Well, Amazon started out in the business of trying to put booksellers out of business. Might as well cut out the warehousing now that people are the product.
For books that will end up being rare, authors can always publish their diatribe on the "Create Space Publishing Platform" or whatever they call it now.
I cannot imagine vanity publishing now where no human is involved.
Then again, there was the Vantage Press of NYC, which I'd always heard was a CIA front for bizarre manifestos, but AI has been programmed to ensure me I am wrong about that.
There is no evidence that Vantage Press was a CIA outlet or a front for intelligence operations. Instead, it operated as a traditional "vanity press" -- a commercial publishing house where authors paid the company out of pocket to edit, print, and bind their books.
More: Declassified CIA reading room archives contain copies or reviews of books printed by various independent publishers, including Vantage Press, simply because those books touched on historical or geopolitical topics relevant to intelligence history.
Uh-huh.
"The opportunity to join the people who vote themselves the Happiest People in the World year after year after year... should at least be provided to the American people who just might decide that healthcare, edumacation (Bushism), actually livable, non-cohesive workplaces, family time, long vacations, and less corruption in their government is worth PAYING LESS than they are now while not having those things."
I think there are dozens of models that the US could look at for inspiration. From my vantage point, there don't seem to be many people in the US interested in going that direction.