The comics internet’s been afire and atwitter and presumably afacebook in response to Dan Nadel’s editorial in which he went off on some kickstarter project because they didn’t know Garo like Dan knows Garo, and also Amazon.
I think the most telling point Dan makes is this:
p.s.: Frank Santoro is having another big back issue sale this weekend in NYC!
In short, if you get an idea and try to crowdfund it, you’re a whiny little beggar man undeserving of kissing R. Crumb’s $700 napkin doodles…but if you’re the editor of the Comics Journal and you use your position at the top of the comics critical heap to shill for your friend’s basement sale — hey, that’s professionalism.
I don’t know anything about Garo. I don’t know anything about Kickstarter. I don’t know Box Brown or his comics. But nonetheless, I’m wearisomely familiar with Dan’s argument, because it’s not an argument. It’s an assertion of professional status and in-group clout, which boils down to little more than, “Hey! I’m a publisher and the editor of the Comics Journal, and you’re not. Go around the back, boy, and if you’re lucky I’ll let you drop some pennies in my awesome tin can, which is miles more authentic than your tin can, because it was pissed in by Gary Groth himself.”
I respect Dan’s accomplishments as a publisher; I have enjoyed his writing in the past; I think that he and Tim have done many great things with TCJ. But the signature weakness of Comics Comics remains. That weakness, in case anyone hasn’t noticed, is a supposedly jocular but in fact witheringly earnest cliquishness, which manifests in fulsome sycophancy towards those who are further up the pecking order, and bullying contempt towards those who are further down. To the extent that art comics is an irrelevant insular subculture, it is not because people use the word “Garo” wrong, or because they hand money over to Jeff Bezos so he can do horrible things like support marriage equality. Rather, it’s because, in the art comics world, people like Dan, with institutional power and authority, continue to treat their artform like a grimy little treehouse, from which they emerge only briefly to blink and snicker contemptuously at all those poor schmucks (Dan’s word) who don’t know the password.
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Sean Collins has a thoughtful discussion of Dan’s post and related matters.
A commenter named Shannon on the tcj.com thread also had some good things to say.
And here’s the Kickstarter drive that started the ruckus.
The above is from an ad that seems to run perpetually on the Comics Journal site. It’s for celebrity photographer Eric Curtis’ Fallen Superheroes. “Using superheroes (think Batman, Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Superman) as the allegory, Curtis explores the not-so-glamorous and sometimes dark realities of those who strive to live their dreams against all odds,” says the copy if you click through. Plastering that all over your site is a lot more dignified than funding through Kickstarter, I think you’ll agree.
Huh, yes I’ve been following this foofarrah. I think Nadel suffers not so much from cliquishness as from an excessive Puritanism. For Christ’s sake, what the hell is wrong with tapping Kickstarter capital? What’s so evil about Amazon?
That said, I’ve participated in projects with Ian Harker and they were very pleasant but rather amateurish. That doesn’t bother me as I consider myself just a fan who cartoons, but I can understand how Nadel could get cheesed off at the somewhat pretentious claims to art comix status put forth in that proposal.
Cliquishness and puritanism aren’t so far apart. Either way, it’s about purity.
I’m thinking of starting a Kickstarter drive for T-shirts that say, “I was put down by Dan Nadel before being put down by Dan Nadel was cool.”
Hey, Robert, zat true?
I think by now Nadel either a) regrets posting such a vicious piece, or b)is hunkered down in denial about how dickish that piece was.
That seems to be the current consensus: Nadel is a dick.
Hey Noah, thanks for liking my comment!
Well, Nadel edited one of the most important reprints since the original Smithsonian collection; Comics Comics had a valuable critical project; and TCJ.com under his stewardship is a million times better than the 1.0 version (not that that’s a high bar to clear). Let’s not forget to praise him during all these burials!
That said, I don’t get the criticisms against Kickstarter from Nadel et al. Private patronage of art has a long history, and weren’t lots of books funded by prior subscriptions back in olden times?
I got the impression that Nadel’s rant was just that, a rant. Not that rants can’t be revealing, but I’m with AB and Collins. While the TCJ/Comics Comics guys evan be cliquish, what I read seemed more like an ill-placed, under-thought effort to draw lines in the sand.
I do like the conversation his tirade started at TCJ and on other sites (this one included).
Hey Robert–that was pretty much my FB status update on Sunday: “I was irrationally attacked with no provocation by Dan Nadel before being irrationally attacked with no provocation by Dan Nadel was cool.”
Jones, I did mention that I respect Dan, and pointed out that he’s done good things with the site. But certainly no harm in saying so again.
Nate, I’m not really seeing the distinction between cliquishness and drawing lines in the sand. They seem to go together fairly easily.
Andrei–
Dan’s bullshit side is so much of a piece with the contemporary hipster ethos that it’s a hard point not to make. I’m sure we’re not the only ones making comments like that. Credit where it’s due, though: you got there before I did.
I’m pretty much in accord with Noah about Dan in general. He’s an accomplished guy who deserves respect for many things. But he’s also a clique-minded jerk. That rant about the Garo project was petty even for him. Can’t he wait for the book to come out before he criticizes it?
Eh, well…I don’t know that my glass house is the best vantage from which to throw stones at him for that.
I feel like I should add…I meant no slight on Frank Santoro. Lord knows I use this site to promote my own work and that of my friends to the extent I’m able. I’m not objecting to the capitalism which Frank’s engaging in, but to the double standard Dan advocates which makes capitalism okay only when it’s done by those who have a certain kind of institutional clout.
I really know exceedingly little about Dan Nadel (he used to run some site called “Comics Comics, which I never visited; now helps run tcj.com, and I’m not particularly clear on what his official duties are there). And I know bupkis about this Garo thing.
However, much — indeed, ALL, save for the penultimate paragraph on the subject — of his oh-so-outrageous screed is actually devoted to jabs about what he makes clear are absurd, wrong-headed, self-inflating comments in the glib pitch for the project. Its lack of historic accuracy, distorted description of Garo itself, and meaningless (at best) mention of today’s “underground cartoonists.”
And, it also irritates him that an anthology is being hyped with the grandiose goal of hoping [from the pitch] “to engender discussion about the trans-national influence of manga on the broader world of art-comix.” When the previous parts of the pitch sure come across as indicating a muddy lack of understanding about the many aspects of Garo, and modern independent comics in general.
Now, mebbe whoever wrote the appeal for the Kickstarter funding was not involved in the editing process, and was not particularly knowledgeable, just chosen for their ability to craft a slick, compelling-sounding line. However, it hardly induces confidence in the result.
Re that penultimate paragraph: what it comes across as indicating is, “Kickstarter fatigue.” When what by some is employed for funding a hopelessly-uncommercial-but-worthy project, now metastasizes into use for anything. Thereby inescapably sucking away funds that might instead have gone to the hopelessly-uncommercial-but-worthy projects, and further fattening Amazon.
A reaction reminiscent of Gary Groth’s disgust that the “artists’ revolt” that led to the creation of Image Comics, simply led to more of the same ol’ superhero crap.
Nadel says: “I’m so sick of seeing perfectly viable (viable, but not smart or interesting; viable) comic book projects on there…” Now people are using Kickstarter for “hustling dough for your movie-ready zombie-baseball graphic novel, or fucking Cyberforce…”
Indeed, in a recent New Yorker cartoon, several convicts are gathered ’round a table in the prison exercise yard. One explains, “thanks to Kickstarter, we’re building a tunnel.”
Moreover, rather that “I’m a publisher and you’re not” snobbery, what I also see is awareness of the larger ramifications of what all this metastasized-Kickstarter nonsense is doing to the comics ecosystem. Alternative comics publishers like Fantagraphics, D&Q, Top Shelf, etc., are not some “treehouse” of snobbish cliquery; they have been and are an incredibly powerful and important force in creating and sustaining the rich field of alternative comics we can feast from.
That Kickstarter — by skipping publishers for even “perfectly viable…comic book projects” — and Amazon, by fighting mightily to engulf, devour, and destroy all “bricks and mortar” book and comic book stores out there, and strangling the life out of publishers, are toxic forces to this ecosystem, is pretty obvious.
But then, to entitlement-laded, “I want what I want when I want it, and I shouldn’t have to pay for it, because ‘information wants to be free’ ” moderns out there, all these larger concerns are incomprehensible.
Looking at the project itself ( http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1154777626/sp7-alt-comics-tribute-to-garo-manga ), it seems innocuous enough. But one doesn’t have to be as deeply involved in comics as Nadel himself to understand — if not necessarily share — his irritation.
Which, by the way, surely was one of the greatest publicity boosts the anthology could have hoped for, and surely brought in more than a few “sympathy votes.”
The editors (Ian Harker and Box Brown) can also be grateful it wan’t Gary Groth writing the piece. It would have gone on for five times the length, been infinitely more harsh, and included at least one “meretricious.”
Where is the real Mike Hunter, and what have you done with his idiosyncratic formatting?
At first I thought that this ws going to be an anthology of Garo‘s 60s comics (especially Tsuge, natch)! Bummer!
Mike: “Amazon, […] fighting mightily to engulf, devour, and destroy all “bricks and mortar” book and comic book stores out there[.]”
Good riddance to those.
Oops! please forget the “book” part!
As one of the schmucks, I think this piece summed up the reasons behind the general outcry over Nadel’s admittedly, rather petty and minor post rather well. If he, as an expert on the subject of Garo(which I,like you, know nothing about) had a problem with the blurb describing the anthology, he simply could have written to the editors, pointed out his issues and suggested a change or two. But he didn’t. He lambasted them publicly on the pages of the comics magazine of record. The same mean-spirited bullying behind that gesture is felt in his writing and his direction of TCJ and the little art-comics world that is his fiefdom. Coming on the heels of a large number of rejections for BCAGF (yours truly was one),the piece was the tipping point for a good portion of the community-and I think you summed up the reasons why very succinctly. (this is not to deny the man his many accomplishments-which I respect-although I don’t much care for his taste- and which you’ve detailed)
That said-
Re: Mr. Hunter’s point above:
“That Kickstarter and Amazon are….toxic forces to that ecosystem”
–I’d have to see some numbers before I’d believe that.
As a former publisher(“pood”, and my own stuff as well)I can’t imagine Comic Book Shops are awash in Kickstarter books. That the books may show up in “Previews” may be true(or not-I don’t know)-but it doesn’t mean a shop has to order it (& if it’s not from a publisher they know, most likely they won’t. I speak from experience and zilions of boxes of comics in my house!)
And I can’t imagine we’re talking so many sales on Amazon for most(underscore “most”) of these projects that it would amount to much either. But hey, the only evidence I have is my own experience w/Amazon( I don’t have access to any info about sales of Kickstarter books on Amazon)-which indicates that all of the concern is much ado about nothing. More likely than not, we’re not talking about big numbers in the larger scheme of things.
But if we’re talking the economy, one could also argue that printers,local and otherwise, who have been suffering, are getting a boost of all this activity-but again, that’s pure conjecture.
The Amazon discussion, re: mom-n-pop’s, is part of a larger discussion about corporate America, Barnes and Noble and Wal-Mart; and my sympathies lie w/Mom-n-Pop(my wife was an independent retailer for years, so I know what they’re fighting against), but again, I’m not sure Kickstarter is a major factor in that general trend–which has been going on for decades. (does Amazon even sell floppies? Last I knew you couldn’t sell saddle-stitched pamphlets on Amazon.)
As for Gary Groth’s complaints about Image, the b&w revolution, etc. of the ’80’s-again, Fantagraphics is still here, most of those B & W’s are long forgotten. And Image–not a company I follow much-(I read lotsa Fanta’ though)-does seem to put out a good book or two now and again. At least that’s what I’m told. And comics shops sell them pretty well, do they not?
Over and over across the years we’ve heard that comics aren’t selling and shops not doing well because of a lack of variety(among other things); the base of appeal is not great enough-etc. etc.
And then, when something like Kickstarter comes along that might fuel an enormous boost in variety-there are individuals who would rather there were some kind of (editorial?) control. And viable projects that should be w/a publisher? Well, obviously those projects weren’t deemed “viable” by publishers or they wouldn’t be on Kickstarter.
All of this fear. It’s exasperating.
I don’t really have a problem with him talking about his issues with the confusion around Garo publicly. But sneering at people because they don’t have the institutional resources you do and are therefore forced to look for alternatives seems like a pretty crappy thing to do.
“But sneering at people because they don’t have the institutional resources you do and are therefore forced to look for alternatives seems like a pretty crappy thing to do.”
I wouldn’t normally comment just to basically say, “Seconded!” but that sentence alone pretty much sums up all my feelings on the matter. Well said, Noah.
@Noah: “I don’t really have a problem with him talking about his issues with the confusion around Garo publicly.”
I guess my feeling is (from my vantage point of rather advanced years) that these are young guys, more or less just out of the gate-(by my admittedly geezer standards)-it seems the gentlemanly thing to do to cut ’em some slack. Or at the very least -there’s another way to talk about it without shaming them.
Especially-as you say- we’re talking about someone w/ greater institutional resources.
I sometimes shame people too, so I don’t want to rule that out entirely…but I have to admit, I don’t really see why he felt he had to do it, or what is at stake in using or not using Garo correctly that makes it worth calling people names. It would be one thing if they were transparently misrepresenting their product for financial gain or some sort of cache…like this. But Garo is sufficiently obscure in the States that it seems unlikely to be either a financial or a critical draw…so what you’ve got is editors who are, at worst confused.
I don’t know; maybe his shoes were too tight that day or something….
I suppose that you can’t be cliquish without drawing lines in the sand, but that you can draw lines in the sand without being cliquish (which would make you iconoclastic?).
Anyway, since I agree that Nadel was being both cliquish and drawing lines in the sand, I was probably making a distinction without a difference.
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Jones, one of the Jones boys says:
Where is the real Mike Hunter, and what have you done with his idiosyncratic formatting?
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Heh! Just being wild n’ crazy…
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Domingos Isabelinho says:
Mike: “Amazon, […] fighting mightily to engulf, devour, and destroy all “bricks and mortar” book and comic book stores out there[.]”
Good riddance to those.
…Oops! please forget the “book” part!
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Thank Gawd for that disclaimer! Oh, how I love little bookstores (especially used bookstores); long may they survive.
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Geoff says:
…Re: Mr. Hunter’s point above:
“That Kickstarter and Amazon are….toxic forces to that ecosystem”
–I’d have to see some numbers before I’d believe that.
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I’m familiar with this phenomenon from many a past argument. No amount of figures or mountains of evidence ever changed anybody’s mind about anything. (I exaggerate but slightly.) It’s called “staying the course”…
No neat figures here (not that it would have made a whit of difference), but re Amazon and books, the case is clear:
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While Amazon consistently argues that its low prices are better for readers–who doesn’t love saving an average of $15 on a new hardcover?-one can’t help but wonder if this will be good for readers over the long-term. What will happen when writers stop receiving royalties because their books are being sold so cheaply? How will alternative and small presses continue to operate when they can no longer compete within Amazon’s pricing scheme? (Books are sold from publishing houses to Amazon, usually at a discount, though Amazon has been stepping up the pressure for greater discounts, and small presses are feeling the hit.)
Eventually, fewer small press offerings will be very bad for readers who prefer less mainstream or more diverse reading fare. In fact, as large corporations such as Barnes and Noble, Walmart and Target have increasing influence over how a book is produced (offering input on everything from storyline to book cover to book title), and then offer their books at drastically lower prices than the traditional $25 price, it’s possible that offerings to readers will become increasingly narrow. Goodbye unconventional characters. Goodbye literary experimentation. Goodbye careful line-editing.
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Much more nastiness by Amazon at http://thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/how-amazon-hurts-readers .
Also: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/23/145468105/publishers-and-booksellers-see-a-predatory-amazon .
While Amazon indeed doesn’t sell “floppies,” it sells the regular gatherings of a set of those issues in book forms, at a far greater discount than a comics store can.
And Amazon, like Wal-Mart, by using its massive muscle to browbeat suppliers of its “product” into supplying it at huge discounts, thereby slashes the profits those suppliers need for survival, paying creators, taking chances on something that might not be a “sure sale” down to the bone.
(The evils of Wal-Mart: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/26-9 , http://suite101.com/article/how-wal-mart-hurts-america-a317136 , http://suite101.com/article/walmart-the-high-cost-of-low-prices-a188059 .)
And sure, like Amazon, Wal-Mart saves “consumers” money ( http://money.families.com/blog/walmart-friend-or-foe ). But the cost to the greater society in destruction of small businesses, low-paying jobs, damage to manufacturers, production driven to overseas sweatshops while U.S. manufacturing shrivels away, are far higher.
But, Hevvin forbid that people should look an inch beyond their pocketbook.
Re comics moving into digital versions, which I consider a big mistake ( http://www.standard.net/topics/business/2011/03/07/comic-book-stores-retailers-see-dark-times-ahead-because-digital-age ), well, Amazon’s there too, selling e-books at a loss for starters to undercut and destroy the competition: http://www.inreads.com/blog/2012/06/27/are-e-books-hurting-independent-bookstores/ .
Re Kickstarter, it’s too relatively new and relatively tiny a phenomenon to assess with as much clarity. There certainly are many valuable functions it can perform. However, if just a few comics that could have been put out by full-fledged, committed publishers instead are promoted and sold by Kickstarter, those are obviously a financial loss to publishers. Which, unless they’re Marvel and DC, rolling in movie money, hurts institutions which are vital to the comics ecosystem.
(Hell, even Marvel and DC, for all the commercial crap they put out, are vital to that ecosystem. Superhero comics sales helping keep comics shops that offer alternative fare afloat; giving the occasional high-profile, high-paying job to indie or “arts” comics creators.)
“Eventually, fewer small press offerings will be very bad for readers who prefer less mainstream or more diverse reading fare.”
A major reason I go to Amazon is that I can’t find most philosophy or film theory or even many of the fiction writers I’m looking for at book stores. I question that the majority of small bookstores have ever been particularly good for small press (of which, I’m primarily interested in academic books). Back when Borders was just starting to spread outside of Michigan (before it went public), they had an amazing selection of fairly obscure stuff. Their store in Dallas was the only new bookstore where I’d shop off the shelf.
Amazon makes a much wider variety of books available than any bookstore can, and it makes them available to people located far outside urban population centers. You can argue that bookstores have other benefits if you want, but if you’re talking about availability of just about anything for the vast majority of the population, Amazon is a huge boon.
And it seems to me that Kickstarter is part of that. It uses Amazon’s infrastructure to make it possible for projects that probably never would have seen the light of day to reach an audience. I’m sure many of those projects are stupid…but many things that get published are really stupid.
It ends up getting dangerously close to Dan whining because publishers like Picturebox and Fanta don’t have the control over the market that they used to.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Amazon makes a much wider variety of books available than any bookstore can, and it makes them available to people located far outside urban population centers. You can argue that bookstores have other benefits if you want, but if you’re talking about availability of just about anything for the vast majority of the population, Amazon is a huge boon.
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Sure, it has all that. Never mind the factor that if Amazon has its way (as the info quoted in my earlier post notes) that “wider variety of books” might not GET to be published in the future.
If I were dictator (or, a far less likely scenario, if “our” government actually tried to level the playing field between small businesses and megacorporations), they and Wal-Mart would not be allowed to slash prices so grossly that small businesses could not compete.
Which would still make available Amazon’s access to hard-to-find books (or serve isolated communities), and protect smaller bookstores.
Of course, that would have the GOP frothing at the mouth over interfering with the “free market.” How those giants should be allowed to use their massive purchasing power to force suppliers to give them huge discounts.
Of course, when it came to G.W. Bush’s Medicare prescription plan, the Republican-dominated Congress ordered that Medicare should not be allowed to use its massive purchasing power to force the pharmaceutical industry to give it huge discounts, thus saving taxpayers billions. ( http://safepatientproject.org/posts/2251-cu_report_80_of_the_time_the_lowest_retail_price_beats_medicare_part_d_donut_hole_prices )
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And it seems to me that Kickstarter is part of that. It uses Amazon’s infrastructure to make it possible for projects that probably never would have seen the light of day to reach an audience. I’m sure many of those projects are stupid…but many things that get published are really stupid.
It ends up getting dangerously close to Dan whining because publishers like Picturebox and Fanta don’t have the control over the market that they used to.
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Picturebox and Fanta used to have “control over the market”? Dunno about Picturebox, but throughout the entire life of Fantagraphics, the market was overwhelmingly glutted with stuff Messrs. Groth and Thompson found utterly odious, so that in many cases Fanta fare could never even squeeze into comics-store shelves.
Even with the rise of other, competing alt-comics publishers, well before Kickstarter, Fanta hardly had much of a “control over the market,” even in the non-superhero comics arena.
Funny how, while Amazon is being defended, Dan Nadel and Fantagraphics are being portrayed as massively-powerful “gatekeepers,” using their planet-shaking force to cast any comics that don’t meet with their approval into the Outer Darkness.
(As a sign what a powerful “gatekeeper” Nadel is (sarcasm alert), note how after his anti-Kickstarter comments, no opinions critical of his stand were to be seen, anywhere!)
If you want to see something that truly has “gatekeeper” power, from that link in my earlier post:
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Amazon may on its surface appear diverse, comprehensive and democratic in its wide array of offerings. Yet its danger lies in its monopolization of the power over what so many read. Suppose that tomorrow, founder Jeff Bezos decided to exclude all books written by women? Or all novels depicting homosexual relationships?
Perhaps this sounds unthinkable in our open market. Yet just a year ago, “Amazon de-ranked hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books,” writes Onnesha Roychoudhuri in the November/December issue of The Boston Review. “Without a sales rank, the visibility of the titles plummeted.” Though the books were eventually made available once again, Amazon representatives offered little explanation as to what happened, nor were any changes made to safe-guard similar actions in the future.
…And who could forget the whirlwind couple of days during which Macmillan refused to cooperate with Amazon’s book markdowns for the Kindle? Macmillan CEO John Sargent flew out to speak with Amazon execs, hoping to negotiate a pricing model that would be fair to publishers and writers. Before Sargent even got off his plane, Amazon had removed the buy buttons from all Macmillan books. (They were later replaced, but the vulnerability of writers and publishers was felt around the world.)
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http://thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/how-amazon-hurts-readers .
Not to mention Apple, whose apps store openly censors content.
I don’t think this makes any sense, Mike. If the books are more available and more people can buy them, that isn’t going to make such books less likely to be published. And by supporting kickstarter, Amazon’s making it easier for people to get their books out there, not harder.
Monopolization can be a problem; I didn’t say that Amazon was perfect or that it solved all problems forever. But insisting that it’s going to limit access contradicts the fact that for most books and for most people, it makes many, many more books wildly more accessible than they ever were before. (And it does have online competition in Barnes and Noble, for example.)
I actually think that one of the big problems with Amazon is the lack of taxation. I think there should be a federal internet tax, which would generate much needed revenue and help level the playing field for local businesses.
Fanta and Picture Box may not be hugely powerful gatekeepers…but they are gatekeepers. The fact that they don’t have tons of power is actually why something like Kickstarter might seem like a threat.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I don’t think this makes any sense, Mike. If the books are more available and more people can buy them, that isn’t going to make such books less likely to be published.
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Sheesh. You’d think I was talking rocket science here. More books that have been published in the past, or current “Amazon is not totally as monopolistic as it’s doing its damnedest to be” system are made easily accessible through Amazon.
However, the concern is what the ever-increasing power of Amazon will do in the future. To quote that oh-so-difficult bit again:
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While Amazon consistently argues that its low prices are better for readers–who doesn’t love saving an average of $15 on a new hardcover?-one can’t help but wonder if this will be good for readers over the long-term. What will happen when writers stop receiving royalties because their books are being sold so cheaply? How will alternative and small presses continue to operate when they can no longer compete within Amazon’s pricing scheme? (Books are sold from publishing houses to Amazon, usually at a discount, though Amazon has been stepping up the pressure for greater discounts, and small presses are feeling the hit.)
Eventually, fewer small press offerings will be very bad for readers who prefer less mainstream or more diverse reading fare. In fact, as large corporations such as Barnes and Noble, Walmart and Target have increasing influence over how a book is produced (offering input on everything from storyline to book cover to book title), and then offer their books at drastically lower prices than the traditional $25 price, it’s possible that offerings to readers will become increasingly narrow. Goodbye unconventional characters. Goodbye literary experimentation. Goodbye careful line-editing.
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Emphasis added; from http://thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/how-amazon-hurts-readers .
You might as well say, “I don’t think the Supreme Court voting to let corporations donate unlimited amounts of money secretly to political campaigns is a problem, because we’ve still got democracy.” Yeah, right now…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
And by supporting kickstarter, Amazon’s making it easier for people to get their books out there, not harder.
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How noble of Amazon! It may squeeze, bleed dry, and threaten publishers, but it tolerates this pocket-sized phenomenon, which it permits and profits from. Because a batch of scattered individuals doing Kickstarter campaigns for one book or another are even less of a threat to its market domination than some puny indie publisher.
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Monopolization can be a problem…
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“Can be”? I guess I’m just a pessimistic sourpuss…
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I actually think that one of the big problems with Amazon is the lack of taxation. I think there should be a federal internet tax, which would generate much needed revenue and help level the playing field for local businesses.
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Hurrah! I’ll heartily agree with that. But the GOP wants to “starve government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub”*; and the spoiled-rotten, entitlement-laden public, awash in right-wing propaganda, sees taxation as theft. Can’t believe the government gives them anything for their money. (Look how well that attitude has worked for Greece…)
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Fanta and Picture Box may not be hugely powerful gatekeepers…but they are gatekeepers.
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Why, ’cause they don’t publish every single thing that’s offered to them, or publicize every single comics-related bit of info? The horror! Aren’t you a “gatekeeper” too, then?
*As right-wing pundit Grover Norquist put it…
I think there’s legitimate reason to fear that Amazon’s aggressive pricing will make them the only game in town for anybody not living in one of 10 major US cities, and not just for people living outside urban areas. If this happens, then the big question is whether Amazon will continue to carry a wide variety of books at reasonable prices. It could happen, but I don’t want to find out if it will.
As for the whole gatekeepers thing, I think its fair to say that Fantagraphics and Picturebox have been cultural gatekeepers, but like Mike I very much doubt they were ever major forces in the market, or that Groth or Nadel ever thought of themselves that way.
Mike, I guess I’m something of a gatekeeper…but it’s a little different in that nobody here makes any money. I’m really not that far from just random person setting up a blog for free…which is pretty much what I am, anyway.