The giant monster — a kaiju, let’s say — does what a giant monster does. It stomps around. It doesn’t stomp people because it hates people. It stomps people on the way to find its breeding ground or on the way to mate with a particularly saucy skyscraper. People end up stomped like grapes because the giant monster couldn’t see them. The bigger it gets, the more it loses sight of people. The more it loses sight of all the little things underneath it. (Like, say, book culture.)
The bacterial colony wants to grow. It wants to replicate. It is programmed to fill space, to colonize — in a way, like humanity has itself done. Given no competition, bacterial colonies bloat exponentially. Seeing competition, some bacteria cheat to become resistant to that competition. Being resistant to antibiotics, for instance, allows bacteria to enter a period of unfettered growth. An epidemic. A pandemic. A holy-fuck-a-demic.
Big companies — Amazon and publishers alike — are big monsters and little bacteria.
They want to grow.
They want to stomp.
It’s their nature.
Chuck Wendig
I should probably stop posting about this Amazon vs. Hachette fight until some sort of conclusion is reached, but this analogy is simply too good not to pass along!
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