Quote:
Originally Posted by G. M. Palmer
How are readers being screwed by Amazon?
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There's a bit of circular logic to it.
People are naturally drawn to the place that sells a product for a cheaper price than another place. Amazon is typically the cheapest place to buy books (and many other things besides). As a result, independent presses and small businesses that actually require a profit margin on each individual
item they sell -- as opposed to observing an overall profit on hundreds of thousands of items collectively -- don't get the business that they would in the absence of a corporate behemoth.
This assumes, of course, that people would always be willing to pay $20+ for a book. I don't think that's the case, personally. But the other alarming trend is that when all the smaller presses start to close down because they can't compete with a large scale entity like Amazon, then the only arbiters of literature become the entities that can mass produce and mass distribute.
But the real problem is that people, for the most part, aren't wealthy. They'll only spend twice as much as what they have to if they truly believe in the deeper value of their money and think about where it goes. For the most part, the immediacy and cheapness of going on to Amazon is more valuable than trying to keep a small scale publishing house afloat. There's a real disconnect between dollars and sense.