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| Stephen Colbert, Powell’s, and Amazon I have occasionally launched sorties of barbed adverbs at the large online bookseller to the north (see here and here), much to everyone’s disinterest. And yet, my warnings were prescient! Amazon is so big (41% of the dead tree copies, two-thirds of digital) that it exercises enormous control over what gets published and what price it sells for. And because of this might, they can punish unfavored publishers, as they have done with Hachette, one of the big five. (Backstory here in a quick recap.) Hachette’s crime is negotiating with Apple’s e-book service. Amazon is essentially saying: “be a damn shame if someone came in here and took away your Kindle titles” while smacking a thin, nerdy fist into an open palm. The authors, of course, are getting screwed and hate this, but most authors are voiceless bit players in a grand epic. But not all of them: … |
Source: Beervana
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