MAKE THE AUTHORS PAY!

Amazon has decided that it does not want to pay sales tax on books. They intend to take all taxes out of the amount that they pay AUTHORS.

All Amazon does in publishing my book* is to provide an ebook format and put the book on their website. They do NOT edit, market, or do anything that an old time publishing firm used to do. For that they already take way over 50% of my profits.

Now, they are refusing to add taxes to the price of my book. They suggest that I raise the price of my book, in order to cover a multitude of international taxes.

This is what happens when you force people to work long unpaid hours. All internal decisions get made with only one thing in mind. MAXIMIZE PROFITS. Because how else to you get people to volunteer to work late at Amazon rather than play with their kids? You hold out a carrot of "you could get seriously rich."

This is the model that old time American law firms use. They get 20 new lawyers to work 80 hour weeks with the promise that a one of them will become a rich partner of the firm. Then they make life MISERABLE for anyone with the temerity to have children or a hobby.

Those people who are harassed, quit, leaving the healthy and selfish to become partners. And we wonder how people like Trump have no problems hiring legal bullies to keep the peasants in line.

When this model is used in techie companies, the company becomes obsessed with profits, to the point that they try to fire people who use their health insurance.

I liked Amazon because they have large, white on black type for their ebooks. Now I worry that Amazon is willing to sacrifice the authors who made them into the company they are today.

* "Pawns of Power" by Pamela Smith.