George Orwell is Amazon's latest target in battle against Hachette
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
This reminds me of the piracy debate. Was Microsoft helped or hurt by the rampant piracy of the Windows OS? I'm pretty sure they were helped a lot (how else achieve 99% lock in), but presumably the point could be argued back and forth indefinitely (people who would argue either point would be plentiful to find).
Also the discussion is completely besides the point. Two businesses can't agree on a price. Neither of the two has a moral obligation to sell books for a certain price. If they don't agree, they simply don't sell books to each other. Why does that even concern anybody else?
Amazon's customers are readers.
Hachette's customers are large bookstores.
Because "1984" is the first and only thing 99% of people know about George Orwell, bringing his name into a discussion has long been the literary equivalent of reductio ad Hitlerum. "Even George Orwell said...," or "George Orwell himself wrote..." are often the hallmarks of lazy and facile arguments. Amazon's Orwell reference was similarly lame.
I have no love for Hachette in this battle. At the same time, I don't find Amazon to be a wholly likable or compelling protagonist. Its PR strategies have been hamfisted, ceding a lot of moral appeal to Hachette that Hachette has not earned and does not deserve.
That this whole thing plays out, day by day, in a paper of record like the NYT is a consequence of the NYT's close orbit to the publishing world. Many of its writers are represented by the same agencies that rep Hachette's writers, and some are probably Hachette writers themselves.
Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
To the extent the NYT is inclined to take Hachette's side of the fight, that's largely because its staff and editors are much closer to Hachette, geographically, professionally, and socially. It's still not a great reason, of course, but it's not pay-for-play.
If Amazon is dishonest for invoking Orwell, it pales in comparison to the David and Goliath spin that the Times has been putting on this story, where David consists of millionaire celeb authors like Preston, James Patterson, et al and mega-billion conglomerates like Lagadere (Hachette), Bertelsmann, CBS, and Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp.
You're right that this is largely New York "literary" snobbery at work. I just wish they wouldn't use the "poor little author" spin.
Note that Amazon has made three separate offers to mitigate the effect of this dispute on authors. Hachette has rejected all three, and has offered none of its own.
It's pretty clear who's really "hurting authors" here.
Actually that's been clear for quite a long time, given that Amazon pays authors who deal with them direct 70% of retail and doesn't require that the author sign up for the life of the copyright, while Hachette and their ilk typically pay 12%-15% of retail and do require the authors to sign over their rights for the life of the copyright.
This certainly isn't a case of David vs. Goliath. This is a case of an elderly, infirm Goliath having its lunch eaten by a younger, hungrier, smarter Goliath. The reason I'm not completely sympathetic to Amazon, either, is that, as a writer, I'm not in favor of any Goliath's controlling the market. Trading one master for another is progress of a sort, and it's necessary progress. But time will tell if Amazon's new world order is indeed better for writers.
Many writers are being held hostage in this battle, especially those in Hachette's fold. It's one thing for folks like Patterson and Preston to take up Hachette's call to arms from their ivory towers, but the vast majority of writers are struggling to get by. Even the majority of successfully published writers. For every James Patterson, making tens of millions of dollars a year, you have thousands of midlisters who are lucky to make $50k. You even have "bestsellers" who are struggling to get by. (Indeed, the concept of "bestseller" differs remarkably from genre to genre, and category to category. Let us not assume that anyone who's earned the title "NYT Bestselling Author" is making James Patterson scratch.)
As a group, authors have never held a lot of influence over their own fates. That just seems to be the way the market forces work. I can tell you that a lot of writers would rather take their chances in a crowded field with a 70% cut than in a beauty contest with a 10-15% cut. At the same time, they're scared about the prospect of monopoly over distribution. For them, this is sort of like a choice between the devil they know and the devil they don't.