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Comment by seacious | Hacker News Reader

What practice of Hachette is amazon objecting to? The article doesn't specify the cause of the conflict.

> What practice of Hachette is amazon objecting to?

Amazon isn't publicly objecting to any Hachette practice. Per the earlier article on the dispute linked from the source article, [1] Amazon is seeking more favorable contract terms with Hachette (and neither side seems to be disclosing what particular terms are at issue), and is working to discourage sales of their books -- and promote alternatives to people specifically seaching for Hachette books -- to force Hachette to agree to Amazon's preferred terms.

[1] The earlier article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/technology/writers-feel-an...

Yes, of course the publishers wouldn't want authors to see the details of their Amazon deals.

In the 10th paragraph: "Amazon, which is under immense pressure from Wall Street to improve its profit margins, is trying to get better terms on e-books out of Hachette,"

Amazon also previously used this playbook with MacMillan Publishing.

Probably e-book pricing. Hachette doesn't really have any reason to come out publicly and says they are trying to keep e-book prices high, since while that is good for authors and Hachette, it's bad for the consumer pocketbook.

Can we stop with the mindless idea that the point of capitalism is only to drive down the price for consumers. The point is to provide an equilibrium between suppliers and customers. The difference between 12.99 and 9.99 doesn't hurt consumers and provides significant difference in paying authors. Amazon is unfairly trying to kill the suppliers for short term gains at the expense of the industry.

In a similar vain, one could say that selling ebooks at $9.99 and sharing profits between authors and retailers[1] is a better result all around.

[1]Of an amazon monopoly on retail is a bad result, but in principal that has nothing to do with publishers

I'm sorry, but the difference between $12.99 and $9.99 is precisely a cost (hurt) to the consumer of $3. It's certainly a reduction in consumer surplus and, when multiplied by the millions of books sold every year, is a meaningful impact.

Except that the hurt is widely distributed at the higher price, but not at the lower price (where it's felt by a few large publishers).

This kind of unequal distribution can cause the slight lessening of pain for a large number of people to mortally wound the few actually producing content, leading to a serious destabilizing of the market, which requires that both parties have something to provide.

Which was the point of the GP comment, and something you didn't even remotely address, instead making a pedantic point about words chosen for effect.

Not only is this measurable, but laws of supply and demand are pretty well established economic theory. I'm honestly surprised to see such gesticulation about economics in a start-up oriented forum.

Yeah, my point is that nuance gets lost if they go public with the terms of the dispute. "Amazon fighting to keep e-book prices down" is not the headline Hachette wants to see. In fact, Hachette is probably quite happy with the headline they got, "Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Publishers."

I don't agree with this. I think that a 30% price difference is significant.

In the current market, I think that publishers get far too large a fraction of the revenue and authors far too small. If the author creates the content and promotes the content (with the help of Amazon) what value is the publisher adding? Copyediting? Legitimacy stamp?

A better deal from Amazon than individual authors could get on their own.

Not true.

Amazon pays individual authors 70% of retail. That's far more than they get from any publisher.

The practice of not giving Amazon even more money.

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