[ghaff]

>It's just that artists are somehow not able to get together and force fair terms on whatever it is in the upstream

That's nonsense with respect to books. If you self-publish on the most popular distribution channel (Amazon), you keep quite a large percentage of your revenue. The issue isn't the middleman, it's that there's a huge number of other books out there and unless you already have an audience or put the work into creating one somehow, not many people are going to find your work and buy it. If lots of people actually do buy it, you get a pretty good cut. But it's hard to get to that point.

[varispeed]

Isn't that the people who can make a book popular are dealing with major publishers only? Therefore nobody is interested in the unknown writer's pie, as even 90% of 0 is still 0.

[ghaff]

Most people who publish through major publishers aren't making much either and publishers these days don't do a lot of promotion for authors who aren't already well-known.

They do provide sales and distribution and if you're writing mostly for reputational reasons, those may be good reasons to do with a "name" publisher.

But, if you're focused on trying to make money and are prepared to make a speculative investment in making it, it's not at all clear to me that you shouldn't self-publish and pay for promotion, editorial services, etc. to try to make it happen.

Authors have a lot better alternatives than mobile app developers who have basically no choice but to pay the app store tax and musicians who are significantly limiting their reach if they opt out of streaming.