Have Copyright Laws Turned Publishers into Extortionists?

The original clause in the The Constitution of the United States, of course, does not say that all all authors or researchers must give a cut, that is typically much more than the authors keep for themselves, to a handful of corporations that dominate the publishing industry; however, intentionally or not, that's practically what's happening now, with no discussion among the mass media about it, and very little discussion among most alternative media outlets either. What that clause, Article I, Section. 8., does say is "The Congress shall have Power To ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This seems reasonable, as far as it goes, assuming those making the laws act in good faith, preferably discussing it in the media ensuring the public know how copyright is impacting them, especially when it comes to educational material people need access to when participating in the Democratic process.

When copyright laws were first created in this country, in the decades after the Constitution was signed, authors had to rely on publishing companies, which were mostly very small, and with modest means. Back then, books had to be printed and distributed the old fashion way before we had computers and the internet that could distribute electronic books much easier. Limited efforts have been made to take advantage of the ability of the internet to distribute educational material, especially to poor people, and in many cases, do to copyright incentives for writers, they've actually made much more effort to suppress educational material ensuring people can't access it unless they pay for it, but the authors, researchers, artists or other creators of "intellectual property" routinely only get a fraction of the money collected for selling intellectual property; and there's no effort to inform the public about this or create a system that protects the work of the authors, without price gouging the consumers, or ensuring middle men take the vast majority of the money, which is what is happening now. It's virtually guaranteed that the reason traditional media doesn't discuss this is because they profit from the current system, either because they are the middlemen taking the profits, or they work closely with other middlemen, like publishing companies, one way or another, either by having routine business deals with them, that include advertising, having interlocking board members and stock holders, or other financial conflicts of interests.

One good researcher who has looked into this and attempted to inform the public is Robert McChesney author of Rich Media Poor Democracy and The Problem Of The Media which are both available on the Internet Archive for free, at least for now, but the Archive is being sued to take this down, and just lost a court ruling which they're appealing. If this ruling is upheld, then this will be a massive win for wealthy corporations and some authors, at the expense of the middle class and especially the poor, without providing much if any help to struggling authors who probably won't be impacted by this ruling. I'll get into this more below, and covered some of it already previously in Are Copyright Pirates Modern Teachers Of Slaves?

Publishers don't seem to freely disclose what kind of a deal they typically provide authors, and most famous authors rarely discuss this either, for one reason or another, possibly because they think they can get a better deal if they keep the terms secret; however there are a few people who previously tried to figure this out and claim that royalties for traditional authors are between 5% and 20% or about 25% for Kindles, but self publishers can get more, although they have to cover promotions and other expenses. Several of these sources estimating royalties are listed below, one of them, How Much a Professional Author Earn Per Book in 2023? $100K OR…? 01/11/2023, seems to be in the middle estimating that "Self-published authors can earn 40% to 60% royalties for the selling price of a book, while traditionally published authors typically earn 10% to 12% royalties," with authors often getting an advance on those royalties, which means that authors won't get anything until after they earn that advance. This makes it very difficult for poor or middle class people to get into the business, and as I explained in my previous article on the subject the vast majority of professional authors make very little money, often less than they would at a service job like McDonald's, with several sources saying the medium income for authors, sometimes part time, is between $6,000 and $42,000, with most full time authors making less than $50,000. But, of course, if you Google the net worth for an author like Steven King, he's worth about $500 million, and most other moderately famous authors (probably including your favorite, which you can Google to find an estimate of their net worth) are multi millionaires, which means almost all the well known authors are making way more than the medium income for authors.

The vast majority of authors that are struggling to make a living, almost certainly never get any promotion for their books, and are unlikely to have their books featured on the Internet archive; which means that most of the authors that do have books on the Archive are probably already upper middle class, if not wealthy multimillionaires. Perhaps the biggest exception to this is educational researchers that have a difficult time getting published at all, including those writing about child labor, which I discuss a little more at the bottom of this article, and many other issues exposing corporate fraud; however, even in this case the most important thing should be to find a way to fund them, without ensuring publishing companies take an excessive cut; and even in this case, the lawsuit against the Archive is unlikely to do this. If there were some kind of policy decisions to help grassroots authors or ensure they had a fair opportunity to get published and promoted, assuming their work was good, that would be worthwhile; however that's not what's happening. In the two books mentioned above Professor McChesney wrote about how the clause in the Constitution that was intended to protect the rights of authors or inventors, is now being used to increase the power of publishing companies at the expense of consumers and authors and researchers. The legislation against the Internet Archive is partly turning consumers against authors without acknowledging the biggest problem is our system enables the publishing companies to take too big of a cut, and when they make decisions on promotions, they do so based on what's most profitable for them. Educating the public about many issues, including protecting the environment, ending wars based on lies, a rigged economy, how to solve social problems before they escalate to bigger problems, and more are all in the best interests of the general public; but they don't maximize profits, so they don't get adequate promotion.

I suspect if most people were aware of how large a share publishing companies or book stores, especially big-box book stores, get of the sales they would want more protection for both consumers and authors, but there's little effort to inform people about how much the system is rigged in traditional media, and sources like McChesney or other good researchers don't get much if any promotion for their books or other forms of reporting. Also, most people don't suspect that the few authors, at least when it comes to novels, that become best sellers all have a significant amount of institutional support from the biggest publishing companies, and they become famous enabling them to make large amounts of money. One of the issues that McChesney explains is that the quality of writing isn't always the leading factor of deciding who to publish and promote; more important factors include maximizing profits, and, perhaps, supporting the ideology of the wealthy. This hasn't always been this way; in the nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries there were much more diverse publishing companies allowing more diverse views to be published. I doubt if many of the best classics, like Mark Twain, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and many others could ever even be published today, which may be why classic novels are much better than anything I've seen come out recently, and they often challenge the beliefs of the wealthy much more than modern authors. However, as Upton Sinclair wrote in The Brass Check even before media outlets consolidated and postal subsidies to media were eliminated, there was an enormous advantage for writers supporting the ideology of the wealthy back in 1920, and before that.

Ideally we should get some other method of compensating new authors, without giving publishing companies so much power to decide who gets promoted and who doesn't, which could be the difference between an author becoming famous and making millions of dollars, or an author unable to make a living writing and forced to go into another career, in some cases, perhaps, even though they might be a much better author that many people would like much more, if they ever heard of them, especially if they write views discouraged be wealthy oligarchs. This is even more important when it comes to educational material, including an enormous amount of research that should be available to people participating in the Democratic process, like protection of the environment, consumer protection, wars based on lies, research on preventing violence, and much more.

At least in the short term, writing of novels or many other research projects may continue to be at least partly dependent on copyright protection, although we need more diverse sources deciding which to promote more, instead of allowing large corporations controlled by wealthy people making all decisions on what to promote. However, at least for many research projects, there's already some alternative methods to at least partly finance research, and this has been going on for decades, yet they still give corporations the right to profit off copyrights without considering the fact that governments often subsidize research or that people need access to educational material to participate in the Democratic process. When it comes to research into preventing the leading causes of violence, I've found that it's not uncommon for researchers including Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck, Melvin Kohn, and many others to declare that they received federal funding for their research, although they usually don't say how much. Murray Straus and other researchers have expressed legitimate concerns about not receiving adequate promotion that they may have been promised, and in most cases they never had adequate promotion offered to them in the first place.

It's hard to tell how much the government pays to finance research about preventing violence or solve many other social problems, but there are at least a few good researchers who have shown how much they pay to subsidize medical research into Drugs, including Harriet Washington, author of "Deadly Monopolies" and Marcia Angell author of "The Truth About Drug Companies," as well as several others, and they've shown that in most cases, the government provides almost all the financing for research, if not all of it, and they still allow drug companies to have patents enabling them to charge truly outrageous prices. Both Washington, Angell, and several other authors show how patent laws are being used to subsidize drug companies profits with no protection to consumers. The fact that government provides the funding for almost all research indicates that there's no risk or expense to drug companies, which is what patent laws are supposed to compensate for, and this is epidemic fraud. As I said above, McChesney's books show they're doing something similar to enable massive profits for publishing companies, without protecting consumers or unknown authors struggling to make a living, although the details vary.

Furthermore, our current system of financing research and education ensures that the people making important decisions don't pay the price for it, instead it's the poorest people that pay the price for an incompetent and corrupt political system, including lack or educational and economic opportunities, high rates of violence, high rates of pollution and and other social problems, and they have the least access to research material teaching how the political system is rigged, including books behind paywall, often that they can't afford, and fewer of them in libraries in their area. In a previous article that covers how we have the research to prevent violence, Educational Prevention Of Shootings Is Better Than Militarization I also showed that almost all the cities with the highest murder rates, over twice the national average, have well below the median household income; only four out of over one-hundred-twenty five of them made above the national average medium family income, and three of those were in areas with a higher cost of living, so even those were below the local medium family income, and the last one was the District of Columbia, where wealthy people making important decisions are on one, relatively safe, part of town, and the poor are in the other side of town where the medium income is much lower and the crime much higher. The seat of our government is one of the most segregated cities in the country, if not the most segregated city!

These poor cities don't have nearly as much access to the best research about preventing crime as wealthy communities, even though they're the ones most impacted by it. I glanced through the online library catalogs of a few of these in the Boston or New England areas and found that educational books that I'm familiar with are much more common in non-violent areas, with none of them in Dorchester and very few in Roxbury or Mattapan; fortunately they have access to books from other parts of Boston, assuming they're willing to travel or take advantage of any programs that might ship them to other parts of Boston and the Internet Archive may provide one of the best sources of access to many good books, as long as the current ruling isn't enforced and they don't have to delete all the recent educational material about reducing violence. Children in these abandoned inner cities have enough problems with inadequate educational funds, economic opportunities, and much more; however, I have no doubt that occasionally there will be some children as exceptional as Frederick Douglass, able to overcome these obstacles, and the more help including access to educational material, they have, the more likely they will prosper. Those who write and enforce copyright laws don't differentiate between writing for entertainment or research necessary to participate in the Democratic process, reduce violence, or solve many other social problems.

At least when it comes to funding research about solving social problems and educating the public about it, copyright isn't necessarily the best way to do it, especially since it's already at least partially subsidized by the government. Our government already subsidizes fossil fuels that are destroying the planet, weapons of mass destruction being sold to our allies, who are often required weapons in return for economic aid, the media, by giving them oligarchy control over the airwaves, without requiring them to promote educational material, for profit Charter Schools, and many other things that benefit wealthy Wall Street corporations, yet, when it comes to subsidizing education that helps solve social problems, protection of the environment, reduction of economic inequality, or protecting worker rights, the government is very reluctant to do so, and in the case of copyright, it actually makes it tougher to access educational material by putting it behind paywalls.

As I pointed out in my previous article, Educational Prevention Of Shootings Is Better Than Militaization, the media provides an enormous amount of promotions for charismatic "Doctors" like Phil McGraw, Mehmet Oz and Phil Pinsky, even though they have all been caught in numerous scams and they routinely violate ethics recommendations and many more credible doctors consider then highly incompetent. At least one of them didn't renew his medical licence because he admitted his show wasn't practicing medicine but was for entertainment purposes, although they rarely if even remind their audience of that. But they refuse to provide much if any media coverage for psychologists that are much more qualified to explain how to solve social problems, and reduce violence, like James Garbarino, Barbara Coloroso, Dorothy Otnow Lewis, and many other good researchers that help reduce violence. The same goes for many other subjects, like problems with the media; they provide little or no medical coverage for researchers like Robert McChesney, Juliet Schorr, Susan Linn, or many other researchers, for obvious reasons; these researchers educate the public about how the media is manipulating people, and they don't want to give their critics to expose their scams.

Previously in another article about this subject Copyright & "Intellectual Property" Are endangering Lives & Democracy! I explained that an idea from Robert McChesney John Nichols in "The Death and Life of American Journalism" which was initially intended to fund journalism could also be used to fund research and enter the results into the public domain, and I still think this is worth considering, but if the research is already funded by other ways, then there would be no need to use this idea for that reason and they could stick with using it only for funding journalism, as McChesney and Nichols initially intended. However, if traditional media were willing to provide fair coverage for researchers like James Garbarino and Barbara Coloroso, instead of manipulative con-artists, then they might be worth much more money under the current system, and may even be willing to put their "intellectual property" into the public domain, assuming they still control it, which may not be the case.

As I pointed out in the article I just mentioned Murray Straus was critical of the media merger and sued to get his own copyrights back for "Beating the Devil Out of Them," which explains how much damage corporal punishment does, because they didn't keep their promises to promote his book. He also made a point of publishing at least three of his books free online and many of his academic papers so that anyone who wanted to learn from them and help reduce violence could do so without going through a pay wall, and in the months before he passed away he also gave out free copies of The Primordial Violence to a complete stranger, me, who asked a simple question that didn't require reading the whole book, and I'm guessing he gave out copies to many more people. I've noticed that many academics are willing to provide relatively brief replies to people who as questions, often sharing free documents, if they don't have time to explain to many things, strongly implying they think education should be available to all without a paywall, even if they don't discuss their views about copyright. Within a year after Murray Straus passed away UNH withdrew their offer to host it free, even though he obviously wanted it to be available; with the help of the Wayback Machine I reposted his material on a Blog although it doesn't rank as high on search engines as his original site. But it shows that institutions are going in the wrong direction; instead of trying to use technology to make it easier to educate the public, they're using copyright or other policies to restrict access to educational material.

Even if McChesney and Nichols idea is only used to fund journalism, as they indicated, it can help spread the word about the best science available by reviewing it, which for some incomprehensive reason, traditional media refuses to do. They posted this in several of their books and McChesney repeated it in excerpts from the following book:

"Digital Discnnect" by Robert McChesney 2013 p.211-3

... There is little doubt that if Americans spent one tenth as much time devising creative proposals and public funding mechanisms as they do trying to sell people stuff online, we could have a boatload of brilliant propositions to consider. Here I will mention only one, because it pertains directly to how best to capture the genius of the digital revolution and harness that potential for a credible journalism system.

This idea was first developed by the economist Dean Baker and his brother Randy Baker; Nichols and I have embellished their core concept and called it the citizens news voucher. The ideal is simple: every American adult gets a $200 voucher she can use to donate money to any nonprofit news medium of her choice. She will indicate her choice on her tax return. If she does not file a tax return, a simple form will be available to use. She can split her $200 among several different qualifying nonprofit media. This program would be purely voluntary, like the tax-form check-offs for funding elections or protecting wildlife. A government agency, probably operating out of the IRS, can be set up to allocate the funds and to determine eligibility according to universal standards [like those granting 501(c)(3) nonprofit status] that err on the side of expanding rather than constraining the number of serious sources and commenting on the issues of the day.

This funding mechanism would apply to any nonprofit medium that does exclusively media content. The media could not be part of a larger organization that has any non-media operations. Everything the medium produces would have to be made immediately by publication on the Internet, free to all. It would not be covered by copyright and would enter the public domain. The government would not evaluate the content to see that the money is going toward journalism. My assumption is that these criteria would effectively produce the desired result—and if there is some slippage, so be it. Qualifying media ought not to be permitted to accept advertising; this is a sector that is to have a direct and primary relationship with its audience. Qualifying media could accept tax-deductible donations from individuals or foundations to supplement their income.

With advertising banned from this new Internet sector, the pool of advertising that exists could be divvied up among newspapers and commercial media, especially commercial broadcasters. This would give commercial media a better crack at finding a better business model. I would also suggest that for a medium to receive funds, it should have to get commitments for at least $20,000 worth of vouchers. This requirement would lessen fraud and also force anyone wishing to establish a medium to be serious enough to get at least a hundred people to sign on. (In other words, you can't just declare yourself a newspaper and deposit the voucher in your bank account.) There will be some overhead and administration for the program, but it would be minimal.

The voucher system would provide a way for the burgeoning yet starving nonprofit digital news sector to become self-sufficient and have the funds to hire a significant number of full-time paid workers. It could be as much as an annual $30 billion to $40 billion shot in the arm. All those nonprofit digital news operations would finally have a prayer of survival and growth, because this is a policy that recognizes journalism for what it is—a public good.

Imagine a website in the blogosphere right now covering national politics, producing some great content, getting hundreds of thousands of regular visitors, but depending on low-paid or volunteer labor and praying for advertising crumbs or donations for revenue. Now the site goes formally nonprofit, stops obsessing over advertising, and appeals directly to its readers. Imagine this outfit getting twenty thousand people to steer their vouchers into its accounts. That is $4 million, enough to have a well paid staff of fifty full-time journalists, as well as ancillary staffers. Consider what a Web news service could do with that. And then start thinking about how motivated the reporters and editors would be to break big stories, maintain high quality, and keep attracting vouchers.

Or imagine that you live in a city with deplorable news coverage of your community or neighborhood, as more and more Americans do. If someone starts a local news outlet and get thousands of people to give her group their vouchers, that would provide a nice start-up budget of $200,000. For that money, a group can have several reporters covering the turf and build a real following.

Vouchers also would allow newcomers to enter the fray and hence encourage innovation. A group could raise start-up funds from donations or philanthropy, get underway, and then appeal directly for voucher support. In this model, philanthropists would have a much greater incentive to put money into journalism because there would be a way for their grants to lead to self-sustaining institutions. The voucher system would produce intense competition because a medium cannot take its support for granted. It would reward initiative and punish sloth. It would be democratic because rich and poor would get the same voucher. And the government would have no control over who'd get the money, whether left, right, or center. It would be an enormous public investment, yet be a libertarian's dream: people could support whatever political viewpoints or organizations they preferred or do nothing at all. Additional excerpts

Clearly they indicate that journalists can report on what they choose, including good research that can solve many social problems and reduce violence. This would enable much more diverse sources of journalism, not controlled by wealthy oligarchs which are far more concerned about increasing profits than educating the public about the most effective solutions to social problems. He goes on to say that this idea would be considered so "radical" that many people would hesitate to support it; but who decides what is "radical" or "extreme?" Bill McKibben exposed this, at least when it comes to the environment, and the same principles can easily be applied to many other subjects. He has repeatedly said there's nothing radical about protecting the environment and that the real radicals or fanatics are those profiting of the destruction of the environment, yet the media routinely portrays the environmentalist as the radicals and those destroying the environment as mainstream. A couple of his quotes are included in There is Nothing Radical about Environmentalism: Bill McKibben Educates Redlands on Climate Change 04/05/2016 and Bill McKibben on “Radicals” 04/21/2015 but he's made the same point dozens of times and it applies to those preventing wars based on lies, defending education for the poor, exposing corporate fraud, and many other issues, including the stereotype to make it seems like McChesney and Nichols idea as being "radical" or "fringe."

By the same logic I can argue that there's nothing "radical" about a media system that isn't designed primarily to maximize profits for people who already have more money than they can ever need, which is an accurate description of mainstream media, which as McChesney explained in the first two books I mentioned, is controlled by five or six for profit corporations and they practically never provide good educational material on how to solve many social problems, including the reduction of violence, perhaps because some of the leading causes of violence, like poverty, income inequality, inadequate educational or economic opportunities, are directly related to an economic system rigged for the benefit of the rich, and other contributing causes of violence, like early child abuse and bullying may be indirectly related to our economic system, although it may take longer to explain how.

Nor is there anything radical about providing people the education they need in the most effective way possible, while also providing fair wages for those that do research or teach the public, which doesn't necessarily have to involve charging for accessing "intellectual property" especially when this means giving far more money to those controlling institutions like the media or publishing companies. McChesney and Nichols clearly threw this out as one idea of many and hoped that others would come up with more ideas, that don't necessarily involve copyright protections that prevent many people, especially the poor from accessing educational material.

Furthermore, there's good reason to believe that the cost of intellectual property rights is driving up the cost of books, and the legal reasons for this isn't even made available to a large percentage of the public. As far as I can tell few if any authors or publishers have disclosed the terms of their copyright contracts. I have contacted a few academics who are willing to provide brief replies to people doing research, as I said, often willing to share documents, if they don't have time to go into too much detail, and I asked a couple about possible non-disclosure agreements, but most of them provided little or no information on that subject. The best exception was a college professor who specializes in causes of violence or protecting children, but her knowledge of copyrights is probably limited, since it's not her specialty. She acknowledged that "there is no doubt Non-Disclosure Agreements are used in harmful ways" but that she wasn't aware of them being used in copyright contracts, except when reviewing grants or other work to protect authors from having their work shared with others before they ensure they get compensation, and I found a few articles listed below to explain details on this, and she provided a standard link from the American Psychological Association's APA: Forms for journals publication.

She also said that most copyrights "are for perpetuity (last forever). Sometimes if the publisher takes your book out of print, the rights revert to the author;" however, I've seen several other sources showing this isn't always the case. But, as I said, copyright wasn't her specialty, and she only published a modest amount of copyrighted material, which, to be honest with you, is overpriced, and not designed to sell to a large audience, and a much larger amount of material which is free, but are tedious studies mostly targeting other academics. Many other authors probably know more about copyrights than she does, and there's good reason to believe that authors with a well established reputation can negotiate much better deals than unknown authors, who are at the mercy of the terms dictated by large publishing companies, which that professor partly acknowledged, and her primary source of income wasn't publishing but teaching.

There's little public information about what kind of improved deals well known authors make, except for a handful of stories about disagreements, like John Fogerty, Sylvester Stallone, and a few others, which rarely provide too much detail, however, with celebrities like this, we know they're all very wealthy, and some of these arguments are downright silly, but most people don't realize it drives up the cost of music, movies, books and research, including research that's needed to make important decisions in a Democratic society.

In my previous article Are Copyright Pirates Modern Teachers Of Slaves? I pointed out that Substack supposedly charges 15-20% for subscriptions, based on a personal message from someone that isn't very well known; I don't know if more popular people like Glen Greenwald, Matt Taibbi or many other better known authors can get a better deal, Paypal and GoFundMe both charge about 3-5%, and none of these sources provide any promotion; but based on the best information I could find for self published Kindles Amazon, or any other company, charges a minimum of 30% for sales even though they don't provide any promotions for self-funders, with the possible exception of listing them on catalogs that hardly costs them anything. It's almost guaranteed that we could develop a system that is more concerned with the rights of authors and readers that doesn't involve price gouging. If we can post long blogs, or even books for free on Blogspot or many other hosting sites, then we should have a system, perhaps run by nonprofits, that doesn't charge more than a modest commission, less than what Substack charges, or perhaps even less than what Paypal or GoFundMe charge, which would put a screeching halt to price gouging by companies like Amazon and other book publishers.

As I said before I didn't find any sources that were willing to give the authors more than a 70% royalty on Kindles, and much less on print books, and with that high a payout the author would be responsible for all publishing and distribution, which may virtually guarantee few if any sales, and possible big losses for the author. However, this doesn't mean there aren't sources promising more, in some cases offers that are obviously too good to be true. When I Googled "How to self-publish at Amazon" one of the first things that came up was a web page that said "Self Book Publishing Services - Keep 100% of Your Royalties" on the Google listing, but on their actual page they didn't say the same thing, instead saying "Guaranteed enlistment in the Amazon Top Seller List. Ensuring the exposure your book deserve." Both of these claims sound too good to be true, this is a for profit company and there's no way they can make a profit and let authors keep 100% of royalties, and, as much I think unknown authors need a better deal, there's no way any company can "Guarantee enlistment in the Amazon Top Seller List." This is clearly wishful thinking, and it didn't take long for them to contradict themselves. They have an automatic Instant Messenger that pops up with someone asking "Are you looking to get your book published?" On one occasion I got to the point and replied "Not yet, but I can't help but wonder, what's the catch? or how do you make money?" And she replied "Well, It's through a 30% royalty on each book sale," which clearly contradicts the claim that authors keep 100% of Royalties; furthermore, this answer is about the best I found from Amazon, and this was from a for profit advisor that had someone standing by to instant message me simply because I went to their web page, which I've only seen when researching self-publishing, almost guaranteeing there might be another catch.

When I Googled "Scams targeting self-publishing authors," I found a long list of warnings about this, some that I listed below, clearly indicating it's a major problem, but little indication that the government, or any other powerful organization is trying to solve it, or protect low profile authors. There are some grassroots organizations trying to warn potential authors, including at least one authors guild, but most people probably aren't aware of them, and may not be able to tell the credible ones from the scams. Is it possible that some of the scam artists are trying to gain perceived credibility by warning potential authors of scams, making themselves look like the good guy offering help? My best guess is yes, but in many cases it may be difficult to tell the sincere warnings from the scams, which is why I'm not guaranteeing the warnings below are all sincere, although I didn't find obvious problems, nor did I do a thorough check. One of the best known publishing companies, "Christian Faith Publishing," presumably due to their large advertising budget on TV, may have turned out to be misleading, at best, or a scam; which shouldn't be too surprising, since they're a for-profit company that has to pay for those expensive ads and make profits on top of that, in an industry that is almost impossible for aspiring writers to break through. So there was no surprise that when Googling them I found several complaints, which I listed below, indicating that a large portion of their customers may pay a large amount of money without ever selling more than a handful of books. Like many other scams advertised on TV the media gets a cut of the loot by selling ads, so they have an incentive not to expose the scams, which they're aiding and abetting.

Clearly most people don't have equal opportunities when it comes to becoming famous writers, and contrary to the impression the media tries to provide, this isn't based on choices by the people. They have far more influence on what becomes a popular or best selling book than the people, since the vast majority of the people choose their reading material based on what's promoted the most by the media, or presented in big box book stores, or grocery aisles. The best exceptions to this are libraries, but even most libraries promote the same books as the media, and, even if they don't, a large percentage of the public still goes to libraries looking for advertised books that appeal to them, and libraries often discard books with little demand or decline to by them if the media doesn't promote them anyway. One reason why the wealthy don't want to expose these scams is they benefit by deciding who gets the promotions they need and these scams are one more obstacles for those trying to expose fraud by wealthy people.

Furthermore, as I said before, almost all modern books aren't nearly as good as the classics, and I have serious doubts if the best classics could become popular today, because they couldn't get promoted by a handful of book stores, publishers and the five or six corporations controlling well over 90% of the media, that handle all the promotions. Many of the best classic authors, including Jack London, George Orwell, Upton Sinclair, H.G. Welles, Victor Hugo and many others were all Socialists. Others like Aldous Huxley, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Mark Twain and many more were highly critical of a rigged economy, even though most sources don't officially claim they're Socialists, but their writing does appeal to many Socialists, since they expose many problems in society and often defend the working class. A hundred years ago there were many more publishing companies that printed diverse views, which enabled these Socialists to become popular and eventually they were recognized as among the best classics far better than almost all modern authors; now, with six oligarchs controlling the media, and a similar number of for profit corporations controlling book publishing companies or Big-Box book stores, authors like these could never get promoted, and many authors that I consider incredibly bad, like Dan Brown or James Patterson, climb to the best sellers list, not because they're good, but because they're heavily promoted by traditional media.

Furthermore, since a small number of corporations control almost all the media they often use that control to make the worst examples of Socialism seem to be the only versions, which is far from the truth, and I'm certainly not recommend people adopt the worst versions, like the Soviet Union and China, which failed miserably, but to sort out the details and recognize that many aspects of our economy, which are popular with a large majority of the public, like Fire Departments, the Post Office, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, road construction, and much more are all at least partly Socialist programs, and many of the countries with the highest quality of life, least crime, poverty, and economic inequality, like many European countries are also partly Socialist. Instead of trying to teach people to sort through the good and bad aspects of Socialism, corporate media is demonizing it in an effort to convince people to vote against their own best interests, and maintaining a system that has often been called "Socializing the risks and privatizing the profits" for the benefit of the wealthy at the expense of the working class.

However, just because there are no more Socialist authors on best selling lists doesn't mean they no longer exist if you Google "Socialist novelists," "Modern Socialist novelists," or something similar you'll find plenty of them, but most lists are classics, the closest thing to an exception is The Best Socialism Books which includes mostly modern Socialist books. Other non-profit publishing companies that focus on progressive or educational issues that help solve social problems, educate people about issues needed to participate in the democratic process or expose corporate fraud include The New Press, Haymarket Books, Chelsea Green Publishing, and there's also a list of 19 Top Nonprofit Book Publishers. These non-profit publishing companies provide far more educational material that helps solve social problems, yet the vast majority of them don't make it onto the best sellers lists. I have no doubt that many people would cite this as evidence to show that Socialism is no longer popular; however, I suspect it's far more likely that they just never get much promotion from traditional media.

I've found that there are many more good non-fiction books that question our economic system still being published, than there are novelists; however, most of these don't get any media promotion either, and in a few cases, even without a fair amount of promotion some of them become fairly popular, although rarely popular enough to make best seller lists. One thing people at the Grassroots level can start doing, without legislation to implement the policy recommended by McChesney and Nichols mentioned above, is to help spread the word about these good publishing companies, and the fact that they provide better educational material than mainstream media ever promote. One example, which did get a lot of promotion from mainstream media is "Drift" by Rachel Maddow, which is one of the very few books they promote that I actually read in the past ten to fifteen years. This book is better than the vast majority of the reporting on traditional media about war; but I could easily name dozens of books about Wars based on lies that are much better than this, yet they get no media promotion. William Blum "Killing Hope" (Free download) is just one of many books much better than Drift that never made best sellers list, because he never got much if any attention from the media and there certainly wasn't a massive advertising campaign for his book, nor is there massive promotion for dozens more books much better than "Drift," including even Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine," (Free download) which is also much better than Drift, and she praised Drift on the cover, even though she must have known it wasn't nearly as good. David Swanson came to similar conclusions to me when he reviewed her book, Catching Rachel Maddow's Drift 04/03/2012. I also went into this more in Rachel Maddow Gives Sheeple Permission To Think, For Now! Since she wrote this book, and at least one other partly opposing war, she's spent a lot of time providing war propaganda, especially against Russia, raising doubts about whether she ever did oppose permanent war.

The leading reason for this is that the wealthy make all the decisions about which books to promote, and they don't promote books that challenge their fiscal ideology or expose the way the economy is rigged.

This means that the solution is that, one way or another, we have to stop relying on promotions controlled by the wealthy and start making more good recommendations at the grassroots level.

The recommendation by McChesney and Nichols, based on an idea originally developed by the Baker brothers could be a good start to solutions controlled by working class people; but of course, as they indicated, they need more ideas to finish the job. One possible additional partial solution might be an online non-profit Kindle system, possibly going by another name, that would charge people for work that continues to rely on copyright, assuming we can't find a better way to fund the authors. Kindle is owned by Amazon and according to Project Gutenberg Tablets, Phones and eReaders How-To they make it difficult to download free books from Gutenberg, bot not necessarily impossible. Gutenberg also warns that Amazon tries to charge for classic books in the public domain which they offer free, which I also warned people about as well. This means this alternative service might be available on most other devises, but not Kindle, but the non-profit could only charge a minimal fee, to cover expenses, enabling the author to keep almost all of the money paid for Alternate Kindles, and by simply offering this service, it will show how outrageous a fee Amazon is charging for Kindles even though they have little or no expenses to publish or distribute them, and often don't provide much is any more for promotion.

As I said, when it comes to research to solve social problems it's important to fund it other ways so it can be put in the public domain immediately, which McChesney and Nichols proposal also does; but if we can't fund that right away this could be a partial solution to enable self-publishers, perhaps including novels. If Substack can provide content for only 15-20% or Paypal and GoFundMe can collect donations for commissions of no more than 3-5%, then a non-profit organization can almost certainly do the same, although I don't have the computer expertise, there's enough evidence to show this is possible and others would know how to do it. Haymarket Books, and perhaps some other non-profit books are already selling E-Books, which aren't necessarily available on Amazon's Kindle, although they're accompanied by traditional print books, and they still offer editing services, and the commissions aren't public, as far as I can tell. This would not solve all the problems, of course, because it doesn't take into account promotions or advertising to let people know about unknown novelists or other writers, nor does it take into account editing services. However, Some authors might be happy to get their books uploaded quickly, and this won't mean they have to put out a lot of money to get an E-book posted online and available to sell. But, if an amateur author doesn't do a good job editing his own work and promoting it, or have an existing following, he or she is unlikely to sell a lot of books. Another advantage this provides is that various services are provided separately, and they ensure the author knows more about it.

Exploring more grassroots promotions might help a lot, especially when it comes to important non-fiction social issues; but, of course, the deck is stacked against progressives and the biggest publishing companies are reluctant to publish the best progressive research, and even more reluctant to promote them, which is why the best research rarely ever shows up on the best sellers list. There's numerous stories about rigging the best sellers list, in addition to the fact that without massive amounts of promotions from large corporations there's no way authors could come close to getting the name recognition to sell enough books to make it. This is especially true when it comes to politics, where several high profile people, including at least two presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump, along with Donald Trump Jr., have been caught red handed rigging the process to get on the best sellers list. And at least two presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, are widely believed to have used ghost writers to write books they took credit for. And these are just a few of the ones that got caught red-handed; how many more politicians or media pundits have done a much more effective job rigging their way onto the best sellers list without being caught?

Plenty, and the evidence is often hidden in plain sight!

If you search one media pundit after another you'll find many of them are also authors, and if you watch Cable News on a regular basis you may notice that these media pundits often make the rounds to promote their books, even on competing Cable News stations, which gives them a massive advantage getting the word out enabling them to become best sellers, which grassroots writers exposing corporate fraud can never do, including for books much better than "Drift" by Rachel Maddow. This also includes establishment politicians, especially when writing for president, and, as I said before, both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump were caught red-handed cheating to boost their books by demanding bulk sales, getting on the best sellers list. Does that mean that other politicians like Joe Biden or Barack Obama weren't cheating? Not likely, they still had major advertising advantages even if they were cautious enough not to get caught cheating by buying their own books in bulk or demanding their supporters do so on their behalf.

Does this also apply to Jake Tapper, who has at least four best selling novels, which he wrote in a relatively short period of time? When I searched for such claims on the internet I found nothing but praise; however, I also found evidence to show that ghost writers are almost certainly much more common than many people think, and there are almost certainly non-disclosure agreements when they happen to ensure they don't get caught. Hillary Clinton is one of the few where rumors about ghost writers spread, possibly due to a leak or some other reason, but there may be many more, and lets face it poor unknown people aren't going to have the money to hire ghost writers and get away with it. Jake Tapper wrote his books while also working at CNN without taking much if any time off; on at least one or two occasions John Carroll, author of "House of War," had to take months if not well over a year for his weekly column at the Boston Globe to focus on his books. One column per week takes much less time to do than five or six shows, plus what ever time it takes to prepare, at CNN, yet Jake Tapper supposedly did this, and several reviews claim he's an exceptional author. If this really is true, that's impressive; however, even without evidence, I'm not completely ruling out the possibility that he had a ghost writer, writing assistant, or perhaps his books, which I haven't read, aren't nearly as good as the reviewers claim.

I haven't believed that media reviews have been credible in a long time, and have little doubt that many of them have financial incentives, making them meaningless.

But even if Jake Tapper really is that exceptional, how many more unknown writers are as good or much better, but don't have name recognition and can't break into the business, despite their good writing skills? I have no doubt there are many, and if the publishing companies promoted authors based on merits, instead of potential for profits, without exposing flawed fiscal ideologies and reporting on injustice, then we would have many more good authors like the classics, including Mark Twain, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, H.G. Welles, Aldous Huxley, and many more.

This is why we need much more promotion and support from the grassroots, where there isn't a financial incentive to promote books that don't rock the boat, and instead promote the most educational books. I began learning at least fifteen years ago that the best educational books get virtually no media promotion and are almost never on best sellers lists, which are clearly rigged, and the more research on this I do the more obvious it is. I also found that the five biggest publishing companies sell over 60% of all books, yet when I went though many of the best nonfiction books that I've been reading, especially those where I still have copies on hand, I only found a few from the biggest companies, and a couple of those were from Henry Holt publishing company, which is part fifth biggest publishing company, meaning only one or two of them were from the big four, which means that even though the big five sell more than 60% of books nationwide, less than 5% of the educational books I've been reading are from them, and a much larger percentage are from obscure non-profits that I mentioned above, and obscure college presses, which may or may not be for profit, but are focused on educational books.

Over the years, I've learned to search for good non-fiction books by several ways, including checking library shelves, Social media, the sources for good books I've already read, and several other methods, but these books that I do slowly find and read hardly get any media promotion and in most cases never come close to being best sellers, even though they're much better quality than what the media promotes. Now I'm finding that when I look through obscure publishers catalogs I find a much better selection, including many that I found previously and many more that look like they're worth a closer look, and are much better than those promoted by the media, which to be honest, seems to be trying to keep the public stupid, so we don't recognize their scams.

Clearly more needs to be done to get the word out where the best educational material is, since traditional media isn't willing to promote good educational books, and some of the non-profit publishers I mentioned above, or a few other educational sources are worth a much closer look including The New Press, Haymarket Books, Chelsea Green Publishing, Waveland Press Publisher of college text books, including "Controlling the Dangerous Classes" by Randall G. Shelden, University of California Press: Books, and also a list of 19 Top Nonprofit Book Publishers, which I haven't looked as closely yet, but even a quick glance shows there's much more educational material from these publishing companies than is promoted in traditional media outlets or published by the big five. Some of these publishers only have a few dozen books in their catalogs, while others might publish one or two dozen per year, but the quality of their books is clearly much better than mainstream media. And I'm finding that if I look up the publishing companies of books I previously read, and found very good, like the University of California Press, the Oxford University Press, or many others, if I look up their own catalogs, or in some cases search on Google or Amazon for their books, I find many more that are much more educational than books promoted by mainstream media or the ones that get on best sellers lists.

The problem now will no longer be that I have a hard time finding good books, but that I'll never be able to keep up with them, and in many cases, especially with classics, I find they're available either free, or at a reasonably low price, but unfortunately there are still a few that are way over priced, and the reason for that is partly because of copyright, and partly because they don't print them in volume and promote them enough so they can profit off them by selling a large volume, instead of absurdly high mark ups. Some authors, including Naomi Klein and many others, have written in support of the Internet Archive to make books available free, and when Robert McChesney found out about it, he also said he supported the petition for the Archive, James Garbarino indicated he was sympathetic, although he didn't comment too much on the details, that I know of.

I previously wondered why there were so few books about sweat shops or child labor, and even looked for them a few times, without finding them; but in a relatively short time searching these low profile progressive publishers I found over two dozen of them that are worth checking out, and many more progressive books that mainstream media would never promote, and, as far as I can tell, the big five publishing companies would never publish. These educational books were available to us all all along, but the low profile publishers or researchers trying to get the word out get no help from mainstream media or big publishing companies who are only concerned about profit! If the majority of the public was well informed about child abuse, directly or indirectly, by Wall Street corporations, for the benefit of wealthy oligarchs I have no doubt many of them would demand action and protection for the children, but the media and publishing companies refuse to report on this so very few people learn the details.

However, there are good activists on this subject, and many others trying to do a good job and they could use all the grassroots help to spread the word they can get, so for starters, I'm listing some of the books I found along with other back up sources or related articles below, or you can search these progressive publishing websites yourself. One way or another these researchers are the people that need much better funding, not the middle men. However, by middlemen, I mean the biggest most profitable publishing companies and media that promote trivial crap to keep the majority ignorant; not necessarily struggling non-profits or educational organizations that aren't making massive amounts of money, including the Internet Archive, and the good publishing companies mentioned above.

But, when it comes to paying big money, or modest amounts of money, to by books when they can be downloaded for free, or read on the Archives controlled lending policies, keep in mind, a large portion of the money you spend might go to unknown middlemen, or publishing and distribution. Perhaps if you're concerned about funding some of these sources donating directly to them might be more efficient, whether you read their books or not; or organizing for a more open and effective funding process, which as Bullworth might have said, is that evil word, "SOCIALISM," assuming the details are controlled by people that actually want to do a good job!

In a report written by Lee Tucker, a consultant to Human Rights Watch, about the problem of bonded labour in Asia, a young girl shared,

“My sister is 10 years old. Every morning at 7:00 she goes to the bonded-labour man, and every night at 9:00 she comes home. He treats her badly. He hits her if he thinks she is working slowly, or if she talks to the other children, he yells at her. He comes looking for her if she is sick and cannot go to work. I feel this is very difficult for her.

“I don’t care about school or playing. I don’t care about any of that. All I want is to bring my sister home from the bonded-labour man. For 600 rupees I can bring her home. That is our only chance to get her back.

“We don’t have 600 rupees … we will never have 600 rupees [the equivalent of U.S. $17 at the time of writing].”

The following are over two dozen books about child labor that get no promotion, and most of them are available free on the Internet Archive, as long as they aren't forced to take it down due to the greed of wealthy publishing companies. If you want to help the good researchers, many of these books may cover child rights organizations, and donating directly to them may be more efficient than buying books, when publishers take most of the money:

Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire 2022 by Edvige Giunta (Editor), Mary Anne Trasciatti

The world of child labor: an historical and regional survey 2009 1040p.

Child Labour A Public Health Perspective Edited by Anaclaudia Gastal Fassa, David L. Parker, and Thomas J. Scanlon 2010

Child labor: a world history companion by Hobbs, Sandy 1999

A will of their own: cross-cultural perspectives on working children by Liebel, Manfred 2004

Children at work: child labor practices in Africa by Kielland, Anne 2006

Children at work 1979

Children of coal and iron by Rose, Iain 1996

The exploited child 2000

Children in bondage; a complete and careful presentation of the anxious problem of child labor-its causes, its crimes, and its cure by Markham, Edwin 1914

Children for hire: the perils of child labor in the United States by Levine, Marvin J., 2003

Pricing the priceless child: the changing social value of children by Zelizer, Viviana A. Rotman 1985

Crusade for the children: a history of the National Child Labor Committee and child labor reform in America by Trattner, Walter I. 1970

Investing in every child: an economic study of the costs and benefits of eliminating child labour by International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 2004

Victoria's Children of the Dark: the Women and Children Who Built Her Underground by Gallop, Alan 2011

Child employment in Britain: a social and psychological analysis by Hobbs, Sandy 1997

The impact of OSHA: a study of the effects of the Occupational safety and health act on three key industries, aerospace, chemicals, and textiles by Northrup, Herbert Roof 1978

Child labor and the Constitution by Fuller, Raymond 1974

Child labour & exploitation 2014 52p.

Combating child labour 1988

Child labour: burning questions: inaugural lecture by Lieten, Georges Kristoffel 2005

The myth of development: non-viable economies and the crisis of civilization by Rivero B., Oswaldo de 2010

The elimination of child labour: whose responsibility? : a practical workbook by Bhargava, Pramila 2003

Labouring children: British immigrant apprentices to Canada, 1869-1924 by Parr, Joy 1994

Children's lifeworlds: gender, welfare and labour in the developing world by Nieuwenhuys, Olga 1994

Child labour by Gifford, Clive 2009 56p.

Hazardous child labour in Latin America by G.K. Lieten 2011

Child welfare and the law by Stein, Theodore 1991

Child Labour A Public Health Perspective Edited by Anaclaudia Gastal Fassa, David L. Parker, and Thomas J. Scanlon 2010

The following are some additional sources or articles on the subject:

How Much a Professional Author Earn Per Book in 2023? $100K OR…? 01/11/2023 Self-published authors can earn 40% to 60% royalties for the selling price of a book, while traditionally published authors typically earn 10% to 12% royalties.

First-time authors willing to publish traditionally will receive a prepayment. This is usually $10,000 (not so much for first-time authors). However, traditional publishing does not start licensing until you sell a book worth $10,000 at the license rate. You need to get that $10k back before you can start getting a license check from the publisher.

Moreover, many publishers deal with authors who say that selling X books increases loyalty and makes a difference. Nevertheless, Experienced, proven, and traditionally published authors can negotiate higher license rates.

Therefore, 15% is rare for self-published authors; you can earn an average license fee of 60% from the first sale, including each subsequent book sale.

How Much Do Authors Make Per Book? 05/11/2021 How much do authors make per book? As with everything else in publishing, the answer is: It depends. A lot of readers have the idea that every author is wealthy, but that is far from the truth. Yes, Stephen King probably has more money than he’ll ever need, but he is an outlier. The majority of authors don’t even make a living wage with their books. In 2018, the Authors Guild partnered with 14 other writers organizations as well as some publishing platforms to conduct a survey of 5,067 professional writers in the United States. The median 2017 income of participating authors was $6,080 with just $3,100 of that being from book income alone (as opposed to speaking fees, teaching, book reviewing, and other supplemental activities). The median income of people who described themselves as full-time authors was just $20,300 when including all book-related activities. A traditionally published author makes 5–20% royalties on print books, usually 25% on ebooks (though can be less), and 10–25% on audiobooks. Amazon pays self-published authors 70% on ebooks priced 2.99 to 9.99, 35% on ebooks priced outside of that, 60% less printing costs on paperbacks sold on their platform, and 40% less printing costs sold via expanded distribution. In traditional publishing, the publisher manages the process and pays for all costs associated with producing and distributing the book as well as a widely varied amount of marketing, while a self-published author is responsible for that process and those costs. When I teach classes and am asked how much do authors make, people tend to be deeply unsatisfied with my “it depends” answer. There is no way to predict how much a book will make, but I spoke with 15 authors of all stripes to demonstrate the variety of options. I spoke with self-published authors and traditionally published authors who have made less than they spent on expenses, authors of both paths who easily make a living off their writing, and everyone in between.

How Much Do Authors Make? The Truth About Money in Publishing 09/05/2023 How much can authors expect to earn from their books? A first-time author with a traditional publishing deal might expect an advance of $1,000-$10,000 and 5-18% royalties once they “earn out” their advance. Self-published authors do not receive advances, but their royalties can reach up to 70% for ebook editions.

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A New Chapter: My experience with Christian Faith Publishing and what my plan is moving forward 06/22/2021

Alert: Blue Deco Publishing, Christian Faith Publishing 12/08/2017

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Sylvester Stallone Doesn't Think He'll Ever Get The Rights To Rocky Back 02/08/2023

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival acquires rights to his own music after 50 years 01/13/2023

Flashback: John Fogerty Wins Rare Self-Plagiarism Suit in 1988 11/09/2018 copyright censorship

The Time John Fogerty Was Sued for Ripping Off John Fogerty 04/13/2011 copyright censorship

John Fogerty Got Sued For Sounding Like Himself... 09/01/2021 copyright censorship

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Donald Trump Jr.'s New York Times bestseller 'Triggered' sparks literary list controversy 11/27/2019 The scandal may ultimately be more about the list itself then the authors scratching and clawing their way to the top of it.

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Socialism 101: A Reading List By Haymarket Books / March 20 2020

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About The New Press The New Press amplifies progressive voices for a more inclusive, just, and equitable world. As a nonprofit public-interest publisher, we leverage books, diverse voices, and media engagement to facilitate social change, enrich public discourse, and defend democratic values:

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How to Get Published with a Traditional Publishing House 09/30/2020 Most authors don’t realize the New York Times bestseller list isn’t really a bestseller list. The list is carefully curated by their selection board and features their recommendations. They take sales into account, but they also exclude books based on political opinions or publisher. The New York Times has a strong bias against indie authors. If being on the New York Times list is important to you, traditional publishing is your only option. ... Of the remaining books, 40% break even, and 10% of the top books they publish make insane amounts of money. Traditional publishers make money to cover all those costs by selling millions of a few top-selling books.

The Truth About The New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestseller Lists 02/04/2016

The convoluted world of best-seller lists, explained 09/13/2017 The most widely accepted version of this play is to identify independent bookstores that you believe report to the New York Times and go to those specific stores on tours. Slightly more crassly, Mitt Romney boosted the sales figures for his 2010 book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness by requiring his book tour hosts to buy between $25,000 and $50,000 worth of copies of his book.

How Romney made a best-seller 10/15/2010

Time to Throw Their Books Into the Ring 02/22/2007 The lineup of potential presidential candidates is a mishmash of senators, governors, former big-city mayors and a retired four-star Army general. But nearly all of them share one title: published author. “You’re not a real candidate, Pinocchio, if you haven’t written your own book,” said Mark Halperin, the political director of ABC News. “If you know everybody else is doing a book, you’ve got to do a book.”

The Big Five Become the Big Four 11/24/2020 “This merger is obviously illegal,” wrote Matt Stoller. “Random House editors and Simon and Schuster editors bid against each other for books. Now they won’t. Straight up pressing down author wages.” Stoller’s biography at the Federalist Society notes that he’s writing a book about 20th-century monopolies for Simon and Schuster.

Top 10 Publishers in the US 02/18/2022 Henry Holt and Company publisher of the Shock Doctrine was swallowed up by Macmillan Publishers

The Big Five Publishers In The United States 11/20/2022