One has to ask why Amazon is so willing to commit commercial suicide with its new print-on-demand strategy. My thinking is that the book trade is going through a revolution, but the revolution is occuring too soon for Amazon to think clearly about where its future lies. I think there are hundreds of thousands of authors wanting to see their books published and they need a place to hang out. Above all, I think that to live forever as a business you have to treat customers and producers fairly. Amazon does not seem to understand this basic rule. It assumes that print-on-demand is good for customers when it is not! Amazon is in danger of upsetting its own apple cart. Why get authors riled! They can really hurt your business.There are real problems with the author-publishing-consuming cycle. The biggest step for authors would be to eliminate all the intermediaries that wish to take money from them. This means to sell outside of Amazon, and I am sure that some enterprising young people will have the alternatives available for authors soon. Open source technologies will be an alternative for something so vital to pluralism in our modern society.
My problem is that I buy too many hard cover books and do not have enough shelves. I am sure that I would move to an alternative if that were to be available, and I am sure that technology that no one has even thought of right now is certainly going to put Amazon out of business if it continues to push authors around. Truth is that the Amazon system does not work for me where I want it too and I am not even in the market for print-on-demand.
I am equally sure that the monopolies practices people need to hire more employees capable of tearing apart the many monopolies presently in existence that need to be taken down a peg or two. It is time for the average person to say enough is enough with the high cost of education, medicine, and energy. It is time for a change in the way we view monopolization by multinational corporations in high technology industries, such as the education and media trades. They have done enough damage, and its time for change.