All for One, and One for All? Nah.

What follows is probably the thing that makes me the most angry about the business I'm in.

I talk a lot about what an independent fellow I am. I don't belong to any retail organizations. I often feel as if these types of groups breed "in-crowds" and that almost always they result in "group think."

So, admittedly, what follows may seem somewhat contrary to that.

I find myself getting really angry over those shops who purposely seem to join the "enemy"--those forces who don't mean the entire market well. Publishers or wholesalers who make decisions that either go around or even purposely harm the majority of retail stores.

Most often it's a "I got mine" or "It's good for me, too bad for you," type attitude. Even more often, they are just idiots who can't see the harm they are doing. There seem to be a large percentage of these people who are new to the business, who have no context to make such decisions, and who don't care to learn. As long as they perceive it to be good for them, it doesn't matter if it's bad for everyone else.

Well, fuck them.

I use the word Quisling for them. They make me so angry I could spit. The people we are fighting almost always use these Quislings as examples that not all of retailers agree. Which is true--in the same way that climate deniers use the few scientists--usually not even scientists, but under educated TV weathermen--to say, "Not all scientists agree!"

Bullshit.

The last time one of these publisher schemes popped up, a survey of retailers found that 85% if retailers were against it. I have no fucking clue who the other 15% were. People too stupid to be running stores, that's for sure.

But I always hold my tongue while I watch the vast majority of my fellow retailers try to reason with them. Because, like I said, it really makes me so angry that it isn't pretty.

I probably won't print this--I'm just venting.

OK. More Quislings have popped up. So print.