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In war, it's sometimes easy to forget that the two countries flailing away at each other are composed of individuals: people who will suffer the consequences of the actions taken by entities much larger than themselves. It's individual people who bleed and are maimed or rendered homeless or killed.
It's the same when corporations decide to take actions against each other. The corporations might take blows to their bottom line, but despite what the law might say, a corporation isn't an individual person. No, the persons who get hurt by these actions are those whose livelihoods are bound up in and affected by the actions of that corporation. Those are the ones who will lose money or jobs or have their careers ruined.
For some writers at the moment, this is potentially the case with the Simon and Shuster / Barnes & Noble dust-up. B&N is declining to order S&S titles for their bookstores. For the mid list authors especially, this can be catastrophic. Yes, B&N and S&S will eventually patch up their differences and things will return to normal, but orders for future books are usually based on how previous books sold… and what happens when your previous book sold terribly because it was never stocked by the only remaining large chain bookstore? What happens when the third and final book of your trilogy comes out, but none of your readers can find it in their local bookstore?
That's something that author Stephanie Burgis is facing. Go read her post on the subject if you want to understand how it feels to be caught in the middle of a larger conflict over which you have no control at all.
It's the same when corporations decide to take actions against each other. The corporations might take blows to their bottom line, but despite what the law might say, a corporation isn't an individual person. No, the persons who get hurt by these actions are those whose livelihoods are bound up in and affected by the actions of that corporation. Those are the ones who will lose money or jobs or have their careers ruined.
For some writers at the moment, this is potentially the case with the Simon and Shuster / Barnes & Noble dust-up. B&N is declining to order S&S titles for their bookstores. For the mid list authors especially, this can be catastrophic. Yes, B&N and S&S will eventually patch up their differences and things will return to normal, but orders for future books are usually based on how previous books sold… and what happens when your previous book sold terribly because it was never stocked by the only remaining large chain bookstore? What happens when the third and final book of your trilogy comes out, but none of your readers can find it in their local bookstore?
That's something that author Stephanie Burgis is facing. Go read her post on the subject if you want to understand how it feels to be caught in the middle of a larger conflict over which you have no control at all.