We’ve seen the fun and games between Amazon and the Big 5 publishers, most notably Hachette. The ‘old guard’ of the publishing world derides Amazon as a ‘monopolistic’ enterprise (which is clearly not true, as anyone with a dictionary can tell you after looking up the definition of the word ‘monopoly’). The pro-Amazon lobby (of which I count myself a member) derides the Big 5 and their hangers-on (agents, ancillary businesses and all those who are on the ‘other side’) as dinosaurs opposed to progress.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There really are serious concerns over where our current technological revolution is taking us, particularly as regards entertainment. Books are only one part – and a relatively small part – of the entertainment spectrum. Movies, games, music, theater, etc. also fall under the ‘entertainment’ umbrella. We have to accept that in this day and age, where digital access to any and all of these elements is a mouse click away, we’re competing for the same audience and the same dollar.
One of his most salient points is that Amazon views authors as essentially interchangeable widgets, all effectively replaceable. There's no need to support authors or build their success. Just sign them up, let them upload their books, and collect the fees as the sales roll in. If an author doesn't see any success and decides to pack it in, no problem. There's plenty more where that one came from.
While this is technically true, it overlooks the fact that the support a publisher gave an author comes at a price. Most obviously, the publisher tied up your rights to that book, and depending on how options clauses were drafted, any number of future books you might write. You were under the authority of the editor and expected to treat that editor as right by definition, even when wrong. And while some editors might have excellent insights into your book and help you make it better, you could get stuck with a dud who didn't understand what you were trying to achieve with your book, or worse, someone trying to make you conform to a political agenda. Worst of all, your editor might leave or be fired, leaving your book and your career orphaned. And all that for a royalty that's a few percentage points of the book's sales price.
By contrast, Amazon's handling of rights is far more generous to writers, and editorial oversight is pretty much non-existent. There are a few topics that are prohibited, but most of them are pretty squicky stuff such as certain kinds of taboo sexual activities in the erotica areas. Even then, writers have often been able to get their books relisted by making relatively minor changes so the stories become edge-play rather than the actual taboos (near-incest with a step-relative rather than actual incest with a biological relative, for instance).
Of course the lack of editorial oversight means that authors are on their own to make sure that they are producing good copy, which may feel like having no safety net for some writers. However, being on your own doesn't mean you have to do it all yourself. You can pay a freelance editor for any level of editing -- continuity editing (does the story make sense? are there plot holes big enough to fly the ISS through? does characterization remain consistent throughout the story? etc), copy editing (spelling errors, grammar errors, etc), proofreading (ferreting out typos and other errors in the final copy to be presented to readers) -- or you can find a beta reader to do it on a volunteer basis, usually through a writers' group.
The most important thing is that Amazon is effectively acting more like a distributor than a publisher. In fact, many small presses and micropresses are using Amazon's CreateSpace system to produce paper copies of their books, and the Kindle program for e-books. As a result, a number of people have taken to advising that you should create your own imprint name when publishing your books, rather than having them listed as Kindle Direct Publishing in the publisher line, because it will help make your books look that much more professional.
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