Amazon’s janky literary chickens are coming home to roost.
Ebooks are a fucking pimp and hoe scam in American literature thanks to Amazon.
Hell yeah, I said it, because when you see something you say something. Ebooks are a shit plague on American literary humanity, which ushered in big tech’s dominance phasing out the human endeavor on the page. There’s been a lot of talk this week about Amazon pretty much announcing that people who buy ebooks from them don’t own the digital files, they are just licensing them. What they aren’t talking about is how Amazon got to that point of scamming ownership of ebooks, and the wonderful world of pimping the readers and writers have been in all this time to be complicit in the hustle.
Let me run you down the Amazon pimp philosophy so you literary hoes and tricks know your place.
Amazon’s game is strong. In a hundred fucking years of American literature, no corporate publishing entity has been able to convince the literary community of readers, writers, and publishing imprints to devalue their craft like Amazon has. Amazon is the pimp, the readers are the tricks, and the writers and non PenguinRandomSchuster imprints are the hoes, which has made the American literary marketplace Amazon dominates nothing more than an roach infested all you can eat buffet for a dollar, which people convinced themselves was good because of the low price.
Rule number one is hoes, even the bottom bitches, make money not for self but for their pimp.
Once upon a time, ebooks were the dawn of a new revolution in reading. Then Amazon, a logistics company, brought their raggedy asses into the game and leveled up in the pimp game with their first hoes. Those were the desperate writers that couldn’t get deals with PenguinRandomSchuster but were making money tricking their writing for the dough on the side. So they grew their hoe stable with these types who didn’t know the lit game well by buying up POD joints like CreateSpace. They let them be word of mouth and bring in even more hoes, this time the non PenguinRandomSchuster imprints. Amazon put them out there on the track selling some of everything, pulling in the tricks to Amazon’s hoedom, their platform. If hoes did things correctly and hustled, they could be the bottom bitch on their rankings chart, and for the special few, make a little bit of change to brag but not to live. That’s how they got turned out, because they didn’t know they were turned out. The game got rules, and what they didn’t know is a pimp makes sure they keep their hoes looking good but don’t get up off the dough.
Golden rule is, when Amazon pimps and pulls a bitch, they got the bitch.
Hoes need a steady stable of tricks buying their services. Amazon capitalized on that with Kindle Unlimited, circa 2007. They got out there and finessed the American reading public that they needed to leave print alone and get their reading jollies off on the digital side on their platform. Millions of titles, one low price for the nut. They could give the tricks the hoes they wanted, however many they wanted at one time, and on bargain basement prices. Like good reading tricks, they couldn’t turn down a good piece of cheap literary ass and never once thought about the human condition on this deal for the writing and publishing hoes. Nor did they care after getting off with what they wanted, how they wanted.
Rule number two, tricks spend money on hoes.
Amazon conned both sides, but like a good pimp with a slick tongue, they can make any gullible motherfucker believe their bullshit. Hoes thought they’d write a good book, sell it on the track, make a shit ton of money and get fame and notoriety. Tricks thought they were getting over on the hoes and getting beloved classics and discovering new works they couldn’t get without fucking with Amazon first. How did they do that? Amazon bought GoodReads. They ran that shit down to hell so they could control the narrative on reviews. It became the hotel for pimps and hoes with Oprah’s Book Club being the perfect bottom bitch of activity, until both sides realized it was more the backseat of a rust bucket and they were satisfied being fucked there anymore.
Rule number three, the pimp takes money from both the hoes and tricks.
A good pimp makes sure hoe and trick trust stays high even when morale is low, so they created the shit show we know as Kindle Unlimited in 2014. That’s when the hoe and trick price sheet was created, so both sides knew how much the lit ass was worth very little if Amazon was the middleman. If the tricks wanted hoe digital services, the average price points for ebooks were .99 USD to 2.99 USD, with Amazon pimping 40% from the hoes on the back end and retail price or monthly subscription of eight bucks from the tricks on the front end. And how did they do this? By convincing the hoes that if they did things correctly and ponied up for ads and other marketing they offered at cost, then they would be able to be like cream rising to the top. The sad thing is, all along they were old coffee grounds sitting at the bottom drowning. Amazon, of course, was the foam coasting all the flavor of the foam honey taking all the money.
They did that through Kindle Unlimited Pool, the ultimate pyramid scam payout for hoes. See rules number one and three.
Hoes got paid less than a penny per page read for titles on KU, with more rules than a military camp to cheat them out of earning that trap money. Amazon got in the hoes’ minds by convincing them they’d make more going exclusive, and that they were the only game in town. A few people got their foot in the door and made it, but the vast majority fell by the waist side faster than Kindle Vella and Kindle Worlds did. Most of Amazon’s hoes got their asses beat, and like domestic violence hoes that don’t leave a bad relationship because they think they pimp loves them, they grow to love the abuse.
The game got old and sold because you didn’t believe it when told.
Hustlers and grifters swarmed the platform, scamming and scheming trying to make a quick cent on the dollar. That alienated the tricks from patronage but Amazon didn’t care, because when they got a trick on subscription, they got a trick. Amazon pimped all sides again, letting bootleggers and third party affiliates jump in on the action stealing book and republishing them or just undercutting the listing price on their platform or other resell sites, while kicking off hard working old hoes that made a stink about it. It was a road to nowhere fast that made Amazon pimped a shit ton of cash but left the hoes with wet asses that became a very bad afterschool American literary special.
Now in the real pimp world, hoes leave a sadistic pimp and find them a better one. And some literary hoes did, jumping ship to Barnes and Noble/Ingram, Draft2Digital, DriveThruFiction, Boobbaby Lulu or Kobo. But most stayed with big daddy Amazon, hoping they would eventually work their way up for being the chosen bottom bitch ruling the roost, because real hoes only go with the best pimps. They, effectively choose, and defend their big daddy with their life. Amazon enticed them with even more pimping giving them five seconds of trick fame having their book number one in the first five minutes of being on the platform in their rankings, which for some people makes the pimp balls that are called literary awards all the more whorishly cliquish.
This is how Amazon got here, tricks and hoes looking for cheap ass. Fifteen years of bitching about their funky asses hasn’t changed a motherfucking thing. So don’t get in an uproar about Amazon putting you tricks and hoes in your place, because the Spotify of Literature already turned your asses out years ago and you let them. Amazon’s the only pimp on record that has never been shut down for prostitution, and no one is demanding they be knocked down a peg or two for hoeing out the gullible and making money off the unsuspecting that just want a good book nut.
You hoes and tricks just didn’t get played, you got played out.
