Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con
Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.
5/
Think of #healthcare. Consolidation in #pharma lead to price-gouging, where hospitals were suddenly paying 1,000% more for routine drugs. Hospitals formed regional monopolies and boycotted pharma companies unless they lowered their prices - and then turned around and screwed insurers, jacking up the price of care. Health insurers gobbled each other up in an orgy of mergers and fought the hospitals.
6/
And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html
But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three.
4/
Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con
Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.
5/
And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html
But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three.
4/
But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:
It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the #WritersStrike and #ActorsStrike).
3/
When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost *four*. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as #StephenKing said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).
2/
Going to #Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!
https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826
2/
nostr:npub1zle9nhxsw0wr6s3enc0tc23drjaqv3wt60mzast4pen59q4y4kgq3738k8 no, it's from the July issue.
JOIN... The Church of the #SubGenius BECOME AN ORDAINED MINISTER NOW!
SACRED SCRIBE #273 RIDER
#SLACK OFF GET WEIRD PLOT
RECOMMENDED VIEWING FOR THE #SUBGENIUS SCHOLAR
Join me in saying aloud that you are here for #SLACK
The paranoid style in American airport terminal naming
Steve: 1
Secret Service: 0
#HackerCrackdown #OperationSundevil
Right here. The difference between #liberals and #leftists in one sharp graf, in Naomi Klein's forthcoming DOPPELGANGER https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610326/doppelganger
nostr:npub1qlpta30se5pqxlpwfx0q563ahhxxaz6hrtjgn67e7jqfzmh467vqgw3wu4 nostr:npub1ztc55dflshzvtw4zuzdgxh73d4ycec0q8v8fvvp3d360as2qd89qpwjfs8 Have this framed and hanging on a wall in our bathroom at home!
#UlyssesPacts are how wise people protect themselves from themselves
https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f
#FLOSS #CreativeCommons #IrrevocableLicenses #UlyssesWasAHacker
Talking about federating in the future shows humility and foresight.
You know what would show more humility and foresight?
Federating right now.
https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f
#MoneyTalksBullshitWalks #DeedsNotWords #WeDontGetFooledAgain
