Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm a big supporter for Amazon on this one. There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. Amazon is not doing that, and it is not a personal attack on any author despite what media spin they might try to put on this story.
That's what a publisher does.
Amazon basically wants to condition people that the price of an e-book should be no more than $9.99 max. That is good for basically all except the most quality authors (and publishers), who don't necessarily need Amazon's marketing, but want to price their book higher.
obviously all of these things can be done individually by third parties freelance and not using a publisher, but most indie books don't because they likely can't afford it and they suffer from a quality standpoint because of it. publishers can still bring plenty of value, they just need to adapt.
And you know what? They are incredibly bad at most of this. I have a friend who's recently been accepted by a publisher, and he gets virtually no support from them for promotion of his books. Their sole job seems to be putting the books on the shelves in a few places.
At the same time, if you were a marketing guy, you wouldn't want to waste your time working in such companies anchored in centuries of immobility.
[1]My housemate's mother used to be an editor for a publisher as well, and in her words "You know the saying that everyone has a book in them? It just isn't true..."
They do not do any of this for new authors, yet they take huge cuts anyway.
If you self-publish and are wildly successful, you can always sign with a publisher to get an in-store deal later when you have more leverage.
I've been through both paths. James Altucher also wrote about it on his blog and I totally agree with him.
And if you are going to go the self-publish route, you really need to have someone help you with the roles a publisher traditionally fills, such as editing. I say this as someone who has self-published a book. I didn't even consider traditional publishing, but I did use a professional editor.
Maybe it makes sense for authors to bond together to alleviate risks. Again, the question is, what is the right price for that service.
I'd say publishers are just a normal business. They provide some services that have some value. But they are not the gatekeepers they used to be anymore, hence authors should be able to get much better deals now.
As for marketing, a single person with a million followers on Twitter can probably achieve more than a whole traditional PR section of a big publisher? Or a recommendation on the front page of Amazon...
Sure PR still has some value (getting into newspapers and so on). But it's not the only way anymore.
Having said that you may not want to discount them completely. Here are the few things publishers did do:
1. They would give advances to writers so the writers can focus on writing full time or even visit the places to get that extra reality experiences.
2. They had this huge networking with newspapers that allowed books to get significant publicity. It would be almost impossible to get individual writer featured by themselves.
3. They managed events like book signing at popular venues that again added in to significant marketting. Today its not uncommon to have publisher fly out an author to 50 city tour across the country on their dime.
4. They provided cover designer, editors, art work etc although these services now have become much cheaper to get elsewhere by independent writers.
5. Many publishers have great relationships with TV channels and popular bloggers. When you see a book featured on Colbert Report you can almost bet some publisher pulled some strings and their wallets.
I think eventually above kind of book marketing activities would become services provided by companies and publishing books becomes like little startups with investors and what not. That way relationship is much more transparent and authors can own biggest chunk of pie. At some extent this has already started on Kick Starter.
1) Advances have gone to absolute garbage. This means the author has to actually develop and maintain and online presence that is a renewable source of leads and other income. This is more work for same pay, but it's also the evolution of a ridiculously stagnant industry.
2) Shrug. Not really. First time authors get absolutely nothing from publishers. Big time authors get plenty of help (that they could have done themselves or contracted others to do for them at cheaper rates and no points off their royalties). Middling authors sometimes get a break. It is a VERY small portion that gets help from the marketing wing that really needs it.
3) Again, not really. See #2.
4) You covered this.
5) See #2.
All of the "marketing" is overblown. I know this is somewhat your point, but I just wanted to reinforce it. I self-publish now and could not be happier. When I saw how much I'd give up in royalties by going with any of the 3 publishers who sent me contracts, I laughed.
Keep in mind that Amazon is also a "value-added middleman".
I'm certain that Amazon marketing has played a significant role in the initial success of this piece. On the other hand, I proofread the final draft that the author had before approving the piece for publication. The Amazon/Kindle person he had been working with as a proofreader supposedly had 25 years experience proofreading at the NY Times. I probably found 100–200 errors, not the "I would do it like this: kind, but the "this is wrong" kind.
When I spoke to my friend/author later on, he said that the proofreader is simply overwhelmed with work. I can't remember how much she once described to him she'd have to do in short order, but it was a ridiculous amount of work.
So while there is a value add to a middle man like Amazon, I can see how there are shortcomings to what they offer since the grunt-work side of publishing isn’t their focus, even if they do a bit of it. That’s not to suggest the long-standing publishers are better, just that there are shortcomings to what each style of publisher offers, and it may be difficult for a new author to learn the shortcomings before it’s too late.
I am not asking snarkily; I am genuinely curious. I'm contemplating self-publishing, but I'm aware that Amazon is a pretty noisy landscape. If there are ways to power one's signal through the noise, I'm interested in learning about them.
I'm an avid reader; honestly, given my nighttime reading patterns, I probably read too much. I've been to the deep ends of reading self-published work (much of it "acclaimed") and I'm not satisfied. Perhaps one day we'll arrive at a place where crowd-sourced reviews adequately filter the wheat from the chaff in an editor- and marketing-less world, but I'm not convinced we are there just yet.
Short version: I've read many (i.e., 10+) self-published works, and few of them have me looking forward to a world without publishers. I appreciate "elitist" filters that still allow pulpy sci-fi and fantasy through. I'm not ready to see them leave quite yet.
How do you find books to read?
My techniques are: Amazon suggestions, browsing at the library, blogs, forums, and following my favorite authors websites.
None of these require a publisher.
The problem with Crowd sourced reviews, is that quite often, other people might like quite crappy books. The job of a publisher isn't to just find a book that they like, but that the general reading population will love.
I appreciate and respect what the publisher does as part of their filtering - I just suspect they are extracting more value than they are worth.
Hopefully established authors are able to negotiate increasingly more lucrative deals as a reflection of both the reduced risk, as well as the increased value they bring to the equation (as well as the reduced value that the publisher brings. I can't tell you who Stephen King's publisher is...)
Otherwise we'd have to put up with Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, when we could be reading polished high-quality titles that twinkle with the elusive literary aura that only publishers can add.
[snerk]
Here is The Thing: publishing used to be an educated middle class business catering to educated middle class readers.
Self-publishing opened the market to less-educated writers producing work for less-educated readers. Amazon basically reinvented the old Victorian penny dreadful market in digital form.
Does this matter? Not really. The penny dreadfuls didn't kill literature. In fact, in a round-about way, they eventually launched science fiction and fantasy as genres.
Publishers gave up on real literature back in the 80s, when all the old small semi-amateur publishing houses were swallowed by corporate sharks. So don't look for not-crappy there.
There is some basic filtering to eliminate people who can't write at all. But Amazon reviewers are getting pickier, so it's not obvious the can't write at all crowd will survive for much longer.
Meanwhile, many not-quite-mainstream writers have pulled themselves out of publisher-enforced poverty by selling direct.
Is this a bad thing? No, it really isn't.
I don't care about the "general reading population"; I want books that I will enjoy. Recommendation engines provide a lot more value in this area than publishers (at least for fiction).
A publisher filters to find books that will sell, not to find great writing. In some instances great writing will sell quite well, in others that crappy romance novel can be a hit with a lot people. Publisher's release garbage all the time, it's not like they're some guardian angels of good writing. Maybe it would be awesome if we could just let the readers decide whether a book is good to them or not?
As a side note, the assumption here is that reviews are legit and not bought. To me the non-ideal situation of fake reviews is a separate issue vs the principle of whether legitimate customer reviews can serve as a good filter for readers. My experience has been that they certianly can.
I'm on the side of Amazon here, but let's not get carried away.
The books in your local library have largely come through a traditional publisher. Those blogs, forums, and author websites are going to be biased (not in the perjorative sense, but as in selection bias) toward titles that have come through traditional publishers as well.
The closest we can come to seeing a world without the influence of a publisher is Amazon's self-published titles, and they're really not good on average. I don't have a huge number of data points myself, but I haven't heard anyone rave about the quality of a randomly selected self-published title.
I think there's still a valuable role for the publishers to play. However, that role is quite a bit smaller than it once was, and the publishers are currently entrenched in a position of taking the same high cut of the profits that they've always taken, and that's going to have to change in order for them to do well in the longer term.
I usually go in this order: recommendations from friends, reviews, browsing bookstores or libraries, and books sent by publishers or authors (I write a blog about books and ideas at http://jseliger.wordpress.com).
One question is how that initial seeding group happens; right now it tends to through Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and related means. But that gets towards complicated questions of how information and ideas propagate through a society, and I think we're going to be sorting that out for a long time.
As more and more authors are simply buying dozens of 5* reviews for their books on sites like fiverr (or outsourcing it to Book Marketing companies who do the dirty work on their behalf), then I think we're moving further from that world, rather than closer to it.
But some do, correct? I've been reading quite a few (more than 10, probably more like 20-30) lately and I've ran across more than a few great finds. Granted, maybe our "Standards" are vastly different - I admit freely to being spat upon by literary purists for reading Science Fiction and Fantasy.
I've ran into more than a few utter piles though. I'm more selective based on total reviews, so I'm not getting anything cutting edge (10 reviews - 4.5 stars, no thanks, 180 reviews 4 stars, sure). I don't have friends or contacts of any sort that read what I do, so unfortunately that's all I can do.
Publishers provide value to themselves, not to authors or artists.
Argument from quality: nope. Most publishers won't touch quality writing, because they know the market for it is limited. Joyce would never be published today. Austen might, but Austen is a bit difficult, so probably not. Lessing was turned down by a major publisher when she tried submitting under a different name, just to see what happened. I have my doubts if Pynchon or Vonnegut would be taken on today. (Has anyone of equivalent ability been signed in the last twenty five years?)
There's a huge market for ghost-written celebrity blather nonsense, landfill SF and Fantasy, and two-glasses-of-wine-and-a-billionaire chicklit, and a much smaller market for self-absorbed litfic. But quality literature?
Argument from services provided: nope again. Editors aren't quite two a penny, but good ones are available for hire. Likewise cover designers. Because you're paying them direct, you'll find that an editing process that takes publishers 18 months can be completed in a few weeks.
Argument from marketing: Publishers literally won't lift a finger to help any author who isn't already selling in the millions.
Argument from financial support: A couple of $k up front if you're very lucky, in return for losing 85% of future income. And you'll probably be offered a crappy work for hire contract.
So - what is this 'value' that publishers provide?
Whether they're of equivalent ability is subjective, of course, but plenty of difficult but beautiful literary works are published every year. And I would bet that their first run is a lot larger than Ulysses' was :)
Authors I've read in the past couple of years that were not mainstream but were published recently include Roberto Bolano, John Banville, Tom McCarthy, Eduardo Galeano...and I'm not much of a fiction reader. There's an enormous number of books published and almost all of them are not mainstream.
Which is almost exactly what happened to JK Rowling, only her books are slightly more accessible.
The big pubs do not take risks. If a writer can show evidence of critical interest and existing strong sales, they suddenly become interested.
Signing on the basis of a strong, original manuscript? Not any more.
I'm sure there's an exception every year or five, but it's a good bet that unless you're incredibly lucky and/or know commissioning editors personally already because you all went to university together, the odds of getting in through the front door are not good now.
Yes, publishers do provide a value. Also one of the best selling books of late is a 700 page non-fiction book about finance, which reached #1 on Amazon's non-fiction list, published by Harvard University Press.
Saying that all publishing is just mass media crap is a just plain false.
As a reader I like finding publishers like that because it reduces the noise for me considerably and improves discoverability: browsing http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/new-titles or http://www.zero-books.net/forthcoming-titles.html is actually manageable. With a few such publishers (I follow about 5 semi-regularly) you can keep abreast of a lot of interesting things happening without having to recognize the individual authors or do extensive research on them; I outsource the job of doing that to the publisher.
And it remains true that top-selling established authors do okay out of trad pub. The 1% of writers in that category get decent enough advances and some PR support.
Everyone else is wasting their time and getting screwed over. Including a tragically large number of people who write for university presses. (I really hope Piketty got a lawyer to look over his contract.)
Writers are not, generally, minded to think of writing as a business full of business people doing business people things.
But some do - in increasing numbers. If you know anything about the industry, you'll know that where ten years ago it was taken as read that you needed an agent and a real publisher, otherwise you were just some noob with a vanity contract, the reality now is that writers are stampeding away from the agent+publisher deal package.
Agents are literally panicking about their jobs.
The charge has been led by romance writers, who have a terrifyingly efficient business and support association (the RWA) and not a few self-made self-pub millionaires.
The problem with a site like HN is that most people posting here know very little about the industry. But when you're in it, and you've been following developments in detail for a few years, the picture doesn't look the same as it does from outside.
The labels really are dying. They'll hold on a few more decades, but only because they'll not let go of their venue monopoly willingly.
And books? When's the last time you were in a Borders? How long before all those old Barnes and Noble storefronts are just Halloween stores for 2 months out of the year?
They too are losing control of the publishing and distributing process.
There are plenty of authors that the publisher
will deny the opportunity to even put a book
on the shelf.
It's dumbfounding how artists, authors and advocates who claim to support those lowly artists and authors make such self-serving cases against the likes of Amazon, when it does not suit their mores.
What about the democratization of publishing? What about the ability of anyone outside the inner circles of literary royalty, to actually see their work in print? These very same advocates, could not care less.
This is also the reason that newspapers, tabloids and general interest magazines everywhere and the writers who write for them despise what Google has done to their curating (read: gate-keeping) potential.
Their power to singularly table the issues and frame the conversations around those issues has dwindled. And they loathe that with a fervor.
Make no mistake. Artists and authors who demand things to be done on their terms are, first and foremost are unbearable egotists. They want to control the narrative, the medium and the delivery. They want to be power-brokers of their craft. Anyone familiar with the publishing houses will tell you this.
( On a slight tangent, read up on the Frank Gehry - Eli Broad fiasco to learn how difficult even architects are to work with. ) [1]
The outrage in most of these cases is not that some behemoth has unfairly moved the goal posts. Its that the changing landscape is allowing for a larger pool of players to release their works and thereby introducing competition. Hence the playing field is no longer tilted in the favor of these storied publishers and their authors.
That's the gripe here. As in most such cases.
[1] Why and how Eli Broad is giving billions away http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-and-how-eli-broad-is-giving-...
Editing is important. Filters are a damn useful invention. I could be talking about websites, music, or books.
After all, one of the things this feud demonstrates is how enormous a share of the book market Amazon has and how strong a bargaining position it therefore has. That's against a big publisher who, whether or not it's acting fully in the interests of its authors, is basically collectively bargaining on their behalf - in the self-published future, most authors would have nobody to bargain for them. Regardless of how nice Amazon is to them at the moment, surely this is asking for trouble in the long run.
Disclaimer: I know very little about the publishing industry but my impression is that both ways make sense. I wanted to link his post here as it seems to me it would make sense regarding this discussion.
For a different viewpoint on all this, see the posts of Barry Eisler and JA Konrath who've been covering this issue for YEARS.
Early in my career, I also spent time negotiating with retailers like Walmart at a large consumer goods manufacturer.
I've been following this situation closely. I'm not personally affected (yet), but it's an opportunity to collect information in the interest of making better decisions about how to publish future projects.
In most ways, this is a pretty standard supplier/retailer negotiation. Most of these disputes don't go public, and don't last this long, but they happen all the time. Both sides are trying to use whatever leverage they have to negotiate the best possible deal. That's normal.
What's atypical about this particular negotiation is that authors are the counterparty that have the most at stake, but have no seat at the negotiating table. They're directly affected by the dispute, but have zero leverage, zero input, and zero recourse for losses incurred in the dispute.
The affected authors are, quite simply, the only real leverage Hachette has in this dispute, and Hachette is using them for all they're worth.
Here's the part of the NYT story that stuck out to me. It's buried close to the bottom:
"About half [of Preston's] book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent."
Hachette failed to come to mutually agreeable terms with their largest retail partner by dollar and unit volume. That's their most important job as a publisher, and they blew it, to the tune of permanently costing their authors 50-60%+ of sales they'll never recover.
Shipping books into retail distribution in a timely manner to minimize out-of-stocks is a publisher's second most important job. Production and distribution of physical finished goods inventory into retail is a hard problem, and most publishers are reasonably well equipped to handle it at scale.
When Hachette's contract with Amazon expired, Amazon (rightfully) stopped ordering advance inventory for stocking, but continued taking orders for available titles and transmitted those orders to Hachette as they arrived. From there, it's Hachette's responsibility to deliver the orders to an Amazon distribution center. Once the books arrive, Amazon packs & ships them to purchasing customers as normal.
That's why, when Hachette's contract expired, all of their books were listed as "Out of stock: ships in 1 to 6 weeks" - that's how long it takes Hachette to deliver stock. That's slow as hell.
Amazon didn't "boycott" or "drop" or "betray" authors or "discourage" readers from buying their books - it ceased offering retail inventory management services to a supplier whose contract had expired, and made a rational and defensible business decision when it became clear that the supplier was not negotiating in good faith to establish a new agreement.
Preston has a right to be pissed off, but not at Amazon.
The printed book business is about 50 years behind every other modern industry. This is always going to be true for the forseeable future.
BTW I am an author who sells books and has no problem with Amazon trying to improve value for the customer.
That's why "Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price" (usually abbreviated MRSP) is a thing. The manufacturer / supplier suggests a price, but the retailer makes the final call. The only recourse suppliers have to this is pulling distribution from that retailer entirely, as long as they apply the same policy to all retailers - companies like Apple and Bose make credible threats to do this to suppliers that violate their guidelines, which is why their prices are so consistent across retailers.
Otherwise, retailers have the final call on retail pricing unless they waive that right via negotiation: if they want to sell at a loss, or reduce their own margin to use lower prices as a marketing tool, they can. That's why Walmart and Target often sell bottles of Tide below cost - it's called a "loss leader" strategy, and it's very common as a way to attract new business.
Amazon used loss leader pricing on bestselling titles to establish the Kindle platform, which is a major reason why it's the dominant ebook platform now.
A big part of this dispute is that Hachette is demanding final authority on setting prices, and demanding that Amazon gives up the right to discount and use its ebooks as loss leaders - instead, they'd get a flat percentage (likely ~30%) of whatever Hachette decides to charge. This is a major part of what's now called "agency pricing," and the big 5 publishers and Apple colluded to force Amazon to adopt it several years ago. That's why the DOJ filed suit for antitrust / collusion / price fixing, and the publishers each lost or chose to settle.
As a condition of the judgement / settlement, publishers now have to renegotiate their contracts with Amazon. Amazon, justifiably, isn't willing to agree to agency pricing without major concessions. Hachette won't agree to standard retail non-agency pricing. Hence the impasse.
EDIT: also to clarify, wholesale non-agency pricing isn't "unprecedented in the book business." Barnes & Noble and independent retailers have operated on wholesale pricing for print books for decades. Otherwise, B&N wouldn't be able to place a "20% off" sticker on bestselling titles, or offer large discounts to move remaindered stock. Hachette is asking Amazon to agree to something no other book retailer has or would agree to. Retailers like Apple and B&N/Nook have agreed to agency pricing on ebooks in the hopes of shutting down Amazon's ability to discount, with the understanding that publishers were attempting to force Amazon to do the same. (Via collusion.)
The larger game is that Hachette (and other large publishers) are attempting to protect their hardcover print sales by inflating the price of ebooks, which makes them less attractive to readers. Ebooks are more profitable, but it's a more difficult market to control, so publishers are fighting Amazon and doing what they can to slow ebook adoption as much as possible. It's not a smart strategy, IMO, but that's what they're doing.
I ask because I believe in things like grocery retail, the retailers have immense power over the suppliers. If you see pasta sauce at 2-4-1, it's the supplier picking up the cost of that. Favourable placement in store? The supplier pays. The big retailers can hit the supplier over the head with the threat of simply stopping selling the suppliers entire catalog, which would cause massive revenue loss for the supplier. With this stick, the retailer can ensure that they're getting a fixed income for every unit sold, regardless of the actual unit sale price. They pretty much have the suppliers completely over a barrel.
Seems like the balance of power between retailer and supplier is drastically different between sectors.
As much as I love my Kindle, and Amazon, and as much as I realize that the publishers probably extract more value from the entire chain than is reasonable given their contribution (as compared to the author, who I believe should be rewarded a great deal more) - I realize that we will face dark times in the future if Amazon is able to corner the eBook market.
What were the books selling for in paperback? I'm guessing less than $15 - I know it's priced to the market and the utility improves the value, and thus a higher price can be attained. But, I didn't think that Amazon would let publishers rip them off in this way - paying more for something that costs less to produce.
Amazon if ebooks are even marginally above paperback costs should just buy the paperback, format shift to ebook, sell the paperbacks as pulp.
I don't think anyone wants to hand over the ebook market entirely to Amazon; all the publishing houses needed to do was not be evil and not try to squeeze the system dry ... oh well. Death and taxes and human greed can always be relied upon.
It's odd watching two book sellers compete with each other to sell a book at loss.
But, your comment, "Amazon would let publishers rip them off in this way - paying more for something that costs less to produce." brings to mind Scalzi's comment,
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/
"(This is where many people decide to opine that the cost of eBooks should reflect the cost of production in some way that allows them to say that whatever price point they prefer is the naturally correct one. This is where I say: You know what, if you’ve ever paid more than twenty cents for a soda at a fast food restaurant, or have ever bought bottled water at a store, then I feel perfectly justified in considering your cost of production position vis a vis publishing as entirely hypocritical. Please stop making the cost of production argument for books and apparently nothing else in your daily consumer life. I think less of you when you do.)"
Think about the software that I purchase online that costs $0.001 to deliver and I pay $595 - it costs 1/10,000th what the old version with paper books, and CDs, and nice glossy boxes.
I agree with Scalzi - the argument about "it costs less to produce" is bogus. Something should be worth whatever value it has to the person buying it intersecting with whatever price the person willing to sell it wants, plain and simple. The cost of creation is not particularly interesting.
Aside from being a straw-man, Scalzi's just wrong. We pay less for a soda at the fountain than we do in a bottle. That's the comparison that should be made. When you buy Coca-Cola, you are buying more than just the raw ingredients processed. Otherwise you'd be buying Store Brand Cola.
If Amazon wants higher-priced ebooks to be more palatable, they should go the hardcover route. Add something to the product to make it seem better. Maybe a preface not found in print versions, maybe features that only work in ebooks - a zoomable version of the map often found at the beginning/end of fantasy books, etc.
*I'm generally of the opinion that they're actually worse - unless you're putting them on display, that's just more bulk to carry around. The number of books I've read enough times for the better binding to matter is easily single digits. And those usually end up given to friends, so I'm buying a new copy every so often anyway.
Er, what? The software doesn't cost $0.001 to produce.
This is more akin to being able to buy that software in a Staples store for $595 in a box with a DVD and manual. Then the producer starts selling it online for $650, because after all you no longer have to go to the store. They just refuse to cut the consumer in on the savings of not producing boxes, not producing media, not creating manuals and instead only focus on the added utility.
When you're dealing in cultural arts and informational products that can benefit society and instead of allowing the benefit of new technology to enrich you further and enrich society more you instead steal the whole benefit for yourself that's evil.
In terms of Scalzi's example: Yes a soda that's sold for $2 in a can might cost 20c to produce, fine no problem. But then recycling takes off and tech develops and that can now costs 12c less to produce so you put the price up to $3 because you're using more recycled material and that's now a selling point. That's what's wrong here. You already had more profit by selling at the same price point, the move in tech and society created the benefit and you leached it and cynically did one over on your customers because you knew that their desire to improve the world could allow you to get a better price.
The fact that it costs zero dollars to produce (on the margin) is immaterial.
One good argument though, against eBooks being more expensive - you can't resell them, or ven easily give them away, or lend them. That issue, right there, should make eBooks worth less to the person buying them - but having nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they cost less to produce.
FWIW I meant to be downloaded, not to be available via internet/web (as that would be a different product and the analogy wouldn't work).
It's not the zero dollars extra, it's the fact there is no actual publishing and so there is a huge cost-saving through - in most cases - no effort of the publisher. Instead of sharing that cost saving to the benefit of society they swallow it and add extra charges which undoes the benefits that the technological move has created. The only reason an ebook costs more than a paperback is greed; allowing the greedy to dictate access to arts (eg fiction books) and informational sources is not right IMO.
I'm not at all arguing that publishing houses can't abuse the power but when they do like this it makes it hard to side against Amazon coming along to whip them in to line. The publishing houses could have set less greedy ebook prices first and Amazon wouldn't then get to do their knight-in-shining-[consumer-championing]-armour act.
Ebook sellers may think you can't resell but first-sale doctrine disagrees. Of course media companies are lobbying to ensure that such established doctrine get reinterpreted to their favour but that again is not acceptable. Again the rich moulding the law to their favour ...
As an aside IMO there should be no copyright protection granted to sellers who lock up their wares in such a way as to prevent them being resold. In addition as such wares aren't going to enter the public domain (so far as is known at the time the copyright is being granted) we - the people - owe them nothing in protection of their works.
"Authors: Amazon is not your friend. Neither is any other publisher or retailer. They are all business entities with their own goals, only some of which may benefit you. When any of them starts invoking your own interest, while promoting their own, look to your wallet."
Hachette isn't working in the authors' best interest here either - they're looking out for themselves.
Scalzi's comparison to fountain sodas missed the mark -- the reason those cost so much more than the cost of the good itself is that the soda needs to cover the costs of owning, maintaining and providing utilities to the building where the fountain is, and the employees who work in that building. Amazon doesn't HAVE that kind of overhead, and they want to pass the savings on to the consumer. The publishers want Amazon to hold onto those savings (or share them with the publishers), so that Amazon can't undercut the other retailers who DO have that kind of overhead.
Apparently servers, bandwidth, electricity and developers are free now?
Similarly, both the absolute and marginal costs of producing ebooks for a publisher are nearly free (at least on top of the physical publishing process).
Once set up what's the additional cost involved for the publisher in shipping the next 10,000,000 ebook files vs the next 10,000,000 paperbacks. Just the act of transferring the book from the computer system to the ebook reader or the owners bookcase.
I personally distributed > 50,000 computer files this month so far for a marginal cost of < £1. Getting 50,000 DL flyers printed would cost me about £1000 without distribution. It's not entirely comparable but I think it gives the flavour of the savings in production costs available to publishers.
Amazon believe a low priced e-book market would generate more profits overall. So they priced low anyway. That, in turn, was their right.
I don't see how the publishers are evil in that situation. What would you do if a reseller was convinced your product was priced too high, and they wanted you to slash prices? The standard advice on Hacker News is "raise your prices".
Amazon appears to have been right, but it was hardly obvious. And low pricing may not apply to all books. For instance, I don't release my books on kindle because of the low pricing structure for self published books.
(Amazon gives 70% royalties for kindle books priced $2.99-$9.99, but only 30% for pricing above and below that, IIRC. The optimal price for my books on my own site is above $9.99, so I don't want that deal)
[Some made up numbers!]
The paperback costs $10. The publisher removes virtually all the direct production costs of creating the book itself (but obv. not the author, editor, type-setting, marketing and such which remain the same or lower). The publisher puts up the price of books because, hey, why use technology to open access to arts and information when you can use it instead to increase the wealth gap.
Yes, as I indicated, there may be extra utility in ebooks and that enables them to increase the price. But, with no price increase they still make more profit.
Yes, it's just capitalism; it's evil.
With agency being 70/30 split (like apps and mp3s), a publisher could net 70% of the list price on ebooks (Big pubs tend to sell ebooks at or near the physical books list price, which is a whole other debate). Now they're looking at close to 50% of list (maybe Amazon is pushing this even lower?). You'll see a world where all ebooks are cheaper on Amazon than on say iBooks, because Apple is not going to bother with anything but agency model. Big win for Amazon. Big suck for publishers.
Basically Hatchette and co was trying to illegally force up the price of eBooks for a company responsible for over half of all their sales. There's a reason why Walmart and Costco can make or break companies, and there's a reason why every other publisher so far has come to amicable terms with Amazon when their renewals came up and that's because they'd already fucked with Amazon.
Hatchette is currently trying to use public pressure to extort Amazon into doing what Hatchette has already been sued for: price fixing.
Amazon is a retailer, and retailers have every right to discontinue carrying any product they want at any time for any reason as long as it doesn't void a contract... and hey look! Hatchettes contract ran out. Amazon is currently being graceful by continuing to sell any of Hatchettes product.
The notion that Amazon is the "bad guy" here is quite frankly idiotic. Hatchette tried to do something illegal to hurt consumers (you know the people who pay writers wages). Now again they're trying to negotiate elevated ebook prices and take away Amazons ability to discount books to hurt consumers (again, you know the people who pay writers wages through that 10-15% royalty). And now Hatchette is the one who's unable to agree to terms that the other publishers so far have managed to, and they've held in a deadlock for three months where their writers are seeing their incomes halved.
Hatchette is part of a massive publishing conglomerate trying to prop up corporate profits as Hardback sales evaporate. They're in this out of their own interest and have clearly showed they're willing to use their authors as weapons and have the audacity to try to make public outrage against Amazon for their own actions. It was Amazon who offered to help pay the authors for their lost wages during the dispute, which Hatchette has failed to accept (because it would require them matching Amazon's contribution) - but Penguin accepted during their unheard of contract dispute a few months prior to this.
So not only is Hatchette actively fucking their own authors with this contract dispute, they're not even TRYING to compensate them when "THE BAD GUY" is.
That's not atypical, authors lost their negotiating power when they signed up for the "gatekeeping" big labels. Only a few big divas have ever been really able to negotiate.
I'm sorry that I can't recognize your authority (built on reading a few articles) at face value. At least have the decency to link to some of those articles.
How can an article determine the fair value of anything anyway?
Here's a link for you: http://www.spiegel.de/international/amazon-seeks-fifty-perce...
Now about "childish": calling things what they are is indeed the adult way. You've been childish. And in your last post, you've also been cynical ("At least have the decency…"). Both are very bad traits. Please grow up.
Btw I suppose "I have more experience than you (because I read some articles) therefore I am right" is another hallmark of grownup conversations.
Your link says Amazon used to get 30% and now they want 50% of ebook sales, same as for paperback books. They still make more money with paperback books. Where in that does it imply what a fair price is?
You can read books from other sources on your Kindle Reader. So what if Amazon has built a decent reach - why shouldn't they be paid for it? If you place an ad in the New York Times, is it unfair that it costs a lot of money because their paper reaches a certain audience?
I find this hard to believe, but do not know about Hachette specifically. Amazon isn't the only one who can do PoD. In fact, Amazon tends to carry so little stock that many of the publishers drop ship books for Amazon when an order comes in. They will show 1-3 day availability and not 1-6 weeks.
This tactic is typical push a vendor over the cliff mentality that has been shown by Amazon time and time again.
Amazon had a dispute with LSI as well. It was less publicized, so we don't know the details. But LSI books started showing "Out of stock: ships in 1 to 6 weeks" if that book wasn't also available on Createspace.
That was false. LSI takes about a day to ship a book once it receives an order. Amazon was merely delaying LSI orders in an attempt to force authors to use Createspace in conjunction with LSI.
I suspect one of those options is legally questionable. And would cause a very large hoo-ha.
Does anyone have experience with this?
You should consider submitting an opinion piece based on your experiences and your understanding of the situation. (Also with your replied comment about Amazon's retail pricing at a loss; very insightful!)
I love when writers say they would love for people to have better access to literature, but when Amazon shows up with their accessible platform it turns out its back to basics - all about money. Top writers maybe dont get paid as much as with regular publishers, but:
a) they do not need to publish to Amazon
b) if they are really about art and accessibility they will be happy with it
c) I know bills in cities like NYC are high, but hey - you decided to write books for living. You took this route with all pros but also with cons...
Thinking that (1) writers wanting people to have more access to literature, and (2) working in their self-interest to be paid are incompatible is silly. Unless you're voluntarily giving up your salary so that more people can have access to software (or whatever else it is you do).
You can also put non-amazon books -- in formats such as pdf -- on kindle. It's not as simple as buying through amazon, but it's very doable. Further, everyone who owns a smartphone or a tablet can just download a reader app.
One publisher who I find particularly reader-friendly is Baen. If I buy a book from them, it goes into my account there so I can download it at any time (and any number of times) in the future, in a wide variety of formats. Since I do my reading on a kindle, I click the send to kindle link and it pops up next time I turn on my kindle's wireless.
(b) The publisher's other retail markets (Barnes & Noble, Wal-Mart, other distributors and bookstores) would crap out a literal brick, which they would then apply to the publisher, if the publisher started competing with them.
1. Cheaper ebooks (many reasons vs pbooks) 2. No fracking DRM
This whole hachette vs amazon thing is bullshit with the consumers and authors being left on the side while these middlemen argue.
This is a valiant cause. There is no bad guy, it's just economics. Though I have particular respect for anyone that can and does write a book.
That is, if I shouldn't consider the costs of paperback books in comparing physical books to ebooks as to why they should be cheaper, than you can't do the same for why they should be more expensive. No reason the books at the local store couldn't also be 9.99.
Then you can support all three parties at the same time :)
one important analogy is that the first time the library is made it has to pay to buy all the books for lending later. But an online library probably can just distribute copies instead.
Can anyone highlight what laws are going to be followed here and how the authors are going to paid for using this service ? Also will authors have the right to put their books out of bounds of amazon?
As a first gen post here has pointed out authors have no control over what is happening in these essentially corporate negotiations.