Invisible indies or just outside the "margins"?

[Hopscotch]

Umm, what’s wrong with this article?

Penguin Random House is buying Simon & Schuster. That’s bad for readers.
Washington Post  November 25, 2020

...the proposed consolidation of the publishing business is bad for authors, bad for readers and bad for American culture.

As the number of publishers shrinks, authors find themselves with fewer potential buyers for their proposals and manuscripts….And readers face a shelf of titles further dominated by familiar bestsellers most likely to earn big payouts for massive corporations….A vibrant democracy needs more editorial diversity representing a broader range of tastes and interests….margins already are so squeezed that publishers do not have as much money “to take risks on new authors who don’t have followings.”...

[The] root problem is the swelling power of Amazon….the Justice Department’s fixation on low prices has allowed Amazon to become a dominant buyer and retailer of publishers’ books. The online giant is now so large that it can impose increasingly challenging terms on publishers.....Publishers have responded in exactly the way we’re seeing this week: further consolidation....

[The] situation is so extreme that the Justice Department should allow publishers to engage in collective bargaining with Amazon. That could help protect publishers’ margins and ensure at least a little variety among our creative gatekeepers....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/penguin-random-house-is-buying-simon-and-schuster-thats-bad-for-readers/2020/11/25/e53d5382-2f40-11eb-860d-f7999599cbc2_story.html

[Simon Haynes]

There's been discussion about this from a few indies on Twitter. It's like indies don't exist because we're not part of some Big Authorised Business, but hey, they can keep their fantasies ;-)

The other day I had a #1 bestseller in a certain category (not a particularly minor one - Hitchhiker's Guide was in there, for example), and when I checked out the top #100 I had 13 other books in there too.

They probably wish I was a little LESS visible...

[LilyBLily]

The article is just like the ones I've read for years about low-carb diets. First they reluctantly present the results of such diets: all good. Then they pooh-pooh them anyway and go back to insisting that high carb is the healthy way to eat. Huge gap in logic.

It's Amazon's fault that the 800-pound gorilla of trad pub now known as Penguin Random House is buying S&S? The same gap in logic. Always flogging the standard line even when it makes no sense. If Hachette, another world-dominating publisher, had bought S&S, would it be Amazon's fault? Amazon's presence in France, Hachette's home base, is not large according to my understanding.