Reading in the Conglomerate Era

It’s a worrying phenomenon. Consolidation seems to be accelerating in all creative industries.

You used to have many movie studios. Many different businesses you could go to rent a movie or buy a movie.

Now you have consolidated streaming services and studios. This makes it more difficult for people to create things outside of what the mainstream wants. In the past if you had a rejection you have many different studios to go to. If Blockbuster didn’t want to carry your movie you could have many different other rental stores or businesses to sell your DVDs. Now there are only a handful of options.

Same thing is happening in video games. In music.

At least in books you have the self publishing phenomenon that can maybe help you out. But then again there is danger here too. Many people only “self publish” through a handful of outlets like Amazon. So even here the choices are limited.

"In fact, one thing you can count on in the United States is how few people are ever going to willingly read a book of poetry and find out what’s in there." uh yep.