Blaming Amazon for the shaky status of the “Big Six” book giants is akin to blaming the 45 rpm vinyl disc or the portable record player for the sudden onslaught of low-rent rock n’ roll music in 1955.
At that time, the Big Four record companies controlled 85% of the market. Over the next several years they lost half their market share to hundreds of unlikely self-taught artists produced by scores of hypemaster entreprenurial hustlers like Alan Freed, Sam Phillips, Dick Clark, and Berry Gordy Jr. Yes, much of the music was very crude, especially from a learned and “serious” musical standpoint. But the new music, played on cheap discs, enlivened the music industry, and with it, American culture.
Likewise, most of the new 99-cent ebook novels intruding onto prestigious sales lists are plotted, readable, and little else. They’re the first wave of a revolution in publishing which will lead to a transformation of literature—to better novels that will be readable and entertaining, but also significant and meaningful art.
New models for the novel are needed. New exemplars of value. The finely-detailed slow-moving “literary” novel is dead.
Right now Amazon is the chief delivery system for DIY writers and publishers. Amazon is the current-day record shop making new fiction accessible and affordable to all. To those who truly value reading and writing, isn’t that what literature is about?
Read THE TOWER by King Wenclas. The better e-novel. No-overhead literature. A revolution unto itself.
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