Amazon: A Hungry Female Tarantula Amidst Digital Bananas
July 17, 2015
I read “The Book World Need Not Fear Amazon.” The essay tips its fedora to Amazon’s 20th year in business. I am reminded: “It [Amazon] kick started the ebook revolution.” Revolutions are good, aren’t they?
The main idea is that publishers are not too thrilled to find the Amazon tarantula in their now mostly empty book stores. The revenue from backlists is no longer the olive groves they once were.
The write up states:
Some publishers believe that, essentially, Bezos’s company despises them: they are unnecessary intermediaries between authors and the reading public. And then there are the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses, and the company’s tax avoidance … The news that the European commission is investigating Amazon’s business practices – among which is the stipulation that rivals should never receive more favorable terms – has brought cheer.
But the kicker is this statement:
Perhaps Amazon will destroy literary culture. Or perhaps in 20 years’ time we’ll find it hard to remember, as we do with Microsoft, why we were so afraid of it.
Fascinating. The problem is not what Amazon has done. The problem is what book publishers were unable to do. The emergence of a digital book powerhouse comes as a result of publishers who were content and still are thrilled to operate with water wheels and oxen as sources of power.
The Amazon plugs in to a market that no longer reads by candlelight. The fear is warranted, but I don’t have too much sympathy for those who are increasingly disintermediated and marginalized.
Stephen E Arnold, July 17, 2015
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