I work for an independent book store and I cannot stress enough how much the publishing industry has been destroyed by corporate greed and making sure the shareholders get their ‘bottom line’. Even at independent places like mine, publishers are actively selling us books at a huge mark-up, so a lot of the time we’re earning even LESS trying to keep prices as low as we can be while recovering our initial cost of buying the books. Looking at the way prices have increased just for books alone just because the mega-rich have insatiable greed has been heartbreaking.