Brilliance Publishing, owned by Amazon, produces and distributes audiobooks, e-books, and print titles. Its catalog covers everything from bestsellers to niche genres and every sale feeds Amazon’s dominance in publishing. Independent authors and small presses compete in a market where Amazon controls pricing, distribution, and visibility. And Brilliance operates as another spoke in that monopolistic wheel, generating revenue for a company built on worker exploitation, union busting, and surveillance.
Amazon is rated High Impact because its harms are systemic and interlocking.
Environmental Harm: Delivery fleets, aviation cargo, and data centers generate massive emissions and plastic waste, while public pledges mask lobbying against climate regulation.
Human Rights Violations: Workers face surveillance, injury-level quotas, and unsafe delivery speeds. Migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere face wage theft and coercion.
Military & Conflict Complicity: AWS is central to surveillance states. Project Nimbus embeds Amazon in Israel’s occupation and war crimes, supplying AI and data services to its military and government.
The result: consumer spending that powers a machine which entrenches inequality, accelerates climate collapse, and sustains state violence worldwide.