Most SurvivalBlog readers are aware that I’ve been an outspoken critic of Amazon.com’s business practices, their leftist agenda, and their blatant censorship. I even went so far as to very publicly resign from the Amazon Associates program. I did so on principle, knowing that it would cost me nearly $30,000 per year in sales commissions. But I didn’t hesitate, because I knew that it was the right thing to do.
In this article, I will lay out some of the ways that Amazon has destroyed American book publishing, in their quest for monopolistic dominance.
The Flood of Schlock Books
To begin, I must describe how the publishing industry has changed profoundly in the past five years. Let me say bluntly: Amazon has ruined everything. By providing a cut-rate publishing platform for the masses, they’ve flooded the market with poorly-edited self-published schlock books. There are now literally five times more books available “in print” than there were in 2014. This means that many books with real merit from talented authors get lost in the shuffle. The book market is drowning in a sea of mediocrity. For book buyers, the dizzying array of books leaves them asking: What should I buy, and which books are even worth buying? With so many manipulated book reviews, it is hard to tell. There are even fake books that are sold as scams, and several YouTubers coach people on how to make money selling blank books as “a side hustle.” Even more strangely, some Amazon books filled with random gobbledygook are sold for thousands of dollars, in money laundering schemes. — or for discreetly funding graft. (You know, the same way that Hunter Biden sells his “art.”) Amazon publishing has become very strange, indeed.
With the now enormously larger “pie” of the book market, 99% of new writers never get noticed. There are hundreds of thousands of books still listed on Amazon that have sold less than 100 copies. These are available both as e-books and as “print on demand” paperback books, adding to the confusion for book buyers. The end result of this profusion of schlock books is that the major New York publishers now only sign contracts with well-established “big name” authors. My own agent (who is also my partner on e-books) can no longer land me any fiction book contracts from the major publishers, even though I’ve had three New York Times fictionbestsellers. That is how much the publishing market has changed. And much of that change can be attributed solely to Amazon. I’ve been told by market insiders that at least two of the major New York publishers are bleeding red ink and probably will no longer be in business by 2025. The traditional publishing industry is now in a desperate “adapt or die” mode.
Amazon Books, By The Numbers
Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader was launched in 2007. In 2014, there were 2 million books in Amazon’s Kindle e-book store. By 2018, that figure had jumped to 7 million. Fast forward to 2021, and there are now more than 10 million Kindle titles. It has been estimated that Amazon now controls 70.5% of domestic e-book sales.
But e-books are just part of the picture. There are now 48.5 million book titles (print and e-books, combined) listed at Amazon. They cleverly enlisted third-party sellers, allowing them to catalog and sell their books through Amazon, so that they could control the online market for out-of-print books. But internal documents show that Amazon considers these third-party sellers “competitors.” They only allow them to share some profits with Amazon for the sake of Amazon’s quest for total market dominance.
Amazon.com is the world’s largest retailer. At the corporate level, Amazon’s gross sales and gross profits have been huge. Their market capitalization is now more than $1 Trillion (that is trillion, with a T.) Amazon’s gross profit for a recent 12-month period was $167.677 Billion. And on that profit, in many years, they’ve structured their accounting to pay as little as 1.2% in taxes, in recent years.
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