I think the real questions are who controls literature and the publishing business and who has access to literature. There is also the question of whose stories are told and how broadly are they disseminated. With school and public libraries closing and/or cutting back services (the very insitutions that purchase the books that aren’t bestsellers), those are questions that should bother anybody who writes. So far, the moneychangers have taken over the temple and there is no literary Jesus to drive them out.

I’ll ignore the unsubstantiated claims he makes about Jonathan Franzen, and go straight to the real issue here. Amazon and their ilk democratizing literature? Please. They are in business to make money. If they can do it by convincing hacks and wannabes to list their “writing” for sale, they will do it. If they could do it by restricting writing to a handful of elites, they would do that as well.

Except in rare cases every artist, musician, writer or craftsman spends years learning his/her trade, practicing every day until s/he has command of the genre, apprenticing to or becoming students of those who have established themselves in the field. But the message Amazon, Smashwords, Lulu and others send to the public is, “Hey! You don’t have to learn, you don’t have to practice. You don’t even have to write well. Upload your words to our site, cut us a percentage, and you, our friend, are a writer!” But downplaying the work and study that goes into any field cheapens it for all. Substitute doctor or lawyer for writer in that statement and listen to how ridiculous it sounds.

This whole business of “everyone’s talent or opinion is as important as everyone else’s” is a myth. That belief is a con blathered by corporations to get prospective customers to feel “empowered” and friendly towards whatever product or service they happen to be selling. Sure, opinions matter. Responsible opinions, that is. And responsible opinions are forged with time, study and dedication to an issue.

What Amazon is introducing is not Democracy, it’s an oligarchy, cleverly packaged to make it look like opportunity for wannabe writers, in particular those who can’t be bothered to actually learn the craft. The Amazon system lumps all writers, good and bad, into a great pile of text stored in their database. Sitting on top, a collection of marketing and PR people churning out nonsense that has the ultimate goal of keeping the company in power, in position to dictate tastes, or lack of them, to the buying public. The new Medici are already here, Stewart.