One of the big dogs, Viacom, owned by that Electric Barbarella-loving multi-billionaire, Sumner Redstone, has given Simon and Schuster permission to set-up a little social site on Linkedin called, affectionately enough, “Inkedin.” This site supposedly will give authors (certainly not the top-drawer authors) links to social discussions about publishing and other friendly topics.

I wonder if this social web site will be moderated? I can imagine if the midlist authors begin grumbling about advances or marketing of their titles, then the moderator may step in to censor. At any rate, the writing is on the proverbial wall about these midlisters. They’re leaving the proverbial ship like the proverbial rats.

One thing I know they won’t have on that InkedIn site is top-tier authors. Don’t expect to be hob-nobbing with Stephen King or James Patterson. No, you’ll be gossipping with strictly mid-listers. Together with the Author Portal, you might as well be looking for a wormhole into another dimension to sell your books. As we all know, the war is on amongst retailers like Amazon and the “big five dogs,” and we also know who will ultimately suffer: the midlisters.

The midlist authors are being thrown this “bone” because, after all, S&S already placates the indies by running their scam publishing deal called Archway Publishing. This outfit has already been labeled as an “author beware” scam, so I suppose the midlisters are being rounded up and propagandized in this covey called “InkedIn.” Please! Any midlister who is a member of this group, please comment on this blog to tell us what really goes on there! Adventurous indie authors want to know the truth.

I’ll give the midlisters a few more years to get wise about the “big five.” After that time, there will be only “us and them,” meaning the independent authors, us, who collect the majority of the royalties they earned by creating, editing, publishing and marketing their own excellent titles, and “them,” the products of the “big five” money moguls who are too lazy (and too rich) to do it for themselves. In other words, the one percent versus the rest of us.