A Message from the Amazon Books Team | Hacker News Reader

A Message from the Amazon Books Team

readersunited.com

22 pointsdtmmax3312 comments

I recommend reading Orwell's full essay here: http://vintagepenguins.blogspot.com.au/p/review-of-penguin-b... It's well written, because of course it's Orwell, and while he was certainly wrong in 1937, six years later he was cheerfully writing to Penguin about the best books for them to reprint: http://georgeorwellnovels.com/letters/letter-to-penguin-book...

Meanwhile, George Bernard Shaw was saying the cheaper books were, the better, and J. B. Priestley was calling Penguin "a grand publishing feat." Amazon is rewriting history when they say the literary establishment hated paperbacks.

And, of course, Orwell was the last man in the world one could reasonably accuse of being a pawn of corporate interests. He was a revolutionary and a socialist who went to Spain to fight against fascists. He was uncompromising in his examination of even his fellow travelers: 1984 is a criticism of the Soviet Union and abstract leftist thought.

Finally, if you're going to invoke Orwell, you should have the intellectual honesty to link to both people who agree with you and people who disagree with you. You should also not call yourself Readers United. I'm a reader; I have some sympathies with Amazon, but I am not united behind this any more than all authors are part of Authors United.

The post didn't accuse him of being a pawn of corporate interest. It just said he came out against a cheaper book format, as indeed he did, notwithstanding his later change of heart.

I'm not sure of your point. Seems that the only reason he was invoked, was because he is well respected and generally regarded as a smart person. And, he was wrong. That he later changed positions to be "right" is irrelevant.

Similarly, that some in the industry thought paperbacks were a good idea is similarly irrelevant.

So, are there any points in this letter that are not legitimate? Overly sold? I'm genuinely curious. As things stand right now, my take is that I'm for cheaper books. Though, the last ebook I bought was $36. And I don't regret a penny of it. (Granted, the average price of the previous 20 books I bought is probably under a buck. I over saturated myself with the humble bundle for books.)

Perhaps the most interesting thing to analyze is if their numbers on the price elasticity is accurate. Really that is the key of the debate, it seems. I understand that things are a more complicated for Hachette, as they believe this devalues reading as a whole. In particular, their hard back sales. Any numbers showing how 9.99 ebooks affect hard cover sales out there?

Amazon's position on this never really made much sense. If Amazon wanted to make the paperback books analogy, then the real disruptor is the 99 cent Kindle Singles which Amazon sells. If Amazon's predictions come true, then cheap self published books will take over from expensive, publisher published books.

If Hachette wants to price their books at $15, why shouldn't they be allowed to? Any business in America should be free to shoot it's own foot off, that's their right. Where does Amazon come in telling Hachette how to better run Hachette's business?

This was sent to all KDP authors. Mine started with, "Dear KDP Author,"

I just got mine. What seemed odd to me is that the From name was Kindle Direct Publishing, and it is an amazon.com address, but the site is called "Readers United."

I appreciate Amazon's position here. There have been some other posts on HN where a few folks have made strong points in favor of Amazon. But I don't like how this site is presented as a readers effort with that name.

I too, just got mine. As someone who is still kind of confused (and unaffected) by this issue, Amazon may have had on me the opposite effect of what they expected. The following just rubbed me the wrong way:

- Opening with George Orwell (it felt like a milder form of Godwin's)

- Boiling the issue down to "We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not." I thought there was a lot more to it than that?

- "We have noted your illegal collusion."

What more did you think there was to this debate?

It seems like this is the real clinch of their message:

[Hachette] believes they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.

e.g. they are accusing Hachette of putting pain to their own authors with the hope of said authors mobilizing against Amazon in retaliation

Hard to see how else to read hachette's actions, unless amazon is straight out lying about the proposals they made and hachette's response (not likely).

Amazon is much bigger than Hachette. They can absorb losses due to these proposals more easily. If a guy making $50 a day tells a guy making $10 a day that it's fair for them to both make $5 less per day, he's wrong.

Note that Amazon is being semantic when they say ebooks are 1% of income. That's for the Lagardere group as a whole. Hachette is a subsidiary and doesn't have the flexibility to just tell the other subsidiaries to absorb their losses.

http://www.lagardere.com/businesses/lagardere-publishing/ove...

This made me sign up for HN. I just finished reading it and needed to see who was discussing it.

While I agree with some other commenters that it seemed a tad manipulative, it seems that the authors seem to be against Hachette in this instance. I read the comments as of the Author's Guild post as suggested and there were some pretty strong feelings about it.

Basically the small time authors are getting screwed while the big time authors aren't really bothered. This doesn't really affect me but it'd be fun and great if Hachette did accept that second offer and author's got 100% of the sales, if only for a short while.

As also stated, I don't really get why or how Amazon can change the pricing of Hachette's books. If someone would kindly explain that.

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