Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
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."
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.
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.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
If as an author you can't write, then you should be in a different job.