[phoe-krk]

> Everything has gone from centralized to distributed.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google like this. (Microsoft also does.)

The illusion of decentralization given by "you don't need a publisher, you need Amazon" and "you don't need marketing, you need a Facebook page" is one of their most successful creations. We haven't gone decentralized. We've given even more power into singular technology monopolies and eliminated many of the intermediaries that gave us actual choice of who to ask for publishing and how to market our products.

Now it's "sell it on Amazon"/"market it on Facebook" or you just don't exist at all.

[pjc50]

I think he should have written "disintermediated" for those examples. There are now fewer intermediaries, maybe only a single layer - but the companies in that layer occupy almost all of it.

You can publish books without having to worry about publishing and distribution - if you go through the publication-and-distribution vertically integrated monolith.

[amursft]

Yeah, this would totally have been a better / more nuanced way to put it.

[phoe-krk]

I agree. Publishing overall is substantially easier.

Publishing without going through the publishing monopoly is substantially harder though.

[Nasrudith]

This may be a minor distinction but it is easier to publish but harder to get reach when disconnected. This is important in a "allowed to try" way.

Generally for books and music the answer for "should I sell on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Soundcloud, or my own website" is "yes".

In addition to convenience people are understandably leery about where they put their credit card info and the financial infastructure hasn't generally caught up although there are a few "one-off" credit card number generators.