Today’s blogpost by Joe Konrath, titled Exploited Writers in an Unfair Industry, is perhaps the most compelling piece ever written on the subject, and Joe alone has written about it on innumerable occasions. I’m not going to rehash it for you here. You’re better off clicking the link and reading it yourself.

I will, however, show you these two paragraphs (regarding the Big 6 publishers in New York), which lay at the heart of his argument. This is about as concise as it gets, folks. It hits the bullseye from 500 yards.

The Big 6 fear (rightfully) that Amazon is using ebooks to sell Kindles and Prime memberships. This is scary because people are becoming conditioned to buy directly from Amazon using their devices.

That doesn’t give the Big 6 a reason to collude. It gives them a reason to compete. But they can’t compete, because they treat authors poorly, treat readers poorly, don’t innovate, and are only familiar with an archaic business model.

Do yourself a big favor and go read this whole post.