Amazon and Hachette Resolve Dispute | Hacker News Reader

Amazon and Hachette Resolve Dispute

nytimes.com

99 pointsconstantinum27 comments

Although it's perfectly understandable, from both entities' point of view, to want the terms of the agreement kept secret ... part of me feels as if they owe it to the public, whom each side marshaled in support of their positions -- Amazon at http://www.readersunited.com and Hachette at http://authorsunited.net -- to let us know what the resolution was.

True, the Times article broadly describes what each side agreed to, but since we don't know how much money changed hands, or what other concessions were involved, we don't really know whether it was a victory for Amazon or Hachette. Both sides say they're satisfied, but there may be gritted teeth.

As an author (though published by one of Hachette's competitors), I sure would like to know whether this agreement will set a painful precedent for other publishers.

Informed speculation based on the quotes in the article: it appears that Hachette accepted the "incentivized agency" terms that Simon & Schuster agreed to, which is very similar in structure to the terms Amazon offers for Kindle Direct Publishing.

These terms give publishers a strong incentive to keep book prices between certain thresholds (for KDP, higher margins if the price is set between $2.99 and $9.99), but Hachette has the ability to set prices outside of those thresholds as long as they're willing to accept lower margins.

Hachette gets nominal price control, and Amazon gets their preferred pricing because Hachette will get smacked in the pocketbook if they choose to exercise it.

If true, that deal actually seems reasonable. Can't believe they couldn't come to that without six months of mudslinging.

Very likely it's the exact same deal that Amazon offered on Day 1.

Glad that's over! Not that it affected me in any way, but the whole debate was starting to feel like some sort of public marital dispute going on in a supermarket, just embarassing to watch.

Both sides took turns claiming they were just looking out for the little guy. Hachette even tried to pretend they were the little guy, instead of part of a huge corporation. They each trotted out their "kids" (authors) to make public opinion sway one way or the other, but eventually both sides were just hurting themselves as it looked so pathetic.

Now we'll just have to wait and see if this actually lowers ebook prices or not.

> Hachette gets the ability to set the prices on its e-books, which was a major battleground in the dispute.

Extremely sad. In no other market do we let wholesalers dictate retail prices. Even MAPs don't actually force the sales, they just dictate advertising.

On the other hand, in no other market is there effectively only one retailer for a wholesaler's product.

(Yes there are plenty of other readers and ebook software options out there. They don't have the market penetration or mind share that Amazon/Kindle does - Amazon has an effective monopoly here as far as most consumers are concerned.)

> On the other hand, in no other market is there effectively only one retailer for a wholesaler's product.

Steam for digital games is in the same position. And they're no better than amazon (forcing things on the sellers, usually about sales, and having terrible terms for buyers).

This feels like an awful lot of qualifiers ("effective monopoly" "most consumers") to throw around when we're talking about a word that has a very specific definition.

Don't get me wrong, I have no love for either of these parties, they were fighting a battle over who got the right to screw the consumer. However, Amazon is far from a monopoly, even in the book/e-book market.

I just heard on NPR that Amazon only has 40% of the ebook market. That's a far cry from any monopoly position.

In actuality, it is the publishers who have a monopoly on each book that they sell. If Amazon (or any other retailer) wants to sell Amy Poehler's new bestseller Yes Please, they can only buy it from HarperCollins. They can set any wholesale price they want, and no other publisher is allowed to offer a competing price for that book.

That's almost like saying Amy Poehler has a monopoly on her written words. If HarperCollins (or any other publisher) wants to publish her words in a book, they can only pay her for that privilege. She can agree to any terms she wants, and no other person is allowed to agree to a competing offer for those words.

But the point is that while publishers get to sell books through multiple retailers, Amy Poehler does not (in practice) get to license her words to multiple publishers.

Would you really consider one piece of work by an author to be a commodity? Not all of the author's titles mind you, just one.

I can't believe they missed the opportunity to title this "Amazon and Hachette bury the hatchet".

Edited: Lots of others haven't. https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+hachette+bury+the+hat...

Difficult to say if I would look at this comment the same way if it wasn't being downvoted so quickly.

I thought the New York Times tried to avoid puns in their headlines. Can you guess why?

I'm surprised it didn't follow their house style, with something like "For Amazon and Hachette, a Resolution".

That house style is going the way of the the Oxford comma, the possessive gerund, and the compound hyphenate. It's been happening for awhile now, in no small part because the style is suboptimal for search and social.

You used the Oxford comma in your first sentence. I guess it isn't going away anytime soon.

That was intentional. :)

I love Oxford commas. It's an unhealthy love, if I'm being honest. They'll come for my commas, eventually, those descriptivists will. When they do, they can pry my Oxford commas from my cold, dead hands.

But The Times, they are a-changin'.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Come on people, sense of humor and all? If you don't agree, just leave it unvoted.

Seems like rather convenient timing for Amazon. Right when the whole Discover Card getting ripped off scandal drops, they suddenly have a big announcement about hatchette to take it's place in the headlines...

Ripped off for a couple percent of their yearly ad budget?

So if I steal only one dollar in your wallet, it's not really stealing ?

Well if you want to be picky about 'really stealing', I don't think overcharging counts.

But anyway, that wasn't my point at all. The part about discover is a very small issue, merely an example of corruption. I could maybe call this news 'rather convenient' as a response to the entire issue of the lawsuit. As a response to the discover issue, bad handling of one of dozens of campaigns, I think the idea is laughable.

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