This description of Amazon is so outrageously false, it boggles the mind. A bare minimum of research on Amazon’s history and strategy will tell you that the company was initially selling books at a LOSS to build market share at the expense of physical retailers — so it could later sell higher-priced, more profitable items to those same customers. It had zero to do with existing book prices, which by the way, were NOT bloated for print books — the ONLY kind of books Amazon sold when founded. In fact, traditional publishers were well known to lose money on most of their books, making it up on their bestsellers.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s squeezing of traditional publishers — by requiring larger discounts and kickbacks in the form of marketing fees — has made it much harder for those publishers to afford to keep publishing midlist authors — the ones that lost money for them — or to pay them as much as previously. For that reason, the average earnings of traditionally published authors have plummeted. So, if you’re going to call out companies for hurting authors, at least get the right ones!