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.
And to think that I helped Mary Ann North become rich paying $.75 per paperback. Of all the parties beating their breasts in outrage over this issue the only ones I have any sympathy for are the authors and the readers.
I checked the prices of ebooks, and as far as I am concerned, I am finding those prices outrageous.
I do respect the right of authors to make some money, but when an ebook is twice as expensive as a cheap paperback version, there's something highly wrong.
All of that makes me think they actually are trying to kill the ebook market, where "they" means publishers. Amazon of course is not clean either, and they obviously have been taking advantage of their public policy to look like saviors, that they are not.
tldr: ebooks are way too expensive. Anything above 3-4$ 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.
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.
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
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?
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.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
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.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
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...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
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.
AccountKiller
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.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
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!
Stross writes:
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"?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
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.
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.
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?
Kindle Numbers: Traditional Publishing Vs. Self Publishing