From Joseph Esposito's [Scholarly Kitchen post](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/10/05/the-360-competitor/) on the trade book industry, back in October:
> It is a remarkable fact that publishers have succeeded over the past two decades in reaping 100% of the efficiencies from digital media and workflows and shared none of that with authors. This will continue.
The observation, an apt one, is buried in an intelligent, insidery discussion of the mainstream industry. Esposito's [main move](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/10/05/the-360-competitor/) is to analogize to scholarly publishing—with Elsevier as sector counterpart to Amazon (and maybe Berelsmann, in the future) as a potential "360° company". Esposito does not, however, extend the analogy to the "remarkable fact" above, so here it is:
> It is a remarkable fact that scholarly publishers have succceded over the past two decades in repeating 100% of the efficiencies from digital media and workflows and shared none of that with university libraries. This will continue.
(Bertelsmann's Penguin Random House, of course, [*did* end up buying](https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/938919530/book-publisher-simon-schuster-sold-to-rival) Simon & Schuster—an object of informed speculation in Esposito's [October column](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/10/05/the-360-competitor/).)