business practices are stellar—but neither is traditional publishing’s!
But, oh, how quickly we forget.
Sure, if Amazon’s doing something illegal, they need to be held accountable for it—just like Traditional Publishing should similarly be held accountable (and has been taken so to task). New York—you’re not exactly smelling like a rose bush, either. But I find it so fascinating how articles and the Loudest Shouters are making a new “fact”; how everyone’s dumping on Amazon—but they ARE selling books…oh, and yeah, like Traditional Publishing. But Amazon gives authors a little more for their blood, sweat, and tears and they seems far more innovative than the Traditional world. And even Amazon is adopting similar “traditional practices,” like not publishing everything they get and instituting their own “Gatekeepers.”
Big Businesses are big businesses. They’ll always be doing something illegal or not-quite-moral somewhere. It’s what those entities do and the people who run them do. They’re not authors, they’re not editors. They’re Money People. Period. Sometimes they get caught…especially when spotlights are swung their way. Then they lawyer-up and the best arguments win and they move on.
It’s a business expense.
So don’t blindly be dumping on Amazon while forgetting all that Traditional Publishing also hasn’t done for you.
Nobody’s perfect.
Media needs stories.
Conflict sells.
Related Articles