Earth image by digitalart.
I have to get this news out to as many people as I can today. It isn’t because I have any news of my own I want to write about but because what I am seeing today has shaken me up and it needs to be shared. As many of you know, Michael Moore was out in California for the Occupy Oakland events after the police had become violent with the participants. He was also there to attend a regional meeting of Independent Bookstore Owners. There he was confronted by some of the indie bookstore owners and told that basically Amazon was like the Wall Streeters the demonstrators were protesting against. It was reported that his publisher was in the room and left as he was told these facts. Moore basically agreed with what he was told, admitting he hadn’t really thought about this before. (Really Michael, are we to believe that? But that’s an idea for a different post.)
Today the twitter channel is filled with some more outrageous Amazon-related news items. It looks as if the literary world is turning around to bite back at this behemoth. That is some of the good news. But what shocked me today is the fact that Amazon is not just large (go to www.facebook.com/sullivanstpress for lots of these news items) but that they are getting larger and nastier.
I turn to twitter when I feel that the news as it is happening isn’t being reported. Too many news outlets have a vested interest in not reporting about this type of egregious behavior by Amazon. I don’t know if you’ve been following the censorship tweets that have been posted, again on the same Facebook wall, but there again, where is the real outrage against this monster that is eating up our world?Authors are being threatened with permanent banning from the Amazon site if they are found, by Amazon, guilty of some of the most broadly stated terms that all authors have to agree to in order to have their books posted on the site with no redress and no one to contact should they oppose the ban.
Today’s news, though, tipped the scales for me. Not only does it look from the new chart someone has now posted (and can be found on the SSP Facebook page) that Amazon owns most of the world, but they have a new phone app that will be available on Saturday. If you download the app, go into your favorite stores, price the items you want to buy, send those prices to Amazon and not buy the goods there but take advantage of Amazon’s “largesse,” i.e., a $5.00 discount on the item, you will be doing them an enormous favor–all their research. And making use of that phone app so they can get more demographics. Thank you shoppers.
Amazon is Pacman, eating up the known world. They buy us all and they appeal to only one part of our being–that mad shopper who needs to be enticed all day long to order from Amazon. This season especially, Amazon is like The Brain, but with a plan that can work; they really do intend to take over the world, one shopper at a time.
