Progressive Authors Sleeping with the Enemy
"I've got an invitation for all progressive authors out there. How about putting your money and ideas where your mouths are?"
"I'd like to ask Amy Goodman why she published her last book...with Disney-owned Hyperion. Michael Moore: What possessed you to make money for Rupert Murdoch by publishing Stupid White Men, with ReganBooks/HarperCollins, then AOL/Time Warner with Dude! Where's My Country?, before jumping to a third corporate ship, Viacom's Simon & Schuster, to publish your latest offering, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?"
posted by FintanDunne
at 3:16 am
4 Comments:
I guess they do it because only large publishers like that can distribute their books widely enough. Moore's books, for example, are available in just aobut every book store in the English-speaking world. The same can't be said for, say, Michael Parenti's books, which are as rare as hen's teeth.
It is urgent we break the stranglehold corporations have on our society and our lines of communication. If it means going to vanity presses, print-on-demand, or distributing e-books and pdfs, so be it. People will argue that it will make it harder for people in remote places to obtain materials, but Wal-Marts and their ilk censor their selections, anyway. The trick will be to get more computers with net connections in more hands.
'If it means going to vanity presses, print-on-demand, or distributing e-books and pdfs, so be it.'
Couldn't someone who really wanted to suppress such a book buy up all available copies? That pretty much leaves online publication as the only real option.
Amy Goodman is probably the most guilty of this group. As an "anti-big media" activist, it's ironic that both Disney and Time Warner benefit whenever her "Embed the Media" tour rolls into town. Disney owns her publisher, Hyperion, and Time Warner has a distribution deal with Hyperion's book tours. Goodman also hasn't been very good at disclosing the Disney tie in opinion pieces. That is kind of like if Michael Moore had had a financial deal with GM when he was distributing "Roger and Me." (he didn't, of course).
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