> Keep this same energy when your groceries go up by 60%

This is more likely to happen from inflation (i.e Government printing too much money) than from every grocery store in the region jacking up their prices simultaneously.

And if they do, I can decide to grow my own veggies and hunt my own meat. Or if I don't want to do that, I can call up a farmer nearby and trade with them directly. No one is forcing me to do business with any grocer.

> Amazon having total market dominance, and taking 80% of royalties (despite contributing nothing to the production process) is obscene.

Yeah, that is ridiculous. That's a pretty big cut. Seems like they've got a pretty solid platform if they can manage to command such a sizeable cut.

> Amazon famously use books as 'loss leaders' to support their other products/advertising.

Then it should be easy to sell your book on your own site for half the price of what Audible would charge. You'd eat their lunch by having dramatically lower prices, and you'd still be making more money than working with them, presuming the same or similar volume of sales.

> They are the only option, and they are a terrible option.

That's just not true. Anyone can start up a squarespace website and sell their books/audiobooks online for dirt cheap. There's like a million other "run your own website with no technical knowledge" businesses out there, too. No one is making anyone do business with Audible, and authors are free to do business on their own terms if they so choose.

As it stands, I'm guessing authors see it as more valuable to pay Audible for their services than to do their own sales because the incredible ability of Audible to drive sales, even if they only keep 20-40%. This is evidenced by the fact that Audible has a massive library of audiobooks from authors making exactly that decision.