Authors' Amazon Awareness

Geoffrey.landis writes "Many book lovers were surprised this week when Amazon.com removed books from the publisher Macmillan from the shelves (later restored), including such popular imprints as St. Martin's, Henry Holt, and the science fiction publisher Tor. But readers shouldn't have been surprised, according to the Author's Guild. The Author's Guild lists a history of earlier instances where Amazon stopped listing a publisher's books in order to pressure them to accept terms, dating back to early in 2008, when Amazon removed the 'buy' buttons for works from the British publisher Bloomsbury, representing such authors as William Boyd, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling. In response, the Author's Guild has set up a service called Who Moved My Buy Button to alert authors when their books are removed from Amazon's lists." Amazon's actions have generated ill-will on the parts of many authors, who — being authors — are only too happy to explain their viewpoints at length. Two such examples are Tobias Buckell's breakdown of why Amazon isn't the righteous defender of low-prices they claim to be and Charlie Stross's round-up of the situation.

Comments

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is one party in a two party negotiation. If they don't like the terms of the negotiation, they don't have to accept them. Are they supposed to sell books no matter what the terms are? This is a lot of hot air about nothing. It's simple, really. If authors don't like their publisher, if publishers don't like Amazon - they can go elsewhere.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting aside the fact that Amazon is the 800lb gorilla in bookselling business who currently controls 80-90% of eBook market, the problem has arisen due to Amazon's insistence that authors should submit to restrictive contractual terms in order to be allowed into the Kindle store -- i.e. making the book exclusive to Amazon, negotiating a special low price, and worst yet, making Amazon the publisher.

Prior to the iPad's announcement Amazon's terms for ebooks were 70/30. That's 70% going to Amazon. It's nothing short of a robbery.

I'm sorry to say this, but it is a very sleazy company.

Re:So what?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Amazon is one party in a two party negotiation. If they don't like the terms of the negotiation, they don't have to accept them...

You're missing the point. Amazon didn't merely say "we don't like your terms, so we won't sell your e-books." What they did was say "We don't like your terms on one item, e-books, so unless you accept our terms on that we won't sell anything else of yours, either, no hardcover or paperback, sales, not just electronic."

They were trying to use their market dominance in one area to allow them to dictate prices in another area. And not for the first time.

This why monopoly is bad.

Re:So what?

[geekmux]

...Prior to the iPad's announcement Amazon's terms for ebooks were 70/30. That's 70% going to Amazon. It's nothing short of a robbery.

I'm sorry to say this, but it is a very sleazy company.

That's the one good thing about competition. It tends to force change on monopolistic pricing and "sleazy" agreements. Of course, in the case of Apple(iTunes) and Amazon(Kindle), we're talking about two 800-pound Gorillas going at it. Should be a good fight.

Re:So what?

[conureman]

From TFA:
"I don't like to do business with people who, apparently as far as I can tell, think sucker punching you when they disagree, even if they have the right to do it, is the way to go about this."
I found it affirms my opinion of the situation. YMMV. As in many of these type of debates, your opinion is balanced against a very small subset of idealists who will let moral issues influence their business dealings.
That's what.

Re:So what?

[BrokenHalo]

...that Amazon is the 800lb gorilla in bookselling business who currently controls 80-90% of eBook market...

I had been led to understand that only particularly obese gorillas achieved weights of 600lb in captivity. :-)

But in Amazon's case, there is (now) no such exclusivity in the ebook arena, since their attempts to gouge the market have effectively (thanks to the well-publicised shenanigans with Macmillan) been stymied by the entry of the iPad into the market. Whatever we might think about Amazon (or Apple, for that matter), the author is in a stronger position than he was a few weeks ago.

In any case, I don't really believe the dead-tree format is dead. As Buckell says in one of TFAs mentioned in the OP,
$9.99 is really expensive, you suck. eBooks should never cost this much. As a buyer of eBooks, I agree. Hell, as a buyer of regular books I agree. Here's how I, as a reader, go about buying a book. Is it someone I know will rock my world and I'll love reading? I'll buy hardcover.

Although a professional writer might be expected to be a bit more competent in articulating his thoughts, the message comes through clearly enough for me, since I am of the same mind.

Re:So what?

[poena.dare]

Apple will probably win in the long run because, on the whole, they make their products enjoyable to use. It used to be enjoyable to shop at Amazon, but convenience was eclipsed by unwanted force-feeding. Still, I am enjoying the fight. As soon as Google gets seriously involved I imagine it will become the next big spectator sport.

Everyone: take a drink every time someone uses the word "monopoly" in this thread.

Re:So what?

[biryokumaru]

Well, he writes the Halo series, so competent might be a stretch.

Re:So what?

[MaJeStu]

Except that Amazon has nothing even near a monopoly on books, whether electronic, paper, or audio. There are many other online vendors that would jump at the chance to have a major product line Amazon doesn't.

Regardless, Amazon is absolutely right to negotiate with the price-gouging publishers any way they see fit, using any leverage they can. The publishers are trying to use their exclusive rights to the books; why shouldn't Amazon use their exclusive rights to their store? They are not harming the market, or keeping anything from being sold.

Re:So what?

[rjiy]

I see it as publishers imposing price controls. Not a very "free market" thing to do.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

But in Amazon's case, there is (now) no such exclusivity in the ebook arena, since their attempts to gouge the market have effectively (thanks to the well-publicised shenanigans with Macmillan) been stymied by the entry of the iPad into the market.

There have been other e-book readers than Kindle you know. And, in this case it was AMAZON fighting for lower prices, and McMillan fighting to raise them.

Amazon is an evil company who uses their position as market leader to treat customers and retail partners both as commodities. They are a horrible company and deserve nothing but to be put out of business. I'll bring the torches, you supply your own pitchfork, and we'll get em! (I'm serious... I hate those fuckers for screwing me over as a customer, and still forcing me to deal with them in my business life -where they also screw me over.)

But in this one case, Amazon was attempting to maintain lower prices, while McMillian was arguing for the freedom to charge more. -Now that they have made their stand publicly, they can "give in" and charge even more while laying the blame at the feet of the evil publisher.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Amazon believes that publishers are demanding unreasonable pricing for ebooks, because they want to kill the ebook market, then it makes perfect sense that Amazon might want to put a crimp on the publisher's paper book market, don't you think? LIke I said in my OP, Amazon isn't the only party in this negotiation, and they are not the only party playing hardball. Publishers are trying to quash a disruptive technology (that's the speculation anyway), and Amazon is pushing back - which makes sense, because for a retailer, moving ebooks is much easier than packaging and shipping real books. So far, to me, this appears to be an example of markets behaving exactly as you'd hope they would.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to kill people via alcohol poisoning? Even a shot of water per use would like result in water poisoning!

Re:So what?

[Rotting]

Something interesting to note is that competition normally benefits the customer, doesn't it?

I think this is the first time I have seen the prices go up because of competition. Weird times.

Re:So what?

[Geoffrey.landis]

I see it as publishers imposing price controls. Not a very "free market" thing to do.

Huh? When somebody makes a product and says "this is the price we're selling it for," you call that "Not a very 'free market' thing to do"?

What do you believe the word "free market" means? That's the very definition of a free market; producers are free to sell at whatever price they want, and buyers are free to buy, or not buy. If people don't buy it at that price, they're free to change it. That's what we mean by a free market.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like authors better quit being lazy and write some good books.

Re:So what?

[jythie]

Competition benefiting the customer has never been the case. It was an interesting mathematical model for how economics MIGHT work, but it did not hold up very well in the real world and was replaced by more accurate models decades ago. Still, it lives on as a meme.

Re:So what?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Except that Amazon has nothing even near a monopoly on books, whether electronic, paper, or audio.

Except this is clearly not true. Think about it. After Amazon says "we don't like your price on e-books and so we won't sell them," what is their motiviation to not to sell Macmillan paper books; an unrelated product? What do they gain from this?

Up until they disagreed with e-book pricing, they had no problem with Macmillan products, so it's clearly not a case of them not liking their prices on paper books. So what exactly do they gain by what appears, on the surface, to be an economically unjustified decision? If the market were indeed completely fungible, as you suggest, this would only reduce their sales volume. It would put no pressure on Macmillan, since their customers would just buy from somebody else.

The only reason that they would attempt to muscle Macmillan into accepting their pricing terms on e-books by refusing to sell paper books would be if they do have some degree of monopoly power (or, at least, they think that they have power). You say "negotiate using any leverage they can," but there simply isn't any leverage there unless they are market dominant.

Here's a rule of thumb you might consider: When a company uses market dominance to set pricing terms, it pretty much never is a good thing for the consumer. Even if it looks good on the surface.

Re:So what?

[rjiy]

Actually, the publishers are saying "this is price we want _you_ to sell it for". Very different thing and yes I do believe its un-free-market-y.

Re:So what?

[MaJeStu]

Suggesting that Amazon has a monopoly on paper book sales and is abusing that monopoly to unfairly make publishers accept lower prices for their e-books is... absurd.

Re:So what?

[mac1235]

Other sites sell books?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, no, you are either being deceitful or ignorant - publishers are saying "This is the price we'd like you to pay." Amazon said no. Amazon is a customer, natch?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If simple competition alone could solve this then Teddy Roosevelt would not have had to go on a trust busting spree and you (USA) would not have the anti-trust laws you do now. You are not allowed to abuse a monopolistic position and if you do the penalty is to be broken up into little companies to increase competition. And around and around it goes.

Re:So what?

[bruce_the_loon]

It is anti-free market.

If I want to buy from you for $10 and then resell at $5, that is a free market if I'm willing to take the hit. You get your money and I get my customers. If you come to me and say that I have to sell at $15 because you found someone else who wants to sell at $15 and you don't want my business to undermine their business, I have every right to keep selling at $5 or, horror of horrors, drop you because you ain't worth the pain. Pure and simple free market principles. I know my customers, I know my suppliers and it is my job to balance the two out.

Viva Amazon. Viva

Re:So what?

[PCM2]

Maybe Amazon doesn't have a monopoly per se, but it's still using its size to put pressure on companies to set prices how Amazon wants them. Amazon is doing the same thing Wal-Mart does. Wal-Mart doesn't have a monopoly on selling shirts, or binder paper, or whatever else. But it's such a huge retail channel that makers of products pretty much cannot afford not to do business with Wal-Mart. Amazon is definitely in a similar position to Wal-Mart, especially in the book market.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting aside that authors have 100% control over their work due to law known as copyright, and they are the hunter with the big bore rifle loaded and pointed who controls 100% of the decision making with books in ebook or print format, the problem has arisen that Amazon has in turn used their wits to provide a platform that changes the game to make books more available to the consumer, yet they are seen as the bad actor in this situation.

Prior the Kindle, the publisher controlled 100% of the books that made it to print, and the ridiculous hardcover prices. They got 100% what they wanted, and they print industry was suffering. They were taking down their own market, and they even remarked as such that the print industry was shrinking, and how the internet and ebooks would be welcome. Yet they did shit to provide for either as a platform--$100million+ companies that couldn't be bothered to come up with a digital store and delivery practice.

Now someone has, they blame them for their initiative into putting together a hardware, software, and marketing platform. Still, many publishers and authors don't sell on the system at all, their choice, their copyright. Yet the innovator is seen as the bad guy here.

Which is sleazy to you?

"That's 70% going to Amazon. It's nothing short of a robbery."

Amazon created the Kindle store, the hardware, and the software, indeed much of the ENTIRETY of the demand for ebooks. It's their work. You're surprised, appalled, mad, or whatever when they want to take a cut? Development costs and free wireless is part of the Kindle platform and it's appeal to cut consumers to purchase it, and in turn, people have been buying ebooks at a greater rate than print. They made the ebook platform jump into acceptance by years, if not a decade.

And you don't honestly think that's these costs are NOT going to be recouped in the split? It's their platform, their marketing that has this ebook platform succeeding, and you want them to be more fair to author's who have done SHIT for ebooks yet are going to profit from it?

"I'm sorry to say this, but it is a very sleazy company."

JK Rowling is mentioned. She didn't and probably still doesn't have ANY of the Harry Potter books up in ebook format for ANY ebook plaftorm (Kindle, Nook, Sony, all excluded). Is she evil and sleazy and anti-competitive because if her and her publisher's decisions on this? Is she evil, having her Harry Potter movies licensed on DRM only formats in video? They have, in fact, forced Amazon not to make that work available. How come Amazon is considered sleazy, but the author and publisher practices are not?

The industry adopted a format war, not a works war, and Amazon is trying to break it. The industry wanted print only, yet complained mightily how print prices were going up and consumers were buying less. Amazon breaks this, when the industry had every opportunity to for years prior, and Amazon gets blamed for their work. Lovely.

The author is not obligated to sell ebooks. The author is not obligated to sell ebooks for the Kindle--there are a host of other platforms like the Nook, Sony's ereaders, and a bunch of smaller readers that are quite impressive hardware-wise. The author is not obigated to accept Amazon's terms--they can release their stuff in pdf or epub and sell it on there own using PayPal.

Yet Amazon should bow to the publisher and author demands when they do want to sell on their platform and appliance?

Further, when you say sleazy company, that's all encompassing. So I call BS. One thing they do is dubiously bad, and on that you're taking the authors point of view near exclusively and you still aren't persuasive. And yet you KNOW that Amazon does more than the Kindle, and the customer service experience and product selection largely is still far better than most online vendors.

How is a company sleazy when I can get something $5 delivered under a 20% off sale locally, before sales tax? And provides a longer and better ret

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"what is their motiviation to not to sell Macmillan paper books; an unrelated product?"

It's unbelievable to think someone doesn't think the 2 things are colluded in the minds of the publisher.

Macmillan came to Amazon and demanded a pricing change. They approached Amazon on their own with pricing demands, as they now had the agreement with the Apple and its ipad. They were trying to force Amazon's hand.

The CEO also pretty much almost came out to say that the reason they were raising ebook prices was that Amazon would make more and sell more books. Think about that for a second--they are raising ebook prices, so what other books of theirs are they proposing to sell more of? Print of course. Even if that was not explicitly stated, that would be the known and only effect when you raise prices on one good while offering two that the customer may want--more are going to shift to the other (here print books), even if those prices remain the same.

This hurts Amazon not only in the ebook market (reducing Kindle books sold), but shoves their Kindle work to the side in favor of the ipad and their higher prices (bad for consumers), and relegates Amazon to the industry they worked hard to dominate already (print books). It's a triple loss to Amazon, particularly when you consider we talk about the Kindle mainly because it was Amazon who pushed the platform and ebooks, not Apple or the publishers.

Seems damn straightforward what Amazon did here. I'm not sure why everyone is ganging up on Amazon--while they have certainly been missteps, compared to the other players in the ebook world, Amazon does more right (gee, Google and their strongarming and China, Sony and their history with DRM and changing terms of works and movie and music handling, B&N coming into the ebook industry for a 2nd time after leaving users in the dust the first time, and the publishers which have been dirtbags for years with $200+ textbooks commonplace).

Kill the DRM

[millennial]

This is another reason I loathe DRM. Amazon is apparently the sole distributor of the authorized electronic version of these books. They apparently have unquestionable control over whether or not they'll even be available for purchase, and they can revoke ownership of the books remotely without people even noticing (viz the 1984 kerfuffle).

When I buy something, I want to own it. I don't want to license it at the whim of a service that dictates what I can do with it. That's just ridiculous.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what you do: you drive over to their corporate office and make the receptionist suck your cock. Then make your way to their software development office and make the DRM dev team suck your cock. Then ride the elevator up to the C-level offices and force your way into Jeff Bezos' office and make him suck your cock.

Sure, you'll still have to deal with DRM, but at least you will have had your dick sucked. They can take your books away from you, but they can never take your past blowjobs.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

There's an idea: enforce the calling of things by their proper name. i.e. making it illegal to use a "BUY NOW" button in these cases and force them to use a "LICENSE NOW" button instead. False advertising and all that jazz?

Re:Kill the DRM

[RulerOf]

When I buy something, I want to own it. I don't want to license it at the whim of a service that dictates what I can do with it. That's just ridiculous.

Generally speaking, I agree with you, but I'd say there's a notable exception. If I could choose to buy (and own) product A for $X, or I could choose to license product A for $X-Y, licensing might be a viable alternative in certain situations. Kind of like renting a DVD movie or console game, only with more straightforward (I suppose) DRM. DRM that, of course, by being a licensee rather than an owner, I'd be explicitly agreeing to be "managed" by.

Similar to the difference between buying Windows licenses--and yes I'm aware of the irony in what I've just written--and buying into Software Assurance, only on the sub-$100,000 scale.

Re:Kill the DRM

[skine]

Buying a license is still buying something.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has DRM on the brain. DRM has nothing to do with this issue.

This is about a big corporation doing harm to content creators.

Shop at your local mom and pop bookshop, or at least try to avoid the big Borders and B&N's if you care about supporting smaller authors.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that is true is the problem.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Nakor BlueRider]

Yet the pages portray it for all the world as though one is buying a book.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Hurricane78]

Well, I’m all for it. But first we would find someone with the power and money to actually push that trough courts and parliament.
How would we do that?

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

They are advertising the sale of the book - not the sale of a liscence - that still makes it false advertising.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

When I buy something, I want to own it. I don't want to license it at the whim of a service that dictates what I can do with it. That's just ridiculous.

Or, even worse, until the DRM provider looses the database record detailing your purchases.

This is situation I find myself in. For the past two years I have had an ongoing battle with Adobe.

My Adobe ID is in a format 'no longer recognised' on Adobe's database, hence I no longer have access to any of my purchased content.

I've learned my lesson ...

Re:Kill the DRM

[skine]

But when they sell you a book, they don't tell you that they're selling you a license and some ground up dead tree.

Re:Kill the DRM

[noidentity]

I think a "RENT THIS BOOK INDEFINITELY" would be clearer. People aren't familiar with licensing copyrighted works. "Rent" is a term they understand well, and would respond appropriately to, as in "What, I'm paying $14.99 for something I don't even own, can't sell, and might lose access to if your company changes management?"

Re:Kill the DRM

[samkass]

The problem is that "rent" often implies ongoing payments. "License" doesn't, and people are used to it from driver's licenses, hunting, fishing, etc.

"Buy License" would be most descriptive.

Re:Kill the DRM

[noidentity]

I see, you'd be buying a license to read that particular book on your book reader. I love it, as it's even more offensive-sounding, though entirely accurate.

Re:Kill the DRM

[thetoadwarrior]

The user is interested in the book, not the licence and in fact is probably ignorant to the fact they're actually licensing it, so "buy now" is aimed at the book so for completely honest marketing it should be "licence now" or a long winded "buy a licence for this book now".

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet clearly all the world knows they are not receiving a book, the tangible, but rather a book, the content. Customers know they're buying the content, and in that respect nothing is different from the purchase of paper, ink, and glue. The rights to the content are identical--resale rights are to the physical object, not to the intangible work.

It's quite clear that custoemrs are paying for the convenience and portability of the electronic format, which has some tradeoffs from the paper version: transferability is limited or nonexistent and eternal compatibility is not guaranteed.

There are certainly ways to improve electronic media--for example, since they can retain a repository of everything you've purchased and have access to, there can and should be a way to transfer those rights to someone else's account. Some stores have worked on this, but there isn't huge popular demand for it yet. And while some stores have notably shut down and content has been lost as a result, others have allowed for portability to other sources, prorated refunds, or even the release of DRM.

But there are advantages. If you lose a physical book, it's gone and you have to repurchase it. However, electronic versions can be kept safe in a backup archive and sometimes be re-downloaded if accidentally deleted. You can also have multiple-access to the same content. Many eBooks and other media can be used simultaneously on multiple devices, whereas you have to buy multiple books to achieve the same.

Re:Kill the DRM

[that this is not und]

The examples you chose: drivers, hunting, fishing licenses are all for a fixed term and involve ongoing payments to renew.

Re:Kill the DRM

[jedidiah]

Nonsense. This is about big corporations that screw content creators being done harm.

If I want to support a smaller author, I will go to one of the literary
conventions where they are forced to market their own work and buy the
book straight from them personally.

Re:Kill the DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

"Amazon is apparently the sole distributor of the authorized electronic version of these books"

Apparently not. Well, I'd better ask what you mean by "these books." Most works I've bought for my Kindle are also available for Sony's ereader.

Also, isn't the "sole distributor" thing really left up to the publisher and author, who decides which platform they want? They can certainly choose to sell on the Nook and Sony's, as many authors do. That's the point of "copyright." Amazon doesn't hold it; the monopoly to the work is the copyright holder, not Amazon's.

But nice try. I think are a merely misinformed Amazon basher.

"They apparently have unquestionable control over whether or not they'll even be available for purchase,"

Harry Potter books aren't available for the Kindle, or at least, they weren't for years. This is one of the author's mentioned in the article summary. So it's not up to Amazon.

A couple of titles (Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive), are not available in ebook format. How come? Author or publisher.

Sort of shoots the whole "unquestionable control" by Amazon. So you're wrong again.

And there's also the fact that any publisher can put their works up separate from any ebook platform. Isn't that what O"Reilly has done with Safari and their epub and pdf format ebooks? Hardly Amazon forcing anyone do to anything. Amazon sells O'Reilly books still, cheaper than O'Reilly does too.

"This is another reason I loathe DRM."

You are aware that Amazon's DRM is like DVD DRM? BROKE

PC version or downloaded to the PC from the device, your choice. Owned.

"(viz the 1984 kerfuffle)."

Which has nothing to do with the Macmillan situation.

Which Amazon apologized for and realized was a stupid move. And, which, most people don't seem to realize Amazon's move insulated their customers wholesale, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

The mention of this is more you not liking ebooks in general or bashing Amazon, not because you are being level-headed for the situation. Pray tell, how would you have handled the 1984 issue? This is a sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't. Amazon sold unauthorized, illegal copies. They had a list of everyone it was sold to obviously. They were open to civil, electronic, DMCA, and criminal statutes. Prosecutors, litigators, the judge could have asked for a list.

What would you have done? No question Amazon should have handled it better, but I would have pulled the book too, although I would have made an attempt to contact the copyright holder with their mistake, but even then, they might have been held over the barrel (essentially extorted in the talks). Their error, compounded by a second one, but if they were before a trial judge and found guilty for NOT pulling the works once they were aware it infringed...does the DMCA apply, and how would you have handled customers also be in the gunsights?

What would you be saying if they got to a judge that demanded Amazon provide them with a list of all who owned the illegal, electronic work, so the publisher could go MPAA/RIAA on them? Ended up searching those people's homes, since they would have been in receipt of illegal copies that Amazon may have alerted them to in the first place before removing them so they backed up their stuff? That would have been a greater cluster fuck than a bunch of stupid, whiny internet holier than thous bashing Amazon months after a single issue in, what, 4 years?

In the current legal climate, Amazon's actions make a shitload more sense than them doing nothing. It puts the fault entirely on them. You want to bash them for it, good, that's why they did it, but don't tell me Amazon totally mishandled the 1984 issue.

Free Market?

[RulerOf]

Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent? When a single entity can have that kind of power, isn't it a monopoly?

...If Amazon can dictate terms to book publishers in this fashion, do you think that Apple could pull a similar stunt with RIAA members?

Re:Free Market?

[SetupWeasel]

Uh, true free market economies will have monopolies. Anti-trust laws make the market less free. Something to think about when someone gets a bug up their ass about a politician being "Socialist."

Re:Free Market?

[RulerOf]

Anti-trust laws make the market less free.

Aye you've got a point, wasn't trying to be too pedantic, but I suppose I really meant "the incarnation of the free market as it currently exists in the USA." Which means we've got oligopolies instead, but I'm just saying that if Amazon can swing it's weight that effectively, isn't there a problem then that business regulators should be looking into?

Re:Free Market?

[Draek]

...If Amazon can dictate terms to book publishers in this fashion, do you think that Apple could pull a similar stunt with RIAA members?

If the RIAA members weren't previously colluded in the organization we call the RIAA, yeah. As it stands, it comes down to who's the biggest monopoly (or oligopoly, in the RIAA's case), and the music industry is far bigger than the online music distribution industry so Apple's fucked.

Re:Free Market?

[Bluesman]

In a true free market, Amazon, the organization that the government gives special privileges to by calling it a Corporation, would not exist.

So, the current situation doesn't resemble a conceptual free market. And historically the instances of one entity being able to control large portions of an economy without resorting to some sort of coercion (via laws or organized crime) are few.

Anti-trust laws are intended to prevent monopolies.

Here, however, nobody is preventing the publishing and sale of a book. Amazon gets to decide what is sold on its site. I don't see the problem.

Re:Free Market?

[The Mighty Buzzard]

Capitalism is not the same as Free Market. Regardless of that though, most anything taken to the extreme is a really bad idea and causes more problems than it solves. What you do is look at the extreme end of an idea and then back up until the problems it creates have disappeared or are balancing against a worse alternative if you kept backing up.

Re:Free Market?

[Anonymous Coward]

In a free market, the best suited coorporation grows more rapidly than its less suited competitors. Once it reaches a certain size (compared to its competitors) it starts to use various methods of coercion to squash competition, possibly stomping out competitors that are better. This creates a monopoly in place of the free market. Thus, free markets tend towards monopolies. It follows that a free market is a self-destructive utopia. Many governments have laws to offset this development, but they often do not perform that well, having to balance out various issues, such as not stiffling innovation, not being to expensive to enforce, and politicians taking "campaing contributions" (or whatever you want to call the bribes) from monopoly coorporations.

Re:Free Market?

[bangzilla]

Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent? When a single entity can have that kind of power, isn't it a monopoly?

Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in a market is not illegal in itself, a monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly firm actively prohibits competitors from entering the field. In this case authors have many choices regarding publication: traditional publishers, self-publication; Publishers have choice over to whom they sell their books: Amazon, B&N, Borders and 1000's of independent book stores; E-book readers are increasingly entering this market segment: Kindle, Nook and many other that we saw demonstrated at CES a few weeks ago.

So no. This is what free market economics is supposed to encourage. In my opinion, Amazon trying to keep prices down is a great thing. The fact that some authors chose to publish their books with MacMillan who tried to reduce their readership by jacking up the price should give incentive to said authors to find a better publisher that actually wants to increase their readership.

Re:Free Market?

[timeOday]

...If Amazon can dictate terms to book publishers in this fashion...

Actually the whole premise of the article is a fraud anyways, since amazon already caved to McMillan, which will now set the price of e-books on amazon.com, and already sharply raised amazon's previous pricing. So tell me, who is dictating terms here?

Re:Free Market?

[Attila Dimedici]

Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market. Some of the classic examples of "essential" monopoly were created by the government. When electricity and telephone service first came on the scene most cities had many competitors selling either. The government stepped in and decided to make both of these regulated monopolies.

Re:Free Market?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market.

Nice to think so, but it's not true.

Anti-trust laws were written to break up the big 19th- and early 20th century trusts-- essentially groups of large businesses collaborating to drive smaller ones out of the market so that they could set prices-- for example, Standard Oil's agreement with the railroads, which was not merely that the railroads would give them low prices (that's standard business practice), but that the railroads had to agree to not give smaller competitors good prices.

Re:Free Market?

[TubeSteak]

Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market. Some of the classic examples of "essential" monopoly were created by the government. When electricity and telephone service first came on the scene most cities had many competitors selling either. The government stepped in and decided to make both of these regulated monopolies.

[Citation Needed] because I don't think you have any clue what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Bell#Formation_under_Bell_patent
The telephone (and telegraph) markets were consolidated by Bell Telephone/AT&T.

Following a government antitrust suit in 1913, AT&T agreed to the Kingsbury Commitment in which AT&T would sell their $30 million in Western Union stock, allow competitors to interconnect with their system, and not acquire other independent companies

AT&T did everything but that last bit. They kept buying up telephone/telegraph companies until the government came back again in 1934 and set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly.

I'm not sure why the "all monopolies are the result of government intervention" meme lives on.
During the hey-day of laissez faire economics, "classic" monopolies sprouted up left and right.
The government didn't create railroad and boat shipping monopolies.
The government didn't create the oil production/refining/distribution monopoly .
The government didn't create the monopoly in the telecom market.
I realize that facts are inconvenient to your ideology, but they won't go away.

In case that was all too long:
AT&T built up a monopoly in spite of the government's attempt to prevent it and before the government officially sanctioned them as one.

Re:Free Market?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon and others that swing their weight need to do so carefully - if they irritate enough publishing houses, they may decide that it is not worth dealing with Amazon. What's that you say? Their revenue would plummet [if they believe long term they can do better without them, they should leave, ex: Toro rejecting sales through WalMart] if they left Amazon? Then it is to their benefit to give a little ground in negotiations. Amazon is promoting ebook sales in general via the Kindle and increasing awareness of a particular book by including the kindle link in search results, etc. A 70/30 split may still seem outrageous, but a 30% share of a large market is still better than a 95% share of a small market.

Re:Free Market?

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as we are busting facts inconvenient to ideology, let's point out that many "classic" monopolies are not a bad thing. If they are obtained through so thoroughly beating out the competition that none of them survive, that is not a bad thing for the consumer. Such monopolies are required to maintain that level of performance or risk losing market share to a scrappy new company in most businesses. While not a monopoly, GM, Ford, and Chrysler could be said to be an oligopoly in the US for the most part. They got slack and Japanese companies gutted them competitively to the point that people worried about all three going bankrupt. I admit, those with high fixed entry costs and low long term marginal costs like AT&T have the opportunity to abuse their position - starting up an independent parallel phone service would be quite difficult to be competitive in. The oil monopoly actually produced better prices than the pre-/post-monopoly 'competitive' market because prices were kept deliberately low to avoid new competition. This is the same strategy WalMart has today, lower margins, as efficient a back end as possible to keep anyone from taking away market share.

Re:Free Market?

[raddan]

The premise of the article is not a fraud-- just that, in this particular battle, Macmillan won. Macmillan has private owners (in Germany) who decided that this fight was worth having, right now, because, as they saw it, the future of electronic publishing depended on it. If that meant that the company was going to suffer for awhile, that was OK, because caving in to Amazon meant their business model and price structuring would have to change very dramatically.

If Macmillan had been a public company, this may have turned out differently, as you'd have shareholders screaming for the boardmembers' heads. It seems to have been a tactical mistake on Amazon's part to go after Macmillan first. It turns out that Macmillan was willing to feel the pain for longer than Amazon was.

Re:Free Market?

[Attila Dimedici]

Yes, and those big 19th and early 20th century trusts were in that position because of government (not necessarily Federal) actions that had favored them over their competitors.

Re:Free Market?

[Attila Dimedici]

Governments (the government is not just the Federal government, there are also state and local governments) certainly did implement policies that favored one railroad over others.
Governments did pass laws and implement policies that favored Standard Oil over competitors.
Most local telecom monopolies were created by local government policy... AT&T then bought the local monopolies creating a national monopoly.
You appear to think that only the Federal government intervenes in the market to create monopolies. Most of the 19th and early 20th century trusts came into being as a result of local and state government intervention in the market place.

Re:Free Market?

[Patch86]

There's a difference between being a monopoly and just being an influential player. There's no law against using your influence, if you're a company of any size- except if you're in a monopoly position.

The fact that Amazon isn't a monopoly should be thoroughly highlighted by the fact that Macmillan beat them on this one- Amazon caved because their competitors were offering better terms. If they were a monopoly, that wouldn't have happened.

Re:Free Market?

[zippthorne]

Additionally, it is curious that the oil monopoly seems to have never re-formed, yet the telecom monopoly tends to re-form every time it is broken up.

Re:Free Market?

[rochrist]

Actually, Macmillan didn't want to just raise prices, the wanted to both raise AND lower prices depending on when in the release cycle they were; when the book is just out in HC, the e-book is 12.95 to 14.95, later when it comes out in PB the e-book prices is supposed to be reduced accordingly.

It's all about the money

[wheelema]

And to think that I helped Mary Ann North become rich paying $.75 per paperback. Of all the parties beating their breasts in outrage over this issue the only ones I have any sympathy for are the authors and the readers.

Re:It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what you do:

1) Go to the bookstore, grab her book, sit down somewhere in the store and read it. Don't actually buy it.
2) Find her mailing address.
3) Mail her a check for how much you think her book was worth to you.
4) Profit for her, the majority of your money isn't diverted to fucked-up corporations like Amazon and Apple, and the people who should profit (the author and the reader) do profit.

Re:It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

You really, really don't want to read a book unless the publisher's editor and proofreader have made it readable for you. Most authors can't spell, few are capable of coherent grammar and until someone else has told them that their story doesn't add up, their books aren't worth reading. The editing part of the publishing industry does very useful work.

Re:It's all about the money

[bloobloo]

If as an author you can't write, then you should be in a different job.

Re:It's all about the money

[iphinome]

Perhaps if you replaced the word author with the word storyteller, it's more apt for most fiction. Think about it, no offense to Stephen King but he tells stories, he entertains the people who like his stuff, proofreaders and editors make it readable, everyone's happy. He should be and is in that job.
What you're thinking of as authors are the um.. "serious" types who write the books you see studied in university level English lit classes and enjoyed by people with different tastes, that's fine but the other types don't need a new line of work, they just need the services a publisher provides above and beyond the printing and book binding.

Re:It's all about the money

[tehcyder]

If as an author you can't write, then you should be in a different job.

And if, as a film director, you can't write the score, organise the marketing, design the film posters, and schmooze the critics then you shouldn't be making movies.

Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Ekuryua]

I checked the prices of ebooks, and as far as I am concerned, I am finding those prices outrageous.
I do respect the right of authors to make some money, but when an ebook is twice as expensive as a cheap paperback version, there's something highly wrong.
All of that makes me think they actually are trying to kill the ebook market, where "they" means publishers. Amazon of course is not clean either, and they obviously have been taking advantage of their public policy to look like saviors, that they are not.

tldr: ebooks are way too expensive. Anything above 3-4$ for an old book or 4-8$ for a novelty is just plain insane. It's not like they require a lot of infrastructure. Oh and of course the author should still get most of the money in that grand scheme. But I doubt it's the case.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Anonymous Coward]

They still have to PRODUCE the original book that becomes an ebook.

This requires:

an editor, proofreader, any cover art, conversion to ebook format and some quality checks, oh, and an author to spend near a year working on the book.

Hence, they want new books to cost more. It's called "return on investment." The publishers also want older ebooks that have made the costs back tobe LESS than Amazon's mandated 9.99.

Publishers deserve to make some money, too, because they do a great favor for us all: They reduce the noise and increase the signal. Otherwise you could just read stuff put on the 'net with no filter, no quality checks, proofreading, etc...

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[dreamchaser]

Do you have any idea how much work goes into producing a book? If you want a book that was just published recently you should be willing to pay the price. If you're not then vote with your wallet and wait for the paperback or for the copyright to expire (yes we need to fix that, I know.)

Sadly authors don't get the lion's share of the money, but they get a LOT more for the first runs (hardback, ebook, etc.) than the residuals from cheaper paperbacks once the book gets older.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Roogna]

You know I keep seeing all this about about production costs, such as editors. I don't buy it honestly. The last few "new release" books I bought to read had horrible editing and I can't imagine they were proofread either. The quality of what's considered top notch writing has tanked considerably over the years, and the editing process for most fiction publishers at least doesn't seem to catch even the most glaring errors. No, I think the old publishers are just afraid that they're going to get cut out. After all, what marketing do you think matters more for sales? A little ad someplace? Or top spot front page of something like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, or soon Apple's book stores?

Now I know a couple authors personally. The ones I know are also bullish about e-books in general. There are -issues- to be overcome, such as formats. Epub isn't as nice a layout engine as it could be, kindle does their own thing. The unfortunate DRM controls, made worse by the rights granted varying between one publisher and another. And pricing. No one I know minds paying for e-books. But no one I know will pay MORE for an e-book than the lowest price they can get the book for printed. Nor should they. Over Christmas I was checking into e-book readers myself and the prices involved. I found that in the worst cases I was able to get the new release hardback at -half- the price of the e-book. Now even accounting for any middle men the publisher's try to charge for, the hardback is going to require those same ones PLUS physical printing costs. There is no way it costs double to produce the electronic version. The e-book version prices should at the very least track the lowest price for the SAME work at a given retailer. After all, has been pointed out many times here at /. the dead tree editions come with MORE rights. Such as being lendable or resellable.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Geoffrey.landis]

I checked the prices of ebooks, and as far as I am concerned, I am finding those prices outrageous.

I do respect the right of authors to make some money, but when an ebook is twice as expensive as a cheap paperback version, there's something highly wrong.

I actually agree with this, and I don't think that the fifteen dollar price, or even the proposed 9.99 price, will end up being the long-term equilibrium price. In the long term, I'll bet on low single digits-- the only question is how low. Four dollars for a book, or one dollar?

However, I really am horrified by Amazon's anticompetitive actions-- basically, holding paper books hostage for a deal on e-book prices.

And if you think that Amazon using its market-dominance power to set prices is a good thing for consumers, because they're setting prices at a point where they actually lose money on every e-book sold and low prices are good, right? -- you are not thinking very far ahead. Let me clue you in: Amazon is not trying to secure a dominant market position because they intend to lose money.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[bgalbrecht]

There can be two reasons for this, it really does cost more to produce it, or the publisher is evil

In some cases, the print book was created prior to the advent of ebooks, and so it costs about as much to create the ebook master files as it does to create the master files for a new print edition. If the expected number of sales of the ebook is sufficiently less than even a hardback print run, then it's not profitable for the publisher unless they price it up at a trade paperback or hardback prices. Thanks to the tower of eBabel, there's usually at least 3-4 formats the publisher must prep, although if they have good software, that conversion shouldn't be that hard. Even so, as someone who is involved at Distributed Proofreaders, I can tell you that even for a simple novel for which you don't have the original electronic source documents, the amount of time it takes to create the master files (for example, scan the book, OCR it, proofread it, generate XML master) at minimum is probably about 8-10 hours. Even if you freelance this, it's probably going to take a couple thousand to do this. Since our publisher is afraid of copyright infringement, add in the cost of DRM, another couple thousand. Add in Author royalties, the rest of the publisher overhead including profit margin, and the ebook store's markup, it really does cost more than $9.99 to break even if you have projected sales of about 2,000 ebooks.

In other cases, the publisher created an electronic master document from which the hardbound and mass market paperback editions as well as ebook formats are created. The publisher made the ebook available at the same time as the HB, and priced it the same as the HB. Then, when the MMPB came out a year later, the publisher kept the price of the ebook at the HB price. Why? Because the publishers don't like ebooks, they're afraid that ebook sales will cannibalize the print editions, and any cheap prices on ebooks will get the consumer to expect all books to be priced cheaply. You're proof of it, in their eyes.

In MacMillan's PR campaign for their side of the Amazon dispute, they claim that with their agent model, they will release the ebooks at the same time as the initial HB release, price it around the price of a trade paperback, and eventually drop the price to below that of a MMPB, presumably when the MMPB is released. This sounds good until you take a look at MacMillan's track record. Most of their ebooks are currently priced at HB or TPB prices, even though there's a MMPB available, and their TOR/Forge SF/F imprint has almost no ebooks available. If they really do change their ways, great, if not, it won't be any different from now, where I don't buy ebooks from MacMillan because either they're too expensive, or unavailable.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[ucblockhead]

Keep in mind that what was being argued about was *not* the price of *old* ebooks. What was being argued about was how much Amazon would charge for ebooks on the day the hard cover was first released.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Z34107]

Do you have any idea how much work goes into producing a book?

I Am Not An Author, so no, I have no first-hand experience with how much work goes into a book.

However, I assume that compensation for that work is (and has always been) built into the price of the paperback versions. If none of the people who did all that work were compensated for it, that would mean no paperback versions.

I also assume that paperbacks cost more to produce than e-book versions, which don't require smushing a force with blades and chemicals.

Paperback: Work to produce original content + cost to physically print.

E-book: (Same) Work to produce original content.

I'd assume the E-book would still be much cheaper.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Chaos Incarnate]

The publishers can sell back books for less than $9.99 already; nothing needed to change to allow that. It's the upper end that they're taking issue with.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[MartinSchou]

Alright, you seem about as close to an expert as anyone around here.

What would be a reasonable price for a non-DRM eBook?
And if it's bought directly from the author instead of through a publisher?
Why not use eBooks as a marketing ploy along the lines of hardcovers? I.e. include one for download with the hard-cover version.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[winwar]

"Paperback: Work to produce original content + cost to physically print.

E-book: (Same) Work to produce original content.

I'd assume the E-book would still be much cheaper."

Your assumptions are incorrect. It costs money to create an e-book just as it does to print a paperback. You have all of the same costs of a paperback (as you noted) plus the conversion to the various e-book formats which then have to go through various editing stages to be certain nothing was altered.

More importantly, there is essentially no market for e-books themselves. They don't sell (people buy e-books instead of regular books). So, e-books are created in addition to a hardcover book which adds to the cost and reduces sales (profits) of the hardcover. Unlike music, book publishing is not highly profitable.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[Z34107]

I'd think conversion to e-book formats would be trivial considering that the publisher has the source text. I'd hope that formatting it to fit a screen would cost less than shipping and producing literally tons of paper.

Even if e-books cost more to produce, as you say, there is no market for them. If I were Kindle-selling Amazon, I'd want to jump-start that market with lower prices rather than let it remain a niche market.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[zippthorne]

an editor, proofreader, any cover art, conversion to ebook format and some quality checks, oh, and an author to spend near a year working on the book.

Wow. Isaac Asimov must have been born in like the seventeenth century!

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[GryMor]

Are the rates you quoted % of list price, % of wholesale price or % of retail price?

If a retailer, after paying the normal wholesale price for one of your wife's books, drops the retail price to the wholesale price, does this increase your cash flow from increased units or decrease it from some wacky royalties of retail price clause?

From my perspective, what Macmillan is up to feels like some of the dirty tricks Holywood pulls to cut down on the amount of royalties they need to pay after the fact. I really hope I'm wrong, as I'm not seeing how Amazon has the leverage to stop it.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[mmurphy000]

Keep in mind that for most nationally published authors, the royalty is on cover price in all but a few very carefully worded exceptions that do not usually apply.

That may be true for the YA market. For technology books, and AFAIK non-fiction in general, royalty rates in contracts are on net (after reseller discounts), rather than on gross. That certainly was the case for the two I signed, and I did a fair amount of research to determine that this was, indeed, the norm. Reseller discounts can run as high as 55%, though ~40% is more typical.

And, of course, that's a good part of the reason why I started my own publishing firm.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[curunir]

Amazon wants to sell eBooks, and cheap books sell better than expensive ones (big shocker, right?).

I know that's the end goal, but I don't think that's the motivation behind their current fight with the publishers.

Having read one of the linked author's statements, I think he's being very short-sighted. He talks about how his books sell an order of magnitude less in eBook form than they do in print. But that's because the market is still small...only a small percentage of readers have eBook readers. As people have pointed out in previous Kindle discussions, the initial outlay of money is substantial and it takes a lot of savings on eBooks to recoup that initial cost. The number 1 question I get from people who don't have a Kindle about my Kindle isn't about the experience of using it or anything to do with the device itself. The question I get is, "How much are books and which books are available?"

If publishers are allowed to set whatever prices they want for their books, the answer to that question becomes more complicated and people are discouraged from buying eBook readers. But by pushing for a standard upper price limit, Amazon is trying to increase the number of people with an eBook reader. And if they're successful and a large percentage of the potential buyers of a book have an eBook reader, the authors will find that the order of magnitude difference between the two formats will all but disappear if not becoming reversed. Once the market exists, it won't matter what prices are charged so long as they're sufficiently discounted from the dead tree edition. But if Amazon allows the price variance now, the time it takes to reach that state will increase and we'll continue to see paper books outsell eBooks by a large margin.

As you've mentioned, the author's cut for eBooks should be fairly similar to their cut on a traditional book. The difference will be the cut taken by the publishers and the book sellers. I see this as a struggle between traditional production and distribution and Amazon and the other digital distributors. Amazon wants the future to be now and they are pushing the Kindle to create the market for digital distribution. Publishers see how this will marginalize them and are fighting it. As a Kindle owner, I'm happy to see lower prices, but I have no illusion that Amazon is fighting this for the benefit of customers like me. To say so is disingenuous. But it's just as disingenuous for publishers to explain their position by claiming they're fighting for authors. The reality is that authors and readers are the only two sympathetic parties in the system and both sides have justified their actions by appealing to people sympathy towards those two groups when it's really just greed on their part.

Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but...

[nahdude812]

And besides, devices like the kindle do not lend themselves to very specific layouts by the publisher; they allow you to change font sizes, and the text reflows automatically. Like HTML the publisher doesn't spend lots of time pouring over kerning and leading, making sure that white space rivers don't appear and that text flows meaningfully around any illustrations. You just don't have that much control in an e-book.

There is no way production costs on an e-book are higher than any printed form. Printed forms have the same (or more demanding) layout requirements, more proofreading (making sure the are not words which fell off the page when making plates, for example), plus physical material costs, man hours to run and clean the presses, run the paper shears, collate the pages, fold them, bind them, box them, then there's the physical shipping involved. I worked in a press room for a couple of years in college. Until you get into the very, very large publishers, there's a whole lot of manual labor involved, and even when you're one of the very large publishers, there's still a lot of very expensive equipment involved (whose price needs to be part of the cost of the books printed on them).

The e-book has none of that overhead, someone performs the same level of quality control as the print plates (less really, there aren't blue lines and gels to produce for proofing, etc), then someone runs a software tool to produce the e-book format (which most likely takes less than a minute), and the process is complete. It's ludicrous to suggest that the production costs of an e-book are anywhere near similar to a paperback. Sure there are shared fixed costs which need to be recouped (writing and editing mostly), but an e-book should be half the price of a paperback - or less.

Amazon sucks anyway.

[reddburn]

Great idea: go to a BOOKSTORE and buy a copy. Even better? Get one at a locally owned shop. Book-buying is better in person: browsing shelves, reading through a few pages, checking out your favorite section, then finding that rare gem that you'd have never seen on Amazon anyway.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

ahh... the purists. I bet you use lynx to make your purchases on-line.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[dreamchaser]

There is nothing 'purist' about leaving Mom's basement once in awhile to buy a book, or better yet to go do the Library.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[homer_s]

Great idea: go to a BOOKSTORE and buy a copy. Even better? Get one at a locally owned shop. Book-buying is better in person: browsing shelves, reading through a few pages, checking out your favorite section, then finding that rare gem that you'd have never seen on Amazon anyway.

Why? I value my time and I like to spend it doing other things. Amazon makes it incredibly easy for me to purchase the books I want, new or used. In fact, I have a few books that I could not have found if not for amazon.com.

I see amazon, like any other store, as my agent who aggregates the buying power of consumers to negotiate a price from manufacturers/publishers. I applaud whatever they do to get prices down for me. Authors' rights? That's for them to defend, not me.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[rjiy]

Why would I want to kill whole trees just for a few hours of entertainment?

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[PeanutButterBreath]

GP is talking about people who don't want to buy from Amazon for some reason or other. The point being, rather than bitch about Amazon, if you are inclined to do so, just go elsewhere.

BTW, most bookstores would be happy to special order any book you please. Moreover, rather than limit yourself to your "agent's" evidently skewed and limited selection, you could search the entire internet for titles and have your local shop obtain it for you.

Heck, even your local library will often special order books and give you first dibs on reading it for free.

I buy a lot of books from Amazon myself, because it is convenient. But I know better than to fancy them as working on my behalf. They are just another business balancing my potential desires against scores of millions of others.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[Fizzol]

Have to disagree. Amazon carries far more titles than all my local and chain stores put together. Also, I'm perfectly happy with browsing through books at the computer, downloading samples and making my choices that way. It's quick, convenient, relatively cheap and doesn't kill trees.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[Roogna]

See, I used to think this. And while it's true, there's also a flip side to physical books.

Here's a story for you from my own life. My family were avid book collectors. Around about the time I was 18 we easily had two thousand books in the house if not more, collected over my life, and the life of my Mom, and Grandmother. The problem was, around about then we sold my grandmothers house so she could have some more money in her retirement to live on. The place we moved was smaller and we simply no longer had room for all those books. Obviously we kept our favorite authors and such, but the rest we donated to the local library. Now while this was grand for them, I to this day STILL miss always being able to just reach out and grab a book to read. Now I'm grown, have my own house, and my collection has begun to grow again, but nonetheless, if a e-book reader and store would come out that managed DRM in a more acceptable way, and priced more closely to the price of dead tree books, then I would quite happily purchase that way. Simply for the sake, of never having to leave books behind again, if my family has to move.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Japan, so going to a bookstore and getting a copy isn't an option. A locally owned shop carrying the English books that I'm interested in is even less of an option. e-books fit the bill perfectly for my situation, and Amazon had the lowest prices in the past (like, ridiculously lower prices than other e-book stores, $9 vs. $25). I have ordered real books from amazon.com as well, but unless I want to pay exorbitant prices on shipping, I have to choose an option which can take 1-2 months for them to arrive. And then I have a real book, which takes up a lot of space in my 1 room apartment :)

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[jisatsusha]

I'd be more than happy to do this if books didn't cost at least twice as much as Amazon sell them for.

Re:Amazon sucks anyway.

[Cro Magnon]

That's really why I bought the Kindle. I went a long time without buying new books, simply because I didn't have any more room! Now, I can buy books again without wondering where the heck to put them.

First Rule of Negotiating

[Trip6]

Tell the seller you don't need their product unless they agree to your terms. This is not school - this is hardball.

There can be only one? Since when?

[geekmux]

Not to shadow Amazons draconian pressure tactics, but if I want a product bad enough, I will find another reseller, maybe even a B&M. A "who moved my buy button" service? Are you kidding me? I wasn't aware that there was but one bookstore left in the world.

When retailers and e-tailers realize that people do not take kindly to being screwed with when the want it and want it NOW, AND the fact that I can and will spend the extra 87 cents to buy it from someone else to avoid bullshit, perhaps they'll stop with these games. Hell, I get pissed when I'm not allowed to see what the final tax and/or shipping costs will be until I "create an account"(that would be a hint e-tailers, knock that shit off), and ultimately I end up shopping elsewhere.

Amazon is not the almighty end all be all of e-product. If you start treating it as such, or allow them the illusion that they are, the illusion will become reality. Buy or sell elsewhere if you have or find an issue. Yeah, it can be just THAT simple.

bn.com

[otis wildflower]

It's shit like this that makes me glad we live in a free system that has competition, even as messy as it gets (and yeah, corruption, incompetence, etc. I get it).

If you don't like Amazon's shenanigans, there's bn.com, powells.com, daedalusbooks.com, etc.

Incidentally, IIRC, Borders' online fulfillment got outsourced to Amazon years ago, their online presence otherwise is a pathetic fuckin joke compared to bn.com, I haven't shopped Borders since I got my 3rd edition Player's Handbook at the Borders in the WTC..

Re:bn.com

[otis wildflower]

err 2nd ed, need more coffee...

Re:bn.com

[Chaos Incarnate]

Borders took their online retail back in house years ago

Authors versus consumers it is...

[bruce_the_loon]

Saw this debate start earlier this week on Schlock Mercenary's site http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/04/dear-mister-bezos-are-you-still-all-mad-and-stuff/. Seems like the author found the discussion heading away from the self-righteous line he wanted and killed it.

Don't think he realized how many of his readers are consumers who want the best price for something.

Re:Authors versus consumers it is...

[schlesinm]

While Amazon handled their end badly, I still pull for them in the battle. Macmillan is basically trying to kill e-books with the price point they are forcing on the market. Amazon at least realizes that it makes no sense to have an e-book go for the same price as a physical book (if we could only get them to remove the DRM now).

Re:Authors versus consumers it is...

[AthanasiusKircher]

While Amazon handled their end badly, I still pull for them in the battle. Macmillan is basically trying to kill e-books with the price point they are forcing on the market.

And isn't that Macmillan's choice? If consumers want e-books, and Macmillan tries to kill them, people won't buy Macmillan's books. Authors and readers will seek out books from other publishers, if the e-book market grows. It's their choice as a publisher about how to run their own business, even if you (or Amazon) doesn't like it.

Amazon at least realizes that it makes no sense to have an e-book go for the same price as a physical book (if we could only get them to remove the DRM now).

What Amazon thinks makes "no sense" may not be what the publisher thinks makes "no sense" or what you think makes "no sense." All of these parties get to choose their strategies in a free marketplace. But when one company starts to have a monopolistic control over one segment of the marketplace, and tries to force other companies to change their policies to suit its business model, the marketplace is no longer free. That's the larger problem. I don't think we're quite there with Amazon yet, but the potential for abuse is high.

30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[transporter_ii]

Do some research. There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.

If an author dumped their publisher, went with Amazon, and happened to sell a lot of books, 30% wouldn't be a bad deal, in my opinion.

See the above statement. Who do you think are stirring the pot here? Authors or Publishers?

Yes, there is very much an RIAA type of situation here, where the publisher often does promotion and advertising, but a big name could write a book and go straight to Amazon with it.

Now they could get their own servers, marketing team, etc, and go it on their own. How much time and money do you think all of that will cost?

Amazon isn't spotless in the situation, DRM and all, but a lot of publishers treat their authors like the RIAA treats its artists.

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[Hurricane78]

I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!

There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.

Have you ever heard of ad populum?
It’s faulty logic. Something worse does not make something bad OK. Just like if your limit for badness is <=1, and it’s at 0.7, then telling you that it could be 0.3 or 0.0, does not make 0.7 > 1.0!
Let me use your quote on another topic:

There are people out there that were left with way less than 30% of their money, while the state took a big chunk. I was just reading about a famous guy that has had over eight houses in NY. On some of them, he has left only the couch and toilet. On others, they took everything, only left the blank walls standing, and no money at all.

Now tell me: How would that quote make 70% taxation right? Hm?

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[mobby_6kl]

Im sorry?? Amazons work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all thats left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!

Why don't use then? You'd make a killing and save the poor Author's guild at the same time!

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor selling authors are not owed a living, they are welcome to get onto a payroll scheme list 99.999% of the world. They are not a special breed, most have limited talents, and a great number churn out shit for the sake of it. Like musicians, they need to change the business model to become employees while they churn out their wares.

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[jythie]

Ahm, how is 'gives the authors a significantly better deal then the industry standard' a bad thing? I also think it is quite a stretch to call that an ad populum fallacy. It merely points out that attacking amazon for taking 70% in favor of regular publishers which will take upwards of 90% is rather silly. And I highly doubt you could have a fully functional book selling site set up in 2 days that comes even close to the functionality (both front end and back end) of a place like amazon, or have the same load capacity. Do you have any idea what is involved in 'moving money back and forth' in a system like that?

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Do some research?! You haven't even figured out the difference between what a publisher does and what a retailer does!

An author cannot go straight from a written story to selling on Amazon. There are tons of people in between (at the publisher stage), who proofread, layout, revise, design, print and otherwise make the book *better* and marketable for readers.

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[Patch86]

I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!

That's up there with "Rock Stars don't do anything difficult- I could do that if I wanted to!". Why don't you then? Undercut the big players, offer lots to the authors? Make your millions?

I'll tell you why- if you set up an e-book website, it'd flop. There's more to being a mega-retailer than just writing a web-page and setting up a money transfer. Advertising, promoting, negotiating with publishers and authors, maintaining partnerships... the website itself is no more significant than the shop-front is for a jewelery shop- it's everything else that makes the shop, not the bricks and mortar.

Plenty of people do try and fail- only the ones who are good at all that other stuff survive. Amazon have, Apple have, lots haven't. It's their talents in all these other niggling little areas that enables to act like the juggernaut-bullies that they are.

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[clarkkent09]

I"m sorry?? Amazon's work in selling these e-books is next to nothing. I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day.

Yes but you'll have a hell of a job making that the 8th most visited site in the US like Amazon is. People should know by now, having an online store has nothing to do with the software, and everything to do with marketing. 30% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal

[julesh]

Do some research. There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.

30% is way above industry average for print books, yes. Author royalties on hard copy books are typically somewhere between 6% and 15%, often on a sliding scale starting at the bottom of that band and working up towards the top as larger and larger numbers are sold.

OTOH, ebook royalties have always been somewhat higher. Macmillan pays 20% - 25% on the ebooks they publish, which is admittedly less than 30%, but not by a long way. Flat rate is very rare, and most authors would shy away from such a publisher (except in the rather lucrative work-for-hire market, e.g. writing media tie-ins).

Where there enough sales?

[Geert Jalink]

If there are enough sales for a book, and the book does not insult that much, why would anyone remove all books from any author at all?

How is it not preventing this

[SuperKendall]

Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent?

Yes.

Which it is.

Unless you've been under a rock, Apple is doing a book store. And Barnes & Nobel is too, along with the nook reader... Why do you think Amazon *had* to capitulate?

free market economics works just fine but it doesn't fix things instantly. Over the long run though things will be fixed and arrive at a natural state. Regulation always serves to create an artificial plateau of being that you'd never find otherwise...

Re:How is it not preventing this

[Anonymous Coward]

free market economics works just fine but it doesn't fix things instantly. Over the long run though things will be fixed and arrive at a natural state. Regulation always serves to create an artificial plateau of being that you'd never find otherwise...

I agree with your stance on free markets, but I don't agree with your stance on regulation. Free markets require regulation. Why? Because, as the saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. "Free" should not be equated with anarchy. If your freedoms abridge my freedoms, there is a problem. That is why we need government. The law should limit your freedoms only inasmuch as they limit how you impose on other people's freedoms. If we don't accept this basic proposition, then we should accept slavery. We should accept murder. We should accept theft. This is a basic concept that the tea baggers, in all of their righteous zeal, completely overlook. We live in dangerous times, because the very foundations of the US republic is under attack by great moneyed interests supported by a mass of people ignorant of political history and political philosophy. Powerful feudal ideologues caused the current global economic catastrophe, yet they maintain a stranglehold on popular sentiment by debasing their socially conscientious opponents as "socialists" or "communists" or "fascists" (never mind that these labels are all mutually exclusive). There are a great mass of people being propelled by dangerous ideas, and you, my posting friend, are succumbing to their rhetoric.

Re:How is it not preventing this

[wrook]

What confuses me is this: isn't having a distributor dictate the price of an item to a retailer called "price-fixing"? Isn't is illegal in the US? If I understand correctly, Macmillan and many authors are upset that Amazon want to sell at a reduced retail price while still paying the *same* wholesale price. Shouldn't that be allowed in a free market economy (as long as they aren't selling below cost in order to force out smaller players)?

So why did Amazon have to capitulate? Clearly they have to buy the books at whatever rate the publisher wants. That's fair enough. But I can't understand why they can't set whatever retail price they want.

Re:How is it not preventing this

[JesseMcDonald]

Free markets require regulation. Why? Because, as the saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. "Free" should not be equated with anarchy. If your freedoms abridge my freedoms, there is a problem.

Whatever the colloquial meaning may be, the term "regulation" in an economic context does not include basic enforcement of property rights. The one thing common to all free markets is that property rights are always strictly enforced (a.k.a. the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP). How they are enforced varies; it is possible—some would even say necessary—to ensure their enforcement non-aggressively, i.e. without a government, by relying on the purely defensive use of force in immediate self-defense or as a proportional response to prior aggression. In any event, the absence of aggression is inherent in the free-market concept, and needs no extra label; the term "regulations" refers only to additional prohibitions on non-aggressive use of one's property.

Resisting the violation of one's property rights (e.g. slavery, murder, theft) is an act of defense against prior aggression, but any enforcement of regulations would require one to become the aggressor, violating the property rights of non-aggressors to prevent them from (or punish them for) using their property in the prohibited fashion. This is clearly in violation of the NAP.

The NAP is thus a complete description of the set of prohibited actions in a free market; the introduction of any additional "regulations" can only lead to contradiction.

As for the "socially conscientious opponents", I do not care whether you call them "socialists", "communists", "fascists", or any other label. What they are is individuals who would seek to violate others' property rights, a.k.a. criminals. (Remember, in a free market there is no double-standard separating the normals from the government; the same rules apply to all. All aggression is criminal, regardless of the instigator.)

Re:How is it not preventing this

[tehcyder]

free market economics works just fine

[citation needed]

Re:How is it not preventing this

[Anonymous Coward]

You use too many words. Let's make it simple. I'm a criminal. I took your stuff, and I'm bigger than you. What are you going to do about it?

When were the books restored?

[Joe Helfrich]

According to the link you posted to Charlie's diary, the book's still haven't been restored. Was this done overnight, or did you fall for Amazon's statement that they were going to restore the books?

Prepare to Troll in 3...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive the AC login, but I need to remain behind it as I work for Barnes & Noble. Also, Disclaimer: I work for Barnes & Noble.

With any ebook reader that you can attach to a computer, you have control over the ebook you've purchased. With a certain oddly named ereader in particular, you can move the ebook to your computer. Yes, it does still have DRM, which is regrettable, but you have control over the file. The Kindle is a licensed device where you view licensed content, and their Terms and Agreements spell that out, albeit it briefly.

This past Christmas, more ebooks were sold then physical books. I expect this year will have a thousand and one problems as publishers try to figure out how to place ebooks in their publishing schedule. There has been some talk about having the ebook be released at the same time as the trape paperback, as to not impact hardcover sales as much as they have. Although this would alienate a very large reading audience, such actions have occurred before when companies look to their bottom line.

Authors make money from their up front payments, bookstores make money from their bargain sections. The publisher sets the price of the books when they are released, and they make their money by selling X number of books. When you buy a book in the trade section of a bookstore, almost every cent of that goes to the publisher. Ebooks don't return the same numbers as trade books to the publisher, but I am unsure of the specifics of that.

We'll see how it goes.

Amazon is rarely the sole distributor

[bgalbrecht]

Unless Amazon is the ebook publisher, the ebook is usually available from other ebook stores or the publisher's website. However, Amazon is trying to become the sole distributor, by offering authors 70% royalties if Amazon is their publisher, the list is between $2.99 and $9.99, below the price of any print copies, allows Text To Speech, and various other caveats beneficial to Amazon.

Re:Amazon is rarely the sole distributor

[Anonymous Coward]

What, like the ability to sell e-books worldwide?

Imagine being an Amazon Kindle customer who lives in or moved to the UK or Australia. You change your shipping information, planning to continue using the service you liked to use. But wait - there's a catch. Amazon can ship you physical book no matter where you live, but doesn't have international digital rights. Suddenly you're angry with Amazon and its publishers because you can't buy the books you want.

This isn't an imaginary situation. I have this problem today. Because I'm not a US customer, publishers won't let Amazon sell me their books. Brilliant.

I'm not seeing impaired, dyslexic, nor do I enjoy listening to books, but if I were, I'd be pretty pissed if random books I wanted to read didn't have text-to-speech because the publisher didn't feel like it, even when they had no immediate intention of creating an audio-book for it.

Those "caveats" are also beneficial to Amazon's customers, if you hadn't noticed. The publishers clearly have no interest in what's best for their customers and, in some cases, even selling their books.

Authors Guild burned up a lot of respect for me...

[Vellmont]

When the President of the Authors Guild went on a rant about how text to speech was infringing on authors "audio rights".
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1
I won't go into the arguments, but suffice it to say I sure as hell don't just automatically trust whatever the authors guild is trying to push. Even if you think he's right, was this issue SO important he had to write a very public article about it in the NYT?

On the other hand, Amazon isn't the must trustworthy company in the world either. The incident with 1984 on the Kindle comes to mind. This incident only makes it crystal clear that the Kindle is essentially like renting books, not owning them. It's just kind of amazing that the entire e-book world is rife with anti-consumer paranoia.

The entire e-book industry is doomed to failure unless they're significantly cheaper than the paper version. How many people really want to buy a book on technology platform for only a little less? We all know these are essentially throw-away devices. In 2 years there will be some Great New "gotta have it" book reader platform that'll make anything right now obsolete. In 5 years Kindles will be essentially worthless and people will turn their noses up at them like it's a Palm Pilot. Meanwhile the paper book holds essentially the same value as it did 100 years ago. So which medium should I buy? If I don't need a new version of a recent book, I can get a used copy on Amazon for next to nothing, or deeply discounted. The e-book I can't re-sell, easily loan to a friend, etc. Inferior technologies can only compete on price.

Don't get me wrong, I love technology. I just consider "paper books" to be technology (a competing technology of course). Newer doesn't mean better, and it's difficult for electronics to compete with paper when the content is completely static.

Re:Authors Guild burned up a lot of respect for me

[ColdWetDog]

How many people really want to buy a book on technology platform for only a little less? We all know these are essentially throw-away devices.

For me, this is the crux of the issue. I've read the linked blogs (and a few others - interesting reads) and the author's points are clear and pretty well spot on - except that they are largely thinking of e-books as dead tree replacements. To an author, they decry DRM but mostly on the grounds that it impedes sales.

But DRM changes the entire picture. If something is locked to either the device or the purchaser, it's value drops significantly. I can't just lend the book to a family member or friend. I can't easily back it up. Yes, I know we can typically break the lock, but that's shitty business model.

I actually don't mind a locked down ebook but it's value is decreased compared to a paper version or a fully unlocked version and should be priced accordingly.

Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[Anonymous Coward]

You obvoiusly know little to nothing about the relationship between authoring a book and publishing a book.

Book's most often require editing, fact checking, layout, artwork - even hiring a set of on the cheap professionals this will cost thousands.

You also seem to not grasp the simple fact that E-books are not yet a signifigant part of the bookspace - read the nuimbers and you'll notice that it's about 1% of the book market.

Going to Amazon with a e-book and having no physical book is dropping the vast majority of your customers.

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Re:Uh... Epic Fail on RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

The authors and publishers want to be able to drop the price of the e-books to $4.99 after a period of time has passed since initial release. The want to be able to set the price between $4.99 and $14.99 ie new books by big authors released at the same time as hardcovers would cost $14.99 -- older e-books sold the same time as the paperback version could cost as little as $4.99

Does Amazon Marketplace work with blocked books?

[netringer]

Am I wrong or doesn't the "Available New and Used from $nn from these..." Marketplace Sellers listing still work when Amazon themselves won't stock the book?

There's still a very competitive new and used book marketplace,.

I know. Not for ebooks.

Should focus on the agent model contract

[bgalbrecht]

Amazon will not be able to price match the ebook against the hard cover when there's a hardcover price war. Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon have been having a price war on best-seller hardcovers lately, in the $7.99-$9.99 range, and MacMillian's CEO has already said that that is too low a price for a new ebook. Given MacMillan's current track record (most ebooks still sell at hardcover price even after the mass market paperback is released), I don't expect MacMillan to drop the price of the ebook to match the discounted hardcover.

Re:Should focus on the agent model contract

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The hard cover price war you mentioned basically got well below the normal "loss-leader". A hard cover with a $30 cover price wholesales at roughly $15, and the store is losing $5 on each book sale to get you in the door, with the eye on making money on anything else that the buyer might get on the same visit. Amazon did lose money on ebooks of best sellers until last week, with the intent of earning a larger market share than it could before.

I agree that the price of ebooks should go down when a paperback is available. I hope that Apple getting into the game will change that, because I don't see enough incentive to buying ebooks if they remain the same price in perpetuity. I know there is a convenience, but if I have to buy a device to read them comfortably, then I'm not going to try.

Libertarian bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bunch of Libertarian bullshit, but of course it will be modded up because Libertarianism is oh-so-fashionable around here. And the replies will be ignored because the truth isn't fashionable.

"cheap" $9.99 books?

[Sloppy]

Stross writes:

They lied by falsely positioning themselves as the defenders of cheap $9.99 ebooks

I'm so confused. Here I am with a paperback that says $7.99 on its back. An ebook costs a fraction of that to manufacture and the paperback's price also includes all the amortized costs (like paying the author!) in its price, so how the fuck is $9.99 "cheap"?

Re:"cheap" $9.99 books?

[Chaos Incarnate]

$9.99 compared to the $29.99 hardcover. In theory, the ebook price will drop to match the paperback's when the book is out in MMPB.

In practice, Macmillan and others won't bother.

Re:"cheap" $9.99 books?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remember this every time you say anything about what something _should_ cost: An item's price is what the buyer is willing to pay for it. The cost of production is only a lower bound on the price (at least if you wish to remain profitable). Amazon thinks that people who buy a $260 device are willing to fork over $9.99 per book to be able to make use of it. It's not that unreasonable, and e-book sales numbers show that it might be true. Whether it will continue to be so is yet to be seen.

Re:"cheap" $9.99 books?

[rochrist]

Because, of course, they're lazy and they don't want to sell books.

Re:"cheap" $9.99 books?

[Sloppy]

I'm not saying they should sell it for less or that it's unreasonable to rope as many suckers as they can. I'm saying we ought to call bullshit on anyone who calls a $10 e-book "cheap." An e-book that costs more than a paperback is an expensive book, no matter how many people buy it.

Likewise, a $10000-off Ferrari isn't cheap, no matter how many collectors get a hard on at the thought of it. Come see me and I'll show you what a "cheap" car really is.

Well written analysis of this issue

[ctmurray]

My wife is an indie author and has been following this debate. She found a really good description of what is going on here . A basic conflict between Amazon's business model vs the book publisher's legacy business model.

Better than competition: No publishers.

[Futurepower(R)]

Why have publishers? They take most of the money, and for most authors, do very, very little. It would be better for authors to hire editors and layout artists themselves, and sell online from their own web sites.

Re:Better than competition: No publishers.

[winwar]

"Why have publishers?"

Because the authors want them. They provide useful services.

You might want to read some of the links in the article. They contain information about where all the money goes and why authors use publishers.

Re:Better than competition: No publishers.

[ucblockhead]

I wrote three technical books in college. Please explain to me how I could possibly use writing a book in 1986 (which wouldn't be published until 1987) to help support myself in college without an advance from the publisher. Please explain to me how I could have possibly afforded to hire an editor when my yearly income was $10,000.

Also please explain to me why having a publisher give me an advance before I started writing is worse for me than going through a process that requires me to put thousands of dollars on the line with no hope of any returns until a year into the process.

Publishers provide many services to the author. Two big ones are early advances and taking on risk. It's the difference between "I'll give you $5,000 in three payments to write a book, with the potential for future royalties" and "please pay $10,000 of your own money and in two years you might get (slightly higher) royalties."

Re:Better than competition: No publishers.

[rochrist]

The short answer is: because publishers assume all the risk, lay out the money to publish the book, make the book better and pay the authors something in advance.

Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[that this is not und]

Nope. You can't.

That you think this is possible just disqualifies you for the discussion.

You're ignorant. Anything more you say will just be more drivel. Done.

Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Book's most often require editing, fact checking, layout, artwork - even hiring a set of on the cheap professionals this will cost thousands.

Or you can go down to your local college and higher a couple people for next to nothing and end up with the same quality.

It's sad, but unfortunately the trend seems to indicate that you're right. Many publishers used to do multiple levels of editing, detailed proofreading, etc. The process in some sense required it, because you had to move from a typescript page (or even handwritten) by an author to a typeset page, and in the process, things had to be checked. Nowadays, even large publishers have cut out many stages, and some appear to do little more than dump the text from a computer file into a layout app, do 15 minutes of design, and get ready to publish. If there were errors, the author has to catch them. And I've seen a number of cases where proofs don't seem to matter -- things that an author corrects in proofs go uncorrected in the final copy, because it's too much of a pain to go through those corrections in detail and make changes in a format that is often different from the application the author is using (or the one that is being used to track changes).

Designing, typesetting, and making a book used to be so much more labor-intensive and time-consuming in the past. Yet I look at such books published decades ago all the time, and generally the quality is quite high. Why is it, then, that I see more poorly-designed books these days with typographical errors on every page?

if B&N couldn't do it, why do you think you co

[Anonymous Coward]

Barnes & Noble totally botched http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/26/nook-fails-to-communicate-download-purchased-ebooks/ their attempt to setup an online e-book shop to support their new hardware product (Nook).

WTF makes you think you could do in one single day what B&N couldn't do even when they had months of planning and it was needed as part of a major campaign to keep their company alive?

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Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[ae1294]

Designing, typesetting, and making a book used to be so much more labor-intensive and time-consuming in the past. Yet I look at such books published decades ago all the time, and generally the quality is quite high. Why is it, then, that I see more poorly-designed books these days with typographical errors on every page?

I'm horrible when it comes to spelling but I come across errors all the time while reading newer books so that leads me to beleive that publishers really don't do anything magical that some random English major couldn't do. Better yet hire 2 or 3 people and pay per error corrected or something like that...

But I forget my place.. We can't improve or make anything cheaper if it hurts big media...

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E-book consumers aren't that happy either

[Robotech_Master]

For what it's worth, it's generated ill-will on the part of e-book consumers, too, many of whom feel this whole thing is yet another instance of the continued cluelessness over e-books that they've had to endure for the past ten years, and who feel that authors and publishers are deliberately ignoring them or misrepresenting their positions.

A couple of examples:

"Maybe we should be hurting the authors" by Ficbot
"The Amazon/Macmillan blow-up: An e-book lover's appeal for understanding" by me

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Good discussion:

[Futurepower(R)]

Kindle Numbers: Traditional Publishing Vs. Self Publishing

Re:Good discussion:

[BlackCreek]

MOD PARENT UP! Link is extremely informative!

Re:Good discussion:

[julesh]

Kindle Numbers: Traditional Publishing Vs. Self Publishing

Yeah. Note, however, that we're talking about J. A. Konrath. OK, he isn't a publishing megastar, but we're not talking about an unknown. He was published by a well-known, respected publisher first. His sales figures would probably be somewhat different if he didn't have that publisher behind him.

Also, he's missing an important point. His ebook sales on his pro-published books, e.g. Whiskey Sour are lower than his ebook sales on his self-published books, but he doesn't seem to consider that there's a very good reason for this other than the pricing: most of the people reading his self-published books will be doing so after reading his professional ones. His professional ones are published in both paperback and e-book format. The self-published ones are only available in e-book. When there's no alternative available, people will buy the e-book who would normally have prefered a hard copy book. He's losing e-book sales on his pro published books to the hard copy versions of the same book, but isn't doing so on his self published books, so the figures are not comparable.

Another point to consider: Konrath is widely considered a master of the art of self-promoting a book. He's well known for this ability. Most authors rely on their publishers to promote their books much more than Konrath does. Results for his books will not apply to books from most other authors.

Also: read his conclusion.

If you're a new author, reading this and thinking about the fame and fortune you'll make on ebooks, I urge you to try the traditional route first.

Sensible advice, and completely contrary to what you seem to be suggesting.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please go take a history course.

Re:So what? Shane on Amazon!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is ripping off students with its proprietary pricing deals forced on textbook publishers. How many know that Amazon wants up to 65-70% of the MSRP of eBook textbooks MSRP, in return for the publisher having the right to put it in the Amazon Store and compatible with Kindle? Also, they force the publishers into an arrangement that forbids they (the publisher) sell the digital versions for less anywhere else. Sleaze! This keeps the cost of textbooks artificially high! Amazon has simply gotten too big for its britches. I'm looking forward to the day when their high-priced and crippled Kindle is priced as a cheap calculator and sold at Target. That's where it belongs, and Amazon had better shape up or it's going to find itself at the backside of the long tail of e-Retailers; they're big now, but the digital domain can slap outsized vendors and retails upside the head. It's a new world Amazon. Stop being so damned greedy! Amazon likes to make a big deal about how it is helping to lower the cost of textbook, but in reality it is keeping prices high through its ominous pricing agreements.

You are confusing collusion with fixing

[SuperKendall]

What confuses me is this: isn't having a distributor dictate the price of an item to a retailer called "price-fixing"?

You are confused about the term "price fixing". That refers to a number of companies all agreeing to a fixed price, so customers in a market have no choice but to pay that price for some particular good.

But here's the thing. While one company might decide to "fix" prices at $15, there is nothing in the model that lets companies set pricing to stop another company from saying "Hey, why not publish similar books for $10 and steal some of that market". And so a naturally acceptable price is set. Frankly I think that price happens to be $10, but it might be a little higher.

Meanwhile Amazon is looking to "fix" prices as well - by setting a ceiling at which they will not allow prices to pass. That leads to all kinds of problems like many, many very niche books that need a higher price to survive, simply not being published under that system. It's not illegal either but it's not a good model for publishers or authors to allow a distributor to have total control over pricing.

That does not equal regulation

[SuperKendall]

Free markets require regulation. Why? Because, as the saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. "Free" should not be equated with anarchy.

But you can achieve that effect without overall regulation, by ONLY regulating companies recognized as true monopolies, and even then with a light hand - or enforcing laws which make literal attempts to connect fist with nose illegal. Rule of law is important but regulation is a whole different kettle of fish.

I am not one to say you can realistically achieve no regulation but we have gone way, way over the top with regulating things and we need to peel back that onion dramatically no matter how many people cry about it, because we are strangling small businesses and propping up old corpses that should be allowed to die natural deaths.

Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[BlackCreek]

This writer seems to disagree with you http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/kindle-numbers-traditional-publishing.html

Please explain Books On Line, then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain Books On Line, then. The ONLY monopoly here is the one of copyright. Don't like monopoly abuse? Remove or heavily restrict copyright. But anyone can sell books if the publisher lets them.

IF THE PUBLISHER LETS THEM.

Note how that even absent any publisher, Google Books is still "not allowed" to use books without specific approval by authors and publishers whose books aren't even the ones under discussion because authors and the media industry astroturfers hate anyone else having power in the realm of copyright: they are DEATHLY AFRAID that someone else is making money. They don't give a shit if they're not, but if someone else could possibly be making money from "their" work, even though they themselves refuse to make the effort to make money from it, they refuse to let anyone else do it and DEMAND that they reap the benefit of someone else's work in selling "their" product.

Re:Please explain Books On Line, then.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Please explain Books On Line, then. The ONLY monopoly here is the one of copyright. Don't like

Does the word "non sequitur" mean anything to you?

The current US copyright system is broken. The current version was a revision intended, as far as I can tell, primarily to prevent Mickey Mouse from dropping into the public domain and hence to allow one of the most powerful corporations in the world, Disney, to prevent make money from their iconic character.

However, that's a different issue.

Right, except that you have it backwards

[Geoffrey.landis]

That would, indeed, be restraint of trade, which is illegal. As it happens, though, you've got the situation exactly backwards: that's not what Macmillan is trying to do; it's what Amazon is trying to do.

Here's a quote from Charlie Stross' blog (discussing the terms Amazon wants):

the devil is in the small print; to get the 30% rate, you have to agree that Amazon is a publisher, license your rights to Amazon to publish through the Kindle platform, guarantee that you will not allow other ebook editions to sell for less than the Kindle price, and let Amazon set that price, with a ceiling of $9.99. In other words, Amazon choose how much to pay you, while using your books to undercut any possible rivals (including the paper editions you still sell).

Amazon (not Macmillan) is the one who wants to prevent you from selling to others at a lower price.

Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill?

[ae1294]

You obvoiusly know little to nothing about the relationship between authoring a book and publishing a book.
Book's most often require editing, fact checking, layout, artwork - even hiring a set of on the cheap professionals this will cost thousands

Or you can go down to your local college and hire a couple people for next to nothing and end up with the same quality.

Nope. You can't. That you think this is possible just disqualifies you for the discussion. You're ignorant. Anything more you say will just be more drivel. Done.

LoL, wow you really put me in my place didn't you. And here I was under the impression that publishers hire people off the street like every other business and that those 'people' had gone to college in order to work as editors, etc...

You can try and mod me down but you really can't stop me unless you hire a ninja...

Macmillan is only being greedy.

[N3tRunner]

Macmillan was simply feeling greedy because they were offered a sweeter deal from Apple for their iPad ebook store. Amazon shouldn't be forced to raise the price on electronic books that don't cost any more today than they did when the deal was made in the first place. No matter what their evil practices may be, I'm with Amazon on this one.