Amazon UK to stop selling Bloomsbury's books | Hacker News Reader

Amazon UK to stop selling Bloomsbury's books

thebookseller.com

49 pointsnickcotter49 comments

> "Our expired terms with Bloomsbury were far out of sync with other publishers who sell books through our store. Unlike other UK publishers, with whom we’ve successfully negotiated in recent years, Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments in bringing books in all formats to readers."

Anyone know what this marketing-speak translates into?

Right now a book like [1] [2] is £8.99 paperback, £7.99 ebook from the publishers, £2.29 ebook from Kindle.

Bloomsbury seem to already be giving Amazon an enormous discount on the ebook; you'd think Amazon would be happy to renew on such generous terms.

[1] https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mime-order-9781526675989/ [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mime-Order-Bone-Season-Book-ebook/d...

Most probably Amazon wanted to push ebook prices further down - or a time-limited deal for Bloomsbury about less ebook fees expired.

"Successfully renegotiated" from Amazon's point of view likely means Amazon taking a larger % of revenue from sales

Analogous, having been on the wrong end of the same negotiation with Wallmart, our pre-meeting preparation consisted almost entirely of "how much of a haircut can they impose on us before we just close shop?". I can't imagine it's different at Amazon.

It's more about what % of the price cut goes directly to Amazon in fees rather than the actual cost discount to end users.

> Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments

They didn’t want to get F-ed any more.

Amazon is very one sided business. They there to enrich themselves at the cost of publisher and reader, consumer and producer.

Amazon has publishers over a barrel - it makes up a large proportion of book sales, but it's so aggressive in negotiations that publishers hardly make any profit at all. They hate Amazon like a shopkeeper hates the local racketeers extracting protection money. I guess Bloomsbury finally snapped, and I wouldn't be surprised if other publishers follow suit now that the dam has broken.

If all the major publishers pull out, Amazon loses negotiating power. But it only works if the publishers act as a block

Be careful what you wish for. The level of collusion that would allow 'all' the major publishers to neuter Amazon would very quickly be redirected to all the other retail channels.

Yes, publishers have not proven to be particularly civic-minded in the past. I'm having a hard time picking who to root for, but it's probably slightly better to have a world of many cartels than a single one - and it gives a chance for the other retail channels to form a block too.

On a side note, France solved this particular problem by mandating a unique price for books, regardless of the retail channel, in order to protect less-commercial titles. Not exactly scalable to all sectors, but Art will not be cheapened.

"Bloomsbury wishes to sell to us at the customary discount if offers to other wholesalers, and which covers their costs and then a bit more. We however, want a larger discount, because we are Amazon. If that leaves nothing for Bloomsbury's overhead, so be it. They can watch their sales fall off drastically and think again about presuming to negotiate with us."

As someone who worked for the world's largest trade book publisher a decade ago, let me tell you that dealing with Amazon is the worst. They squeeze publishers' profit margins to the absolute minimum, and they aggressively force them to accept terrible deals because they have the upper hand.

Amazon has been horrible for the book industry. Please buy your books elsewhere!

Book industry or just the publishers? Show me a single author who loves publishers

It does rather feel like the shoe is on the other foot now. Go back a few decades and publishers were the ones rinsing bookshops for all they were worth. Two wrongs don't make a right of course...

The real lesson is if you let a person or organisation get into a position where they can squeeze, they will squeeze. They won't even be doing it because they are "evil" because the hedonic treadmill makes everyone feel entitled to more. The problem is systemic. We know our failures but don't do anything about it.

This could be summarised as "companies leverage their power" which is unsurprising.

If you were to list occasions where entities acted intentionally against their best interests then that would be more noteworthy!

There's nuance to this. A company can achieve power by giving customers a better experience and in that way insert itself between customer and the industry. Thus wielding power in the interest of the customer. A company can also achieve power by giving producers a better experience and insert themselves between producer and industry.

I think my point is that in the majority of cases companies will do both. i.e. (when run "effectively") they will use all available levers.

If they fail to, it will usually be an oversight than a deliberate strategy.

Of course - some companies push harder, overstep more bounds and neglect the possible negative 2nd order effects more. But assuming there's an obvious lever that says "make more money legally" - the vast number of companies will reach for it.

Is it in Amazon's interest to destroy the publishing industry? Is it in publisher's interest for writing books to not be a viable career?

Don't worry, Amazon screws authors directly too when they self-publish, by using the cudgel of Kindle Unlimited to choke possible competition in ebook sales.

https://bsky.app/profile/glynnstewart.com/post/3leu7lzvy622g

KU is amazing.

There's entire genres like litrpg, progression fantasy and cozy fantasy that likely would either not exist or be a fraction of their current size without it.

And authors can make a living, there's plenty in those genres (not to mention romance) who via a combination of patreon + KU + Audible are doing just fine.

I too wish there was someone who could compete with amazon, but the thing is nobody seems to actually even try? I feel like the entire book industry would be quite happy if things had remained stuck in time circa 1990, on their own they would never have invented something like KU.

> I too wish there was someone who could compete with amazon, the thing is nobody seems to actually even try?

Apple was starting to compete, got sued by the US government for it, and decided they didn’t need to bother.

I mean, they did it illegally. Their fault for doing it that way. Kobo is competing with Amazon pretty well.

US market is heavily skewed in Amazon's favor though.

Sure doesn't help that unless you go out of your way to buy a third-party device, there's platform lock-in, which was never an issue with physical publishing.

Frugal is the business term :-)

Can I take this opportunity to recommend the lovely http://bookshop.org and http://uk.bookshop.org

And while I’m at it:

https://libro.fm/

for audiobooks.

https://www.hive.co.uk/

An online retailer that allows you to send a cut of the profits to a local independent bookshop of your choosing.

No connection. Just a satisfied customer.

I was about to suggest the same. They sell books, ebooks, music, films.

I got my hopes up, but hive says

> Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

Bloomsbury OTOH sells DRM-free e-books.

Amazon has been more than just generically horrible - they use blatantly anti-competitive contracts (as if their near-monopsony position wasn't bad enough):

"Amazon fixed online retail prices through contract provisions and policies" that "prevent third-party sellers that offer products on Amazon.com from offering their products at lower prices or on better terms on any other online platform, including their own websites,"

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/amazon-sued-over...

Looks like they already resolved it - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/bloomsbury-reaches-new-lo...

https://archive.is/lylvl

If Bloomsbury caved to Amazon, that is not a good outcome. Just one of the many reasons why I refuse to buy books on Amazon.

Indeed, the original article on thebookseller.com seemed to go up AFTER the deal was reached.

Bloomsbury is one of the few "big publishers" that let you legally buy English-language DRM-free e-books, I whole-heartedly recommend buying from them instead of contributing to lord bezo's dystopian future.

There's another list at https://libreture.com/bookshops/ but it's a bit of a bother to look into all of them; if there's an English-language fiction book I want I tend to just check Bloomsbury (or a quick web search) and if it's not there I give up on finding a legal e-book. There's a niche here for a search engine for bookshops offering DRM-free e-books (ping marginalia_nu ). It's not that hard to set up a shop offering a DRM-free e-book, but it is hard marketing it and making it easy for people to find that book.

>I whole-heartedly recommend buying from them instead of contributing to lord bezo's dystopian future.

The tech enthusiast. What would be the opposite? Tech critic? Tech sucks. Honestly. We would be better off without any internet and the industry abusing it.

I'm very interested in what Bloomsbury might have to say about this, because the quotes from Amazon sound like "they refused to accept our dictates on wholesale prices".

Amazon is simply using its control over a distribution channel to bully partner companies. They’re the new Walmart.

I still don't know why book publishers do not create a global platform for ebook distribution. It's not expensive and they'd get to keep all of the profits.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32690410

Lulu seems to still be around. I think it gets used for self-publishing.

https://www.lulu.com/

I agree they should, but the key part of the platform is the reader hardware. They'd need decent and cheap ereader hardware tied to the store, otherwise who would want to buy books there?

See the Apple books store for an example of how little people care about ebooks if they have to read them on a phone or tablet. Barnes & Noble are doing better than them which is surprising given Apple's clout and their attempts to strangle alternative stores like Kindle with rules on in-app stores.

The market share is something like

Amazon (Kindle Reader) - 80%

Barnes & Noble (Nook Reader) - 10%

Apple ebooks (no reader) - 5%

Other - 5%

In the US. Other markets aren't quite as skewed. Canada has Kobo/Amazon in very similar marketshare for example which is why Canadian Kindle prices are waaaay under what the exchange rate would suggest unlike pretty much every other electronics.

Apple is just a horrible place to buy books too. They only work on Apple devices. There is no Apple Books for PC or Android.

I have a running joke with some friends that they don't say "Amazon" out loud in my presence.

A few months back they started to understand why, when they attempted to navigate the dark-pattern event horizon that is the Amazon Music cancellation process.

(I don't hold out much hope for them developing more ethical shopping habits, though - they've since started buying from Temu!)

At this point I would consider that to be like 80% of Amazon without the markup on the crap.

I think it is about the time the world realizes that Amazon sucks for a while now.

People are told to and need to consume and they are told that convenience is the most important thing. We deserve everything and Amazon gives it to us, in less than 24h.

Consumerism is a problem. Both because how it impacts our environment but also because our economies seem to be dependent on it.

And capitalism is what makes Amazon such a powerful behemoth crushing everything in its path.

Who cares ? I go to Waterstones anyways.

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