Subterranean Homesick Blues

I wanted to criticize Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, because I felt that in his introduction of the new kindles, Bezos repeatedly peddled the lie that a book is created by one person, and that therefore a book’s author should be the sole entity to profit from the sale of the book. (Aside, of course, from Amazon itself.) …

…my issue is not with self-publishing. My issue is with Bezos profiting from this false narrative that an Amazon monopoly will benefit both readers and writers. In truth, I don’t think it will benefit anyone. In the long run, I don’t even think it will benefit Amazon, because if they succeed in destroying publishers, the quality of the books they sell will suffer, and even fewer people will be inclined to spend their evenings reading.