Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Publishers

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times: "Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle. The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling's new novel. The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.' In some cases, even the pages promoting the books have disappeared. Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel, The Girls of August, coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition. Only the audio edition is still being sold (for more than $60). Otherwise it is as if it did not exist. Amazon is also flexing its muscles in Germany, delaying deliveries of books issued by Bonnier, a major publisher."

Comments

Good news for BN?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Amazon stops carrying titles, will this help other retailers (online and brick and mortar)?

Re:Good news for BN?

[Anonymous Coward]

the question is; is it abusing a dominant market position?

I don't know enough about law to answer.

Re:Good news for BN?

[0123456]

the question is; is it abusing a dominant market position?

How can it be in a dominant market position in something it's refusing to sell?

Re:Good news for BN?

[alen]

think of the old people and how hard it's to create an account on another website

remember how the old people ask you what you put into the name field, the address field, the zip code field

Re:Good news for BN?

[oh_my_080980980]

RTA: " The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.' "

Re:Good news for BN?

[Daniel_Staal]

The market position is 'bookstore' - so the question is 'is refusing to carry one book or one publisher's book out of dislike for the subject abusing it's position as a bookstore'?

Re:Good news for BN?

[0123456]

Yeah, and?

Am I in a dominant market position in unicorn sales?

Re:Good news for BN?

[Anonymous Coward]

No but you are in being a clueless fuckwit.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SydShamino]

Like many things in law, it probably comes down to intent. Refusing to carry a book critical of their CEO is likely protected in most cases, since they aren't a "common carrier" required to deliver any content a customer requests. Refusing to carry or demoting the books of a given publisher unless they get paid more is trickier, if they are found to be abusing their effective monopoly to force those concessions.

Of course, if they are found to be abusing a monopoly, the resulting settlement could include requirements that they carry all books from certain publishers, which could then lead to them carrying books like the one critical of Bezos against their will.

Re:Good news for BN?

[mysidia]

The article summary appears to misrepresent the situation.

The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling's new novel.

They made it sound like JK Rowling's novel is on the market and Amazon deleted its page. That's not the case. Amazon kept the page intact, but they stopped accepting PRE-ORDERS

The publisher wants them to start taking orders for an item that is not even available to ship yet, because the publisher has not released it yet.

The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.

Again.. the page says in stock and available to order.

Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel, The Girls of August, coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition.

A page for the physical book came right up, when I searched for it; stating unavailable with an option to e-mail me when it becomes available.

I think it's clear that what we have here is a MARKETING dispute. For one reason or another; Amazon has decided to stop collecting pre-orders on some books. Perhaps because the Publisher has not signed the proper contracts or made the proper agreements with Amazon, required for them to offer that publisher's books on a pre-order basis.

Re:Good news for BN?

[jythie]

Even if the law says it is ok, they still have a worrying amount of power regarding which books get to see the light of day and which do not. The harder it is for customers to hear about, locate, and purchase your work, the fewer will do so. Outside niches with fan bases willing to put in that extra work and communities that do the heavy lifting for them, this kind of censorship could be enough to pick winners and losers not based off consumer demand, but Amazon"s politics.

Re:Good news for BN?

[0123456]

So you're saying that book stores shouldn't be allowed to decide what books they sell?

I guess the local book store better build a big warehouse so they can store all those new books they're going to be forced to stock.

Re:Good news for BN?

[Daniel_Staal]

Well, I was actually clarifying a question from two posts above me - where the poster specifically said they didn't know enough to answer. I'm in the same boat on the general question actually.

In general, yes a book store gets to choose which books to sell - as does any other store. On the other hand, if the store is the only store in town and there's no easy way to leave town, well that's what the anti-trust laws were originally written for. Market position matters: If you have a small slice of the market you can get away with a lot of things you aren't allowed to do if you totally dominate it. (Oh: And 'sell' isn't the same as 'stock' - the local bookstore will usually happily sell you plenty of books they don't stock - they'll order them from the publisher for you.)

The question I posted above has two parts: Whether the reason for the refusal matters, and whether the market position is strong enough for it to matter. Amazon is probably borderline on both cases, but only just, and which side of the line they are on isn't something I have the knowledge or experience to say.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

Refusing to carry or demoting the books of a given publisher unless they get paid more is trickier, if they are found to be abusing their effective monopoly to force those concessions.

What on earth would an "effective monopoly" look like in online retail?

How would you even "muscle out" the competition?

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

By selling at cost, becoming dominant in the field, and forcing other players to negotiate steep discounts with you. Now when you sell at cost it's below everyone else's cost. Amazon does the first. That's pretty much the entire point of Amazon. They also do the second, and even have the muscle to force shippers to change their business practices. OTOH, pretty much any big online retailer tries to do the same damn thing.

When they stop being a hard-ball retail company that sticks up for it's customers, and become Monopolistic Tyrants is a hard judgement call to make.

IMO if the NYTimes article is right they're pretty damn close to tyrant territory.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

That's part of the dispute.

But if you read the article the meat of the dispute is that after you hit "buy" Amazon says the books won't be available for weeks, and wouldn't you like to buy from someone else? Hachette swears it's shipping orders to Amazon the same as it always did. Amazon swears Hachette isn't sending them books. And a bunch of authors swear their royalty checks are shrinking.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

By selling at cost, becoming dominant in the field, and forcing other players to negotiate steep discounts with you. Now when you sell at cost it's below everyone else's cost. Amazon does the first. That's pretty much the entire point of Amazon. They also do the second, and even have the muscle to force shippers to change their business practices. OTOH, pretty much any big online retailer tries to do the same damn thing.

So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?

If they decide they're a "monopoly" and jack up their prices - what do you think happens in the realm of online retail?

Let me get to the point. I don't think an "effective monopoly" is remotely possible in online sales, absent government intervention.

Is Amazon going to buy out all the search engines so people can't find cheaper retailers? How can Amazon jack up their prices, earn "monopoly profits", and keep competitors from popping up? If they continue to sell at cost to "kill" competitors, they're not harming customers.

Talking about "online tyrants" is ridiculous.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

Under anti-trust law market-leaders have a lot of responsibilities normal companies don't have. Which means your analogy to the local store is irrelevant. Local book stores don't have to deal with the Sherman Antitrust Act*.

If you're a company like Amazon, and your policy is to stock damn near everything, including no less then 19 books by Hitler, you're not supposed to use your market power to screw anyone. You can use your power to a certain extent, but you can't abuse it. And yes, I'm fully aware that abuse is a relative term. That's kinda the point. If it wasn't, then a company could hack it's way around the objective definition very easily.

Keep in mind that if anti-trust law did not exist nobody would be able to read Slashdot unless they used Windows and IE, and that nobody would even have a computer running an open source OS because IBM would just have slapped IBM-OS on the original PC and Linus would never have been able to buy a machine capable of running a kernel he wrote himself.

*Internet factoid of the day: this is not named after the Civil War General, but after his brother, who became a Senator in 1861. He started as a Congressman, and almost became Speaker, but South Carolina managed to block him right before seceding, so he moved to the Senate. At the time William Tecumseh Sherman was known mostly as being Senator Sherman's brother. The loser third Sherman brother was Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

You have a lot of very solid logic, backed by wonderful theory, that makes perfect sense. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the reasoning you used, or the facts upon which said reasoning is based.

That doesn't mean it's not BS. Like all theories a single data point that doesn't fit with the theory totally destroys it, no matter how tight the logic.

And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.

I don't know if this will work for Amazon in the long-term, or the government will quash it, or maybe the market will start creating web pages listing back-ordered products by publisher so Amazon can't pull this trick again. Or hell, maybe you can prove that Amazon isn't quite big enough to fall under the Sherman Antitrust Act.

But the simple fact is Amazon has a bunch of consumers who search for products on Amazon first. That means Amazon has a myriad of opportunities to convince them to buy something else. Some are ethical (ie: an ad saying "try this instead"), others are quite sketchy. If it's true Amazon has been delaying deliveries for one specific publisher that's a problem. There are almost certainly others which could be hidden (ie: tweaking search algorithms, emails falsely implying that a product you paid for is not available and would you prefer this substitute and a portion of your money back, etc.). Which means Amazon can screw businesses selling on it's site, which in turn means Amazon can screw consumers by reducing the number of choices available in the marketplace.

Re:Good news for BN?

[waveman]

> The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.

This would be disturbing if true.

I just did a search, All editions are available and in fact I just bought the Kindle edition now.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.

Monopoly is not defined as "power to `hurt' customers" or "customer faces a reduced number of choices", so all the rest of your post is a red herring.

Hachette books does not have an innate right to use Amazon to sell their wares. If they don't like the level of service provided by Amazon, Amazon can do NOTHING to stop Hachette from creating an online store for their readers and shipping books by their choice of USPS, UPS, or FedEx. They could even sell their readers ebooks and not deal with the logistics of killing trees and moving them around.

Or if that's too much work for Hachette, there a myriad of other online retailers who will gladly work with them to sell their wares.

The very idea of "muscling" in the online realm is ridiculous. Amazon can take their ball and go home but they can't force anyone else to use their ball.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.

Monopoly is not defined as "power to `hurt' customers" or "customer faces a reduced number of choices", so all the rest of your post is a red herring.

No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:
"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"

We can engage in a 10th-grade level grammar debate over whether "Monopolized" only means "the act of being a monopoly," or it can also mean "having monopoly power," or you can respond to my post on reality with something besides theory.

Hachette books does not have an innate right to use Amazon to sell their wares. If they don't like the level of service provided by Amazon, Amazon can do NOTHING to stop Hachette from creating an online store for their readers and shipping books by their choice of USPS, UPS, or FedEx. They could even sell their readers ebooks and not deal with the logistics of killing trees and moving them around.

The rights of a monopolist are red herring.

You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.

Or if that's too much work for Hachette, there a myriad of other online retailers who will gladly work with them to sell their wares.

The very idea of "muscling" in the online realm is ridiculous. Amazon can take their ball and go home but they can't force anyone else to use their ball.

If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.

Re:Good news for BN?

[west]

You are certainly technically correct. Amazon is not a monopoly. However, they are the 800-pound gorilla, and we've seen this script before.

Essentially their market power allows them to dictate price and the price they demand is well below what the publishers can sustain themselves (as they currently exist) at. This means that they cannot (and will not) give the same price to the competition. This happened with the independent and the chain bookstores as well, and it pretty much drove the vast majority of the independents out of business.

And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon. Being unavailable in Amazon is roughly equivalent to having Google search delist your website. Sure, you still exist, and a small number of die-hards have you in their bookmarks, but you're essentially a dead-man (site?) walking.

So, effectively for the publishers, Amazon *is* the only game in town, regardless of legal definitions, and Amazon is playing the Walmart game. This might work well for consumers, unless they're looking for a certain quality of goods, in which case, the practice is deeply worrisome.

If you are interested in lots of cheap self-published fan-fic, then the "Amazonization" of the book industry is not a problem. After all, Walmart serves a significant audience as well. However, if you are well-served by the *current* book market, where books aren't cheap, but you are willing to pay the publishers for quality control (and assume that most good authors would find gainful employment elsewhere if they're asked to write for near-free) , then yes, driving the publishers out of business is not a positive development.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:

"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"

"Lowest cost seller of everything" is not a monopoly. Monopolies involve markets for specific goods. A monopoly on "everything" is impossible, because of the sheer number of goods and methods of distribution involved. If a company can figure out how to do that without use of government force - they deserve to be the "monopoly".

You also completely missed the point - which was that this so-called monopoly scenario ends up providing the lowest cost goods to the customers - maximizing value to them.

The rights of a monopolist are red herring. You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.

/facepalm

1. Amazon is not a monopolist.

2. Amazon doesn't own the Internet.

3. The only "monopoly" Amazon has is the right to sell things on Amazon. You seem to be suggesting that everyone has a right to sell things on Amazon on their own terms, and that Amazon isn't allowed to negotiated the terms of that business contract.

If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.

So did buggy whip manufacturers. That's not evidence of a problem or a monopoly situation. Think, for crying out loud.

A free market is not "status quo forever".

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

Essentially their market power allows them to dictate price and the price they demand is well below what the publishers can sustain themselves (as they currently exist) at. This means that they cannot (and will not) give the same price to the competition. This happened with the independent and the chain bookstores as well, and it pretty much drove the vast majority of the independents out of business.

And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon. Being unavailable in Amazon is roughly equivalent to having Google search delist your website. Sure, you still exist, and a small number of die-hards have you in their bookmarks, but you're essentially a dead-man (site?) walking.

The publishers don't have a right to exist as they currently are. Book publishing has changed and their model built when book publishing had high upfront costs doesn't work so well in an age where you can toss an ebook on the internet for practically nothing.

And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon.

That's not a monopoly. Every single one of those customers have the ability to choose any other Internet retailer. It's as simple as typing a new address in the browser. What is Amazon going to do, hijack their computer with a script?

There's market power there, but that's legitimately earned.

So, effectively for the publishers, Amazon *is* the only game in town, regardless of legal definitions, and Amazon is playing the Walmart game. This might work well for consumers, unless they're looking for a certain quality of goods, in which case, the practice is deeply worrisome.

In summary: you want to veto the choice of consumers for cheaper goods, so that publishers can sell them books for a higher price.

Because if you didn't do this, then Amazon would use their market power to sell consumers cheaper books, which is harmful.

Expensive books protect consumers. Um, yay?

Re:Good news for BN?

[Leofcwen]

I don't see it as an abuse of market position if it merely refuses to sell a companies products but I think it would be different if it was trying to prevent other companies from doing so. In a free market environment they have the right to sell or not to sell.

Re:Good news for BN?

[wwphx]

In a way, this is a core question in library science regarding censorship: does failure to carry an item constitute silent censorship? In libraries, the effort is to carry quality representations of multiple sides of an issue, even one that you may personally disagree with. But in this case, considering the bajillions of books and other items that Amazon carries in its cavernous warehouses across the United States and the world, operated by low-paid drones, also assuming they carry many other titles by the same publisher or author, then yes, it would seem to me to be abusing its position.

Having said that, there are other posts to this story that say the book is available on Amazon in a variety of formats.

Re:Good news for BN?

[rochrist]

This is idiotic. The real costs of books have not changed significantly. Books ARE NOT widgets. There is no assembly line for books. What will happen, what already IS happening is you'll be able to buy books cheaply and the overwhelming majority of them will suck. That's already the case at Amazon. Thanks to their kindle business (which you can't filter out in searches at Amazon) you have to wade through steaming heaps of self-published dreck to find a good books. If you cut the margins thin enough, the authors will stop writing, or will produce far less content because, you know, they have to actually earn a living.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:

"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"

"Lowest cost seller of everything" is not a monopoly. Monopolies involve markets for specific goods. A monopoly on "everything" is impossible, because of the sheer number of goods and methods of distribution involved. If a company can figure out how to do that without use of government force - they deserve to be the "monopoly".

You also completely missed the point - which was that this so-called monopoly scenario ends up providing the lowest cost goods to the customers - maximizing value to them.

So you've read economics textbooks.

But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."

I'm pretty sure you're a troll, because if you actually read economics textbooks they're pretty clear that a market where people can only by a Lada sucks, even if prices are low.

The rights of a monopolist are red herring.

You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.

/facepalm

1. Amazon is not a monopolist.

2. Amazon doesn't own the Internet.

3. The only "monopoly" Amazon has is the right to sell things on Amazon. You seem to be suggesting that everyone has a right to sell things on Amazon on their own terms, and that Amazon isn't allowed to negotiated the terms of that business contract.

1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.

2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.

3. And how many posts did it take you to understand my argument? Four?

I'm accusing Amazon of hurting consumers by making it really hard for them to get their hands on a specific set of books.

As a marketplace they by definition have monopoly power over themselves. If their overall market-power extends so far that Hachette must surrender or go under then they are by definition abusing that monopoly power.

If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.

So did buggy whip manufacturers. That's not evidence of a problem or a monopoly situation. Think, for crying out loud.

A free market is not "status quo forever".

Just because their industry was shrinking that doesn't mean that it's legal for a monopoly to crush one particular buggy whip maker.

And publisher's industry is definitely not shrinking. It's changing, and I sincerely doubt they'll be able to hold onto 52.5% of their eBook revenue (Amazon gets 30% of list price, the author gets a quarter of the remaining 70% or 17.5%), but I also doubt that Amazon deserves more then their current 30% cut. They don't add any real value to a book, they just have a big old database of eBooks, a credit card machine, and some bandwidth

Re:Good news for BN?

[stoatwblr]

"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how? "

In the same way Microsoft became harmful.

Once you have established a de-facto monopoly via attrition/buyouts, you are free to charge whatever you want.

Re:Good news for BN?

[west]

> In summary: you want to veto the choice of consumers for cheaper goods, so that publishers can sell them books for a higher price.

I suspect you are projecting. Perhaps you can't imagine anything trend that you disapprove of that shouldn't be banned, but I am not under the illusion that the world revolves around me.

Nowhere did I say or even imply that Amazon's practice should be banned or sanctioned.

Now, I do think it will lead to books becoming essentially irrelevant in 10-15 years (and Amazon making *more* money from books by charging people for "publishing" books on Amazon and more importantly, getting them to show up on the virtual shelves), but that's too bad for me.

Over my lifetime, I've already had two of my hobbies die (one by mail-order and one by Internet) as the consumer's saved enough money that the industry couldn't survive. It's a natural impulse, like eating your seed corn and the first time, I thought it was great. Five years later the hobby was dead (small hobby, didn't take much).

The second time I saw it coming. Didn't participate in saving money, but the same thing happened.

Now books are a much larger deal, and I don't expect books to disappear, but it seems almost inevitable that that Amazonization of the industry will succeed, with more and more people self-publishing books, but fewer and fewer people reading them (even if books are $1 a piece, who has the time to read 100 books to find one that even has a chance of being entertaining?)

However, there will be a good decade of publishers and authors losing money while continuing to publish books with consumer's happily getting cheap books of decent quality. And once the publishers and the bookstores are gone, consumers will find something else to amuse them and I'll add a third hobby of mine to the list.

It's sad, but it's also life.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."

Amazon refusing to sell one particular business's product is not a meaningful reduction in consumer choice. Amazon is not the sole seller of books, or of books online. They have no "effective monopoly" outside of their own Amazon marketplace - and even then others can compete against Amazon, by selling products on Amazon.

1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.

Wiki blurb on Anti-Trust Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"[13]

So has Amazon monopolized book sales? No, there are still retail bookstores who can continue to sell the books.

Is Amazon trying to monopolize online book sales? Not particularly - other competitors exist, and they're not trying to force a publisher to only sell through them. They are trying to get a better contract, but that's normal business negotiation.

The only way you can call Amazon a monopoly is by using a nonsensical definition that does not fall under the language of this act. (Hint: If your definition makes every business a monopoly, your use of the word monopoly becomes useless)

2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.

When Amazon isn't allowed to negotiate what it sells in its own online store, you've effectively taken over ownership of Amazon. Who are you giving that ownership to, and what are you planning to do to compensate Amazon's owners?

Do you know the publisher in question was accused of being a part of a price-fixing cartel with Apple? They were trying to keep book prices high, and they don't have the "legal right to do that".

Now I learn that if Amazon wants to make book pricers lower, they don't have the "legal right to do that", either.

What purpose are these laws serving?

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

Nowhere did I say or even imply that Amazon's practice should be banned or sanctioned.

You do think it's bad. I'm pointing out that the bad doesn't make sense.

Over my lifetime, I've already had two of my hobbies die (one by mail-order and one by Internet) as the consumer's saved enough money that the industry couldn't survive. It's a natural impulse, like eating your seed corn and the first time, I thought it was great. Five years later the hobby was dead (small hobby, didn't take much).

Why do you think higher prices would have saved them?

Higher prices mean a higher barrier to entry to the hobby - which isn't going to help it grow or stay alive.

Now books are a much larger deal, and I don't expect books to disappear, but it seems almost inevitable that that Amazonization of the industry will succeed, with more and more people self-publishing books, but fewer and fewer people reading them (even if books are $1 a piece, who has the time to read 100 books to find one that even has a chance of being entertaining?)

If only there was some way for people to share about books they like.

Maybe they could write a blurb on what they liked or disliked, and assign a satisfaction value to their purchase on a 5 point scale.

Alas, this wouldn't be a problem if only books were more expensive.

However, there will be a good decade of publishers and authors losing money while continuing to publish books with consumer's happily getting cheap books of decent quality.

If consumers are buying $1 books instead of $11 books, in quantities to move the market in that direction, there is more profit to be made, not less. That's not even accounting for the change in the market size as the hobby becomes more accessible.

Publishers currently take a large chunk of book sale revenues away from authors. A larger share of a larger pie is going to make it easier for authors to make money.

Re:Good news for BN?

[west]

Actually, if you pay attention to the self-publishing market, the primary problem is to get people to read the books at *any* price. People's time is money, and if 99% of the self-published books out there aren't even of "publishable" qualtiy (by current main-stream standards), then no-one is going to even try to read and evaluate the books. It simply isn't worth their time.

More than that, the general constraint on people's book purchases isn't money, it's time. Most people have time to read a dozen or so books a year. When prices drop, they can now expand their purchases to... a dozen books a year.

Now, the super-cheap books do tend to cause a big spurt of purchases at the beginning. But once people have 2-300 books in their unread pile, their purchase rates drop back to what they were before. Except instead of spending a few hundred dollars a year, if they're lucky, they can spend $50. That's not enough for publishers to survive.

Now it's true that known authors can self-publish, and actually make more money. But that's only if they've already been published by the mainstream press. For new self-published authors, it's incredibly hard. As a result, only a few dozen previously unpublished authors have made it to the "quit the day job" level, as opposed to the few thousand that join those ranks in traditional publishing each year.

Essentially, the discovery of new authors of reasonable quality is the seed corn of the industry. Without high enough prices, that process ends. Of course, the industry grinds on for quite some time, and no doubt people celebrate the odd author that does make it from obscurity. But unless you've got a decent sized pipeline, the industry is going to slowly die. Not with a bang, but with a "no, I gave up reading a while back - wasn't worth the hassle to find anything worth reading."

And yes, higher prices means a higher quality of entrant. Contrary to many people's opinion, authors are usually smart, educated people who actually have many options besides writing.

(And yes, with my previous hobbies, the people that were driving it forward and producing new goods left to do something that could pay the mortgage and feed their kids. The stores that were stocking the merchandise died, and that was the end of anyone new in the hobby. Within years, the hobbies were moribund. But yes, in both cases, there were cheap goods as we burned through our 'capital'.)

I don't know if it's a particular American thing, but boy do you see a lot of the sentiment of "people should be willing to work for nearly free for the privilege of serving me." Well, I'm telling you there's no free lunch. If it's not worth it to you to pay for quality, then it's not worth it for anyone else to produce quality.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."

Amazon refusing to sell one particular business's product is not a meaningful reduction in consumer choice. Amazon is not the sole seller of books, or of books online. They have no "effective monopoly" outside of their own Amazon marketplace - and even then others can compete against Amazon, by selling products on Amazon.

If you read JK Rowling it is a very meaningful reduction in consumer choice.

And consumers aren't the only people with rights. Hachette and it's authors also have rights. And one of those rights is the right not to be forced to reduce their incomes by Amazon.

1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.

Wiki blurb on Anti-Trust Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"[13]

So has Amazon monopolized book sales? No, there are still retail bookstores who can continue to sell the books.

Is Amazon trying to monopolize online book sales? Not particularly - other competitors exist, and they're not trying to force a publisher to only sell through them. They are trying to get a better contract, but that's normal business negotiation.

Dude,

If you're arguing a legal point you don't go to a summary page.

You wanna know why? Because this is section 1:
"Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."

By making it impossible for most eBook buyers to acquire Hachette products they are restraining commerce.

Which means your entire legal argument is literally like saying OJ didn't murder Nicole because he intended to kill her, and then quoting the statute on Second Degree Murder.

The only way you can call Amazon a monopoly is by using a nonsensical definition that does not fall under the language of this act. (Hint: If your definition makes every business a monopoly, your use of the word monopoly becomes useless)

2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.

When Amazon isn't allowed to negotiate what it sells in its own online store, you've effectively taken over ownership of Amazon. Who are you giving that ownership to, and what are you planning to do to compensate Amazon's owners?

Do you know the publisher in question was accused of being a part of a price-fixing cartel with Apple? They were t

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

Now, the super-cheap books do tend to cause a big spurt of purchases at the beginning. But once people have 2-300 books in their unread pile, their purchase rates drop back to what they were before. Except instead of spending a few hundred dollars a year, if they're lucky, they can spend $50. That's not enough for publishers to survive.

You're only looking at this in terms of the existing reader market.

At a lower price per book, it is easier for new readers to try out a series and see if they like it. There will be more people reading books - and perhaps making a lifelong hobby of it, as well as telling their friends about the books they enjoyed.

And yes, higher prices means a higher quality of entrant. Contrary to many people's opinion, authors are usually smart, educated people who actually have many options besides writing.

Wrong. Higher profits, not prices, attract higher quality authors. That's how you get them to quit their day job to focus on writing.

Profits are not based solely on margin per book (price), but margin per book times total books sold.

Reducing the publisher's cut increases the margin per book. Reducing the price to the consumer increases the number of books sold.

It's hard to predict the future, and certainly the publishers add some value to their products, but self-publishing is not going to kill the book industry.

Re:Good news for BN?

[west]

Wrong. Higher profits, not prices, attract higher quality authors. That's how you get them to quit their day job to focus on writing.

You are, of course, correct. However, as I mentioned before, we're not seeing any signs of new readers, nor are we seeing large increases in the number of books being bought per reader over the long-term.

In other words demand for books has shown itself to be (within limits) relatively price insensitive. Again, mostly because time is far more of a constraint than money. Evidence of this has been available for the last hundred years in the form of public libraries, which provide books for *free*, yet are not filled to the rafters with people desperate to read.

And yes, people are more willing to pick up a new series, but as I said, after the first 2-300 books on the "to-be-read' pile, the attraction of cheap books dims considerably and people back off adding any more, even at cheap prices. (The 400th app game that looks kind of interesting and is only a buck has the same problem getting downloaded.)

Of course, for my personal preferences, I take a double whammy. The type of book that has gone over well in the e-book world (and the ones that have been successful in e-only publishing) tend to be lighter books. And no wonder. A meaty book takes effort and concentration. It rewards those, but it does take the work. Unfortunately, most e-readers are also capable of playing games or videos at a touch, which makes doing the work about as easy as dieting in front of an open buffet.

The few e-only stars have mostly made it on lighter romance, pulpy thrillers, etc. I have no objection to the genre and enjoy the occasional one myself, but I do suspect that longer, deeper books that demand more of the reader are simply that much harder to read on an e-reader, which means fewer successes and a change as the new format dominates.

Again, a loss for me. Not much that can be done, except to mourn.

It's hard to predict the future, and certainly the publishers add some value to their products, but self-publishing is not going to kill the book industry.

No, I don't think it will. But I do think Amazon might, in the same sort of way that Walmart put an end to the American consumer good manufacturing industry. Except in this case, I don't think I'm going to be as happy with the price vs. quality trade-off...

Re:Good news for BN?

[the_B0fh]

So when Walmart does it, it's bad, but when Amazon does it, because it's online, it's good?

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

By making it impossible for most eBook buyers to acquire Hachette products they are restraining commerce.

By this legal standard you have just offered, every business is in violation of this law.

If I walk into a Barnes and Nobles and demand they sell me car tires and they refuse, they have made it "impossible" for me to acquire the product I want, "restraining commerce".

Any time a company tries to discontinue a product, they have made it "impossible" for me to acquire something I used to be able to - thus violating your ridiculous interpretation of the Sherman Anti-Trust act. Clearly no one is ever allowed to stop manufacturing/sellling anything, or they'd "restrict" consumer choice.

But why stop there? If they're selling something for more than I'd like to pay for it, clearly they are restricting my options as well! Anyone who doesn't sell me everything I want for $0.01 is also in violation!

Now that we've put the ridiculous interpretations aside - Amazon does not occupy 100% of an inter-state trade, on any good. They are limited by their business model to online retail; so that leaves mail-order, retail, and any other sale channels as competition. Seeing how Amazon has not to my knowledge attempted to block Hachette from selling books through other channels - they have not attempted to monopolize Hachette's products.

Since you're arguing Amazon isn't a monopoly, you're necessarily arguing most people don't buy on Amazon, which means you must conclude Apple was right.

Logical fail. Monopoly: Single seller.

Number of online sellers of books > 1. Thus, Amazon is not a monopoly. They do have a major market share, so they have the potential to "abuse market power" (which is very subjective), but they are not a monopoly in any meaningful sense of the word - there just isn't any mechanism for it - unless Congress passes a law forcing all online sales in the US to go through Amazon.

Because right now all your doing is moving me from my original position that Amazon is in really tricky legal waters and could be in deep shit with the antitrust authorities, into a very strong conclusion that Jeff Bezos is gonna spend the rest of his life in prison.

I'm guessing you decided to skip the IANAL disclaimer, because your legal argument is crap, and you clearly have no business judging the legal side of this issue, never mind the economic side of things. (Hint: Even if you did show that Amazon acted illegally, you haven't shown that it has economically harmed consumers)

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

Classic troll. You lose on every point, so you bring up previous points. I am not continuing this debate because I take your intellect seriously, but because it gives me numerous opportunities to call you stupid.

First off if you think "monopoly" has the legal meaning of "one supplier" you are a fucking moron. Seriously. That's the dumbest thing I have ever read on Slashdot, and I've dealt with idiots who admitted they were trolling me. If Monopoly meant one supplier IBM would not have been a monopoly, Microsoft would not have been a monopoly. Their lawyers tried really hard to get off scot-free by pointing to Apple, but that shit simply does not work in a court of law.

As for the restraint of trade argument, I already told you why your reasoning is ridonkulous crap. I already told you antitrust rules do not apply to non-monopolies. i already told you there is no strict legal standard of what a monopoly is. It's not quite an "I know it when I see it," but it's damn close. It has to do with a company's ability to distort the market. Note that, by definition, market distortion can be either consumer-side (higher prices), or supplier side. A monopoly that artificially reduces the supply of a product to keep prices low, margins high, and competition out of the field has helped consumers by most economics textbooks definitions of those terms; but it's still fucking illegal.

Re:Good news for BN?

[Plumpaquatsch]

1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.

Wiki blurb on Anti-Trust Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"[13]

So has Amazon monopolized book sales? No, there are still retail bookstores who can continue to sell the books.

You are lucky that he fumbled that one - he asked if Amazon was a monopoly and then gave you the exit strategy by talking about the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which not only talks about illegal monopolies, but doesn't even define what a monopoly is.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

First off if you think "monopoly" has the legal meaning of "one supplier" you are a fucking moron. Seriously. That's the dumbest thing I have ever read on Slashdot, and I've dealt with idiots who admitted they were trolling me.

You suggested that Amazon having a "monopoly" on their own store means that they are legally a monopoly. My reference to "legal standards" was to your interpretation of the law - and I was pointing out how every business is a monopoly by your nonsensical interpretation of the law.

If Monopoly meant one supplier IBM would not have been a monopoly, Microsoft would not have been a monopoly. Their lawyers tried really hard to get off scot-free by pointing to Apple, but that shit simply does not work in a court of law.

"IBM was ruled to have created a monopoly via its 1956 patent-sharing agreement with Sperry-Rand," (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_IBM)

"Sperry Rand had tried to monopolize the electronic data processing industry" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_v._Sperry_Rand)

IBM was convicted of being a monopoly by trying to become the sole company in control of a certain market. (by controlling a certain patent, which grants a legal monopoly on an invention)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

"Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly"

For MS, they attempted to monopolize their industry by attacking competitors, so they tried to become the sole supplier for their market.

Look at the plain definition of the word:

1.control of market supply: a situation in which one company controls an industry or is the only provider of a product or service

To assert that single supplier has nothing to do with monopoly is to throw away language entirely.

Now what market does Amazon monopolize? Book sales? When there's so many different sale channels for said books?

A monopoly that artificially reduces the supply of a product to keep prices low, margins high, and competition out of the field ...

Your failure to comprehend basic economics is showing.

Lower supply increases prices.

Lower prices reduce margins.

High margins are high profit, which draws competition, unlike your imaginary universe. ("Aw man, they're making high profits, let's forget competing in that market")

...but it's still fucking illegal.

Illegal like copyright and patents? Heh. You don't seem to realize that the only monopolies that do exist, exist by government intervention.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

You insistence on the one-supplier principle is undercut by your own evidence. If Sperry-Rand and IBM are sharing patents then there are, by definition, two suppliers. And you didn't show that IBM was the sole supplier for the Personal Computing market, which didn't even exist when IBM got it's patent. What happened in IBM's case was the government saw a company with the potential to illegally monopolize a market, and forced it to agree not to do so.

Moreover I was alive in 1999. I can tell you there were a bevy of alternatives to MS Windows. I used Macs. Most of the folks on Slashdot who were around then used some variety of open source UNIX, generally LINUX but occasionally a BSD. BeOS existed. Which handily proves that the mere existence of BN.com won;t save Amazon if Amazon has too much market power.

As for "basic economics," you're forgetting that the strategies of a monopoly are orthogonal supply and demand. If you have a very low cost product, and you've got a monopoly on the low-cost version, you can keep margins high and keep prices low at the same time. You can also dictate the supply. You can choose to flood the market (which makes money in the short term, but adds large downside risk if the market turns and you have excess capacity you can't get rid of without blowing your monopoly), or you can intentionally not fulfill demand.

In this case Amazon is keeping prices low to keep it's lead in the marketplace. But it has no margins because it set it's prices too low. So it's got little choice but to a) raise prices, or b) squeeze it's suppliers for lower costs. It's choosing b). In the short term the result is lowered supply (fewer Hachette books available). If it works this will probably result in permanently lowered supply (the way Royalties work authors would be paid less if Hachette's cut went down, permanently lowering supply), prices would stay artificially low, and profits would be artificially high.

If the market;'s working what will happen is either a) all other companies will get this discount like the day after Hachette gives it to Amazon, b) Amazon gives up, or c) Hachette will just not be carried by Amazon and not suffer. If the market is not working then Hachette caves, Apple can't force the discount, and it's got a very clear case of monopoly profits.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

If Sperry-Rand and IBM are sharing patents then there are, by definition, two suppliers.

Who were working together, a scenario covered under the Anti-Trust act.

Amazon has maybe a third of book sales. (2012 figure showed them at 27%) That means an overwhelming majority of book sales are not sold by Amazon - no monopoly.

Since Amazon is not colluding with its competitors in these news, there's no trust (multiple companies working together to create a "monopoly"), either.

As for "basic economics," you're forgetting that the strategies of a monopoly are orthogonal supply and demand. If you have a very low cost product, and you've got a monopoly on the low-cost version, you can keep margins high and keep prices low at the same time. You can also dictate the supply. You can choose to flood the market (which makes money in the short term, but adds large downside risk if the market turns and you have excess capacity you can't get rid of without blowing your monopoly), or you can intentionally not fulfill demand.

You offered a scenario of low supply, high margins, and low prices as if they came together. An artificially low supply can increase margins, but it's not going to reduce price - the price may absolutely be low, but it's going to be relatively higher than it could have been if the supply was artificially restricted.

If it works this will probably result in permanently lowered supply (the way Royalties work authors would be paid less if Hachette's cut went down, permanently lowering supply), prices would stay artificially low, and profits would be artificially high.

Hachette still has the same number of authors and publishing equipment. "Permanently lower supply" may happen in the future, but you can't lay the blame on Amazon. It's the publisher's job to supply demand; Amazon is a customer of Hachette. (They pay money for goods)

If the market is not working then Hachette caves, Apple can't force the discount, and it's got a very clear case of monopoly profits.

You keep using that word monopoly. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

For somebody who insists on including a dig about dictionary definitions in every single post he makes, your grasp of legal terminology sucks. Trusts are only illegal if you try to use them to start a monopoly. Whether you succeed is actually irrelevant to the law. The attempt is the illegal thing. And it doesn't just apply to trusts.

You might be right about Amazon's overall market-share. But Amazon's overall marketshare is irreverent. Bringing it up is like arguing that MS had no monopoly on Operating Systems because most software revenue went to other companies. We're arguing eBooks. Amazon's market share is roughly 2/3, and is rising fast because most other entrants to the market (notable Kobo and BN.com) have stopped investing in the us completely, and Apple only cares about selling shit to iPad users.

That's pretty damn close to being a monopoly even by the economic definition, and by the legal definition the crime isn't having some magical percentage of market-share, it's being a dick about using that market share to screw competition to maintaining (and increase) market share. Any profits from that activity are by legal definition monopoly profits. Which means if Amazon gets it's price cut, and Hachette refuses to give the other eBook publishers a similar deal, Amazon has used it's market power to entrench itself; which is highly illegal.

Hell, Amazon publishes a lot of books. By making it difficult for Hachette to sell eBooks on it's site it increases it's own Amazon/self-published eBook market share. In this case it's an anti-trust violation even if Hachette turns around and gives Apple the same deal, because that weakens the competition in the publishing market.

I suspect the government will wait and see what happens. If Hachette manages to win the PR battle, and/or Kobo decides that if Amazon won't give the people JK Rowling it will, then everything's fine. If Amazon manages to get it's price it may not be happy.

BTW, you're veering well into troll territory again. Arguing definitions only works when you know the subject so well that you can be 110% sure the other guy isn't gonna say "Dude, I'm from Europe, here the names Elk and Moose are reversed." And you're claiming you didn't know "trust fund babies" are called that because they have Trusts filled with Funds.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

You might be right about Amazon's overall market-share. But Amazon's overall marketshare is irreverent. Bringing it up is like arguing that MS had no monopoly on Operating Systems because most software revenue went to other companies. We're arguing eBooks. Amazon's market share is roughly 2/3, and is rising fast because most other entrants to the market (notable Kobo and BN.com) have stopped investing in the us completely, and Apple only cares about selling shit to iPad users.

Now we're getting closer to something that is defensible. You want to argue that Amazon is developing a monopoly on eBooks, which is far more limited a market than book sales.

Which still makes it nonsensical to complain about Amazon's activity "lowering supply" or developing a monopoly. ebooks have Infinite. Digital. Supply.

The barriers to entry of an ebook store are practically non-existent, so I'm not sure what you're afraid of here. How does one abuse an ebook monopoly? Does Amazon hold a gun to Hachette's head and force them to sell their books for a minimum price?

If Amazon tried to force Hachette to have an exclusive ebook selling contract with itself, that *would* be monopolizing behavior - but that's also not what Amazon was doing.

BTW, you're veering well into troll territory again. Arguing definitions only works when you know the subject so well that you can be 110% sure the other guy isn't gonna say "Dude, I'm from Europe, here the names Elk and Moose are reversed." And you're claiming you didn't know "trust fund babies" are called that because they have Trusts filled with Funds.

The reason I'm harping on definitions is because you're using words nonsensically. I'm trying to figure out what you actually mean, since I'm making a good faith assumption you don't actually believe nonsense.

You simply cannot label Amazon an monopoly using an economic definition. Legal definitions are looser, but they still don't seem to qualify, and I can't help notice you've avoided creating any objective definition which can be objectively evaluated.

In short, you're using "monopoly" as a "badword" accusation, instead of an informative descriptive label. That is the core of my complaint here.

In all this talk about the harm of monopolies, I find it humorous how much fear you have of Amazon's potential "monopoly" on online sales, in defense of the only party with an actual monopoly - Hachette. (Copyright: government protected monopoly of intellectual property)

Hachette is the only one with the ability to monopolistically determine price and restrict supply, and you argue that they're the victims of Amazon's non-monopoly.

If your core point is that monopolies are bad, your choice of criticism is ... odd.

Re:Good news for BN?

[NicBenjamin]

Why would you assume we were talking about a monopoly on physical books when the dispute is about eBook pricing?

If eBooks have infinite digital supply, why I can't buy as many of them on Amazon today as I could before they has a dispute with Hachette? There's a difference between physical supply, and digital supply.

Moreover the way Amazon's contracts are written they don't have infinite physical supply. They decide they'll sell 1,000 copies of a book, so they order 1,000 copies. they send Hachette 70% of list price for those 1,000 copies. The 1,001st guy has to wait until they strike another order with Hachette. This is actually the loop-hole that allows them to screw with Hachette's eBooks. The contract that would allow infinite supply is actually the one that Hachette just got court-ordered from implementing, the so-called "Agency Model."

As for barriers to entry, you're missing the big one: customers. In the late 90s the only barrier to entry in the OS Market was that customers were locked into the MS Ecosystem. The Courts ruled Microsoft's use of that ecosystem to extend it's control to the browser market (ie: by making it impossible to not use Internet Explorer with Windows) was illegal. The major problems for a new eBook seller are that a) everyone already has an Amazon account, and b) Amazon discounts it's prices so much that it breaks even. Kobo's staff have actually left the country because the Japanese eBook seller couldn't figure out how to make money in the market. You can still buy eBooks from them, but they aren't fighting Amazon for market-share anymore.

As for the legal definition of monopoly, as far as I know there isn't one. Monopolies aren't illegal. Thus it doesn't need a strict definition. Using your vast market-share to gain new markets, or expand your old ones, OTOH, is illegal. Your current market-share (and thus monopoly status) is irrelevant. That's why Apple lost even tho it had no market share of it's own.

Amazon's behavior is problematic because it's hard to see how Hachette can avoid caving in to that much market share, and when they do Amazon will be further entrenched in multiple markets. It will be a much bigger player in the publisher's market, because Hachette's royalties are a quarter of it's revenue from Amazon, which means that if that 70% goes to 60% author pay goes from 17.5% to 15%. Which means a smart author with large eBook sales will be much more likely to self-publish on Amazon.

Moreover, as I said, a major problem for entrants to the eBook market is Amazon pays 70% iof list price, and then only charges 80% of list price. If Amazon gets that 70% cost reduced to 60%, then they can discount 30% (aka: the price Kobo actually pays for eBooks) and still break even, or they can simply keep the profit to themselves. Either way it's really hard to see how BN.com or Kobo chips away at that 2/3 market-share if Amazon gains the ability to discount 20% and turn a decent profit.

Re:Good news for BN?

[SillyHamster]

Why would you assume we were talking about a monopoly on physical books when the dispute is about eBook pricing?

Because people are complaining about their physical books taking weeks to ship.

What portion of the Internet do you reside in where it takes weeks to deliver an ebook?

If eBooks have infinite digital supply, why I can't buy as many of them on Amazon today as I could before they has a dispute with Hachette? There's a difference between physical supply, and digital supply.

Hachette's monopoly on the intellectual property they publish - which is why Amazon cannot sell Hachette books without a business contract.

Amazon has a digital copy of all those ebooks they can make infinite copies of - but if they tried to sell that right now, the government would enforce Hachette's monopoly and shut down Amazon's illegal selling of Hachette's IP.

That I even need to explain this to you at all demonstrates something ...

The major problems for a new eBook seller are that a) everyone already has an Amazon account, and b) Amazon discounts it's prices so much that it breaks even. Kobo's staff have actually left the country because the Japanese eBook seller couldn't figure out how to make money in the market. You can still buy eBooks from them, but they aren't fighting Amazon for market-share anymore.

a.) "Everyone" does NOT have an Amazon account. Why are you making shit up to attack Amazon?

b.) This does not make Amazon a monopoly, only a superior business.

Neither of these things have to do with barriers to entry - which on the Internet, is as low as it is possible to be for any type of good, in any type of market. That you think Amazon can create a retail monopoly on digital products (infinite supply!) is laughable.

Amazon's behavior is problematic because it's hard to see how Hachette can avoid caving in to that much market share, and when they do Amazon will be further entrenched in multiple markets.

Hachette's inability to run itself profitably is not Amazon's problem, and its situation is most definitely not due to Amazon having a "monopoly".

If you feel sympathy for Hachette's monopoly - by all means express those emotions - but there is no need to baselessly attack Amazon for something that it is not.

Either way it's really hard to see how BN.com or Kobo chips away at that 2/3 market-share if Amazon gains the ability to discount 20% and turn a decent profit.

Again, not Amazon's problem. It's not illegal to give certain customers a discount due to the nature of their business relationship. BN.com or Kobo should negotiate harder - if they are in fact paying more than Amazon at this moment.

Currently, they're selling Hachette's books for profit while Amazon is not. They're probably gaining a large number of customers from all the people who can't buy the books they want on Amazon. What a monopoly.

and soon they'll have their own drones

[maliqua]

Think they're flexing their muscles now just wait for the drones!

Paywalls

[Kamineko]

Two links, both to paywalled articles.

Fantastic.

Re:Paywalls

[Rob the Bold]

Two links, both to paywalled articles.

Fantastic.

Weird. Both Times articles opened fine for me. I'm in the US, and I don't have an NYT subscription.

Re:Paywalls

[Kremmy]

It doesn't always show the paywall, they've put in a few workarounds here and there so that people following links get the content. It's just more dishonesty in their attempts to monetize a website.
They also seem to send daily ads out pressuring you to get a subscription to their website, if you've given them your e-mail.
I wish content providers trying to sell their content would focus on their content instead of the money. Else what the heck are you selling?

Re:Paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

only 10 articles a month without subscription. It's a soft paywall.

Re:Paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

Two links, both to paywalled articles.

Fantastic.

Accept cookies from NYT and both (both are NYT sites) will work. I'm in Canada and I never have a problem with the NYT paywalled links as long as I accept their cookies.

Just delete the cookies afterwards. That's what I do.

Re:Paywalls

[Daniel_Staal]

I don't necessarily see that putting in workarounds that allow a few pageviews a month for a non-paying user as being dishonest - it's advertising. 'If you like these articles, we have more that you would need to pay for' - and they usually tell you exactly that when you hit the free limit.

Re:Paywalls

[reve_etrange]

Use Incognito Mode (Chrome) or Private Browsing (Firefox). The paywall is a dumb cookie sensor.

Re:Paywalls

[reve_etrange]

Using Incognito Mode / Private Browsing saves you the trouble of deleting cookies manually later on.

Re:Paywalls

[NicBenjamin]

Two links, both to paywalled articles.

Fantastic.

Weird. Both Times articles opened fine for me. I'm in the US, and I don't have an NYT subscription.

You get a couple (5, IIRC) free articles A month.

They enforce it via cookie, so it's pretty trivial to work around.

Re:Paywalls

[Anonymous Coward]

If you dont want you shit read on the net dont put it on the fucking net. That is what there god damn paper is for.

Dangers of monoculture

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't follow the links, taking the summary at face value.

Fuck Jeff Bezos

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Next, we'll hear he's patented not selling books on the Internet.

Re:Fuck Jeff Bezos

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm so confused, I thought he was part of the private space species exploration force?

Re:Fuck Jeff Bezos

[rasmusbr]

I wonder how all this will affect my upcoming book Why Jeff Bezos Is More Awesome Than Elon Musk (working title).

Re:Fuck Jeff Bezos

[Anonymous Coward]

I would start by a novelette titled: "Jeff Bezos: The man that thought one can stop to be straight"

Re:Fuck Jeff Bezos

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you British? What the hell does "stop to be straight" mean?

Re:Fuck Jeff Bezos

[Tablizer]

one-click censorship

Amazon provides a service

[fermion]

Of selling books, often below their cost, and providing a secure system(Kindle DRM) for authors to sell e books. While there is certainly a downward pressure on the price of books due to Amazon, the reality is that authors probably sell a hell of lot more books because of Amazon. I do not see how a publisher can complain. After all, if Amazon is not providing a service, they are free to sell physical books through Barnes and Noble, for instance, as well as sell unencumbered e-books through any number of online sources. They can digitally mark each e-book for each customer, and litigate those that resell or otherwise pirate.

I happily go to O'Reilly and pay $40 for a physical and unencumbered PDF copy of a book. What publishers aren't doing is moving with market forces. The value of book is not what it used to be. The average American is not making what was the previous expectation. We are in a deflationary period. Amazon is under pressure to show a better return on investment. They do not have to sell products when the supplier wants excessive value. It is like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola products. SOme don't because Pepsi cuts a better deal.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[JenovaSynthesis]

True. But Amazon cannot blackmail the publisher using its marketing clout either. It would be like Microsoft making it so Windows will not run a certain company's software.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

No it'd be like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola, and offering customers a Pepsi instead.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a stretch. It's more like Microsoft not selling you a copy of Wordperfect to run on your Windows computer. You can't just make up false comparisons to slot Amazon into your idea of a villainous company.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[stewsters]

You purchase windows to install on your computer, but you don't purchase amazon, so its a little different. It would be more like Walmart not selling your product because you don't agree to their rock bottom pricing they want to force on you. Which is also an issue.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true about shipment of books, but less true when we're talking e-books with DRM running on kindle hardware. Say I bought a kindle and now I can't read books from a particular publisher on it...that's very much like microsoft saying that they wouldn't run a certain company's software.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

very true, microsoft has never rigged dos or windows to degrade or error with other company's software, or used its market dominance to force their own will on its customers.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[tngaijin]

This analogy misses out on a key piece of what Amazon is doing. A more accurate analogy along similar lines would be a restaurant advertising Coca Cola and then offering customers that finally came in a Pepsi right now, or a Coca Cola in an inordinately long amount of time later. I don't know what amount of searches start at Amazon or book PLAs point to Amazon but I would bet it is pretty high which makes this behaviour all the more repulsive to me.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be like Microsoft making it so Windows will not run a certain company's software.

You mean they way Microsoft built checks for not-MS-DOS into Windows back in the days of Windows 3.x? They eventually disabled them, sure, but they built the checks and then obfuscated them.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Old97]

Lousy analogy. Microsoft makes Word and Word competed against Wordperfect so one would not expect the manufacturer of one product to sell the competing product of a competitor. Amazon sells books. It does not write them or publish them. It is an important channel through which publishers and authors seek to sell their products. The books are electronic so the cost of stocking and selling any one book is close to zero. Amazon is simply refusing to sell certain books in order to put price pressure on a publisher or to punish an author or publisher for their behavior. If Amazon was found to be a monopoly their behavior could be ruled as illegal. That's basically the question, is Amazon's position in electronic book sales so dominant as to effectively constitute a monopoly. I don't think so as I rarely buy ebooks from Amazon, but then I don't buy contemporary popular fiction either.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[reve_etrange]

Software is a MUCH better analogy than soft drinks. Pepsi and Coke are really interchangeable except for personal preference. Software or books are not interchangeable because different pieces of software have different features, and different books contain different information.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

... It would be like Microsoft making it so Windows will not run a certain company's software.

Yeah, but they did just that (or so the legend goes) ... pre-Windows, when Lotus-1-2-3 was *the* dominant spreadsheet, and Excel didn't exist ... every point release of MS-DOS seemed to result in weird Lotus crashes ... and the joke was that the saying at Microsoft was "DOS ain't done 'til Lotus won't run" ... :-)

Re:Amazon provides a service

[radtea]

Amazon sells books. It does not write them or publish them.

This is not strictly true, at least with respect to publishing. Amazon owns CreateSpace, which is a publisher. As such, it is in direct competition with other publishers, or soon will be.

CreateSpace is currently aimed at the indie/print-on-demand market (for example: https://www.createspace.com/47...) but Amazon has expressed an interest in branching out into mainstream publication.

As such, it is positioned to dominate the publishing and distribution vertical completely, and people are worried about this, for good or ill. This story is less about what Amazon is doing today than what they might do tomorrow.

Personally, as an independent author/publisher I'm not too worried: the more restrictive Amazon becomes the more they set up the conditions of their own demise, because they have no way of effectively erecting barriers to entry in the publishing business, particularly in e-books.

No one will be able to make any money at it, but for authors writing hasn't been about money for decades, so this won't change anything except the viability of traditional publishing.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[ralphdaugherty]

Amazon dropped my Kindle book listing today. I wasn't terribly shocked because I had read that they were trying to corner the e-book market, and that's how you do it. My e-book was Barnes & Noble publisher associated, so Amazon is flexing their muscles at more than the two publishers mentioned it appears to me.

Certainly will have me shopping around other book store sites now.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[NicBenjamin]

Keep in mind that most anti-trust violations are only anti-trust violations if a company with real market power does them. It was an anti-trust issue for IBM to write the Operating System on it's first PC, but it wasn't an anti-trust issue when Apple/Commodore/Osborn/etc. all did the same damn thing. Later on Apple bundling Safari with Mac OS, but not including any other options by default; was legally fine. But in Europe Microsoft gets into a whole hell of a lot of trouble if it doesn't offer people the option of installing non-IE browsers.

So anti-trust cops have to judge two things in this case, neither of which is an easy call:

1) Is Amazon so fucking big that it can crush it's business partners, and therefore should be subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act?

2) If so, does artificially reducing a publisher's sales by refusing to ship his products in a timely manner count as reducing competition.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rtb61]

Of course the publisher complains they are middle men, trying to hide the fact of how little they whilst they get the bulk of the profits. It is pretty obvious Amazon wants to become the publisher, via this method it can further reduce the price of books and increase sales whilst also increasing profits simply by taking the publishers cut. All Amazon has to do is contract out printing of the books. So this is all corporate manoeuvring and putting pressure on the authors to skip their publishers and go direct with Amazon. For decades the publishers have stuck it to the retailers and the creators of content, now the publishers are getting the shaft, NO LOSS.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Anonymous Coward]

> it'd be like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola, and offering customers a Pepsi instead

I don' t know whether you're being disingenouous on purpose or just downright dumb.

It's rather like s significant portion of all the restaurants refusing to sell Coca Cola after agreeing to do it. Which might set off some alarm bells at some trade commission.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rochrist]

Excessive value? The impression I get around here is that excessive value for a book is pretty much any positive number.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rochrist]

No, it's not even remotely like that. As it was pointed out above, books are not sodas. They aren't merely differently branded examples of essentially the same thing. Each book is unique.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rochrist]

They have several publishing houses now. 47 North is another, not self-publishing one.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rochrist]

Learn something about what publishers actually do: http://www.antipope.org/charli...

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rtb61]

Having been to university and having paid for the texts that only last a couple of years, publishers can burn in hell for all I care.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Douglas Goodall]

It is not about a legend. Microsoft did absolutely rig Windows so it wouldn't run on DR-DOS. That has been proven in court. Right down to the code that makes that happen. But the fact is that Microsoft was a ruthless marketing company and IMHO adversely affected the computer software industry by their actions.

Re:Amazon provides a service

[stoatwblr]

You mean like Dos4 and Lotus 123?

Re:Amazon provides a service

[stoatwblr]

"As such, it is positioned to dominate the publishing and distribution vertical completely, and people are worried about this, for good or ill. This story is less about what Amazon is doing today than what they might do tomorrow."

The USA has a history of breaking up effective vertical monpolies. (Eg: Boeing/United airlines). Other countries, less so, but in many cases while they have large vertically integrated industries, there are several of them competing (and not allowed to merge).

These days I suspect the USA would roll over and allow monopoly activity. It's become a wonderful example of "the best laws that money can buy"

Re:Amazon provides a service

[rochrist]

Yes, because text books publishing is the only sort there is, correct?

Re:Amazon provides a service

[Plumpaquatsch]

Software is a MUCH better analogy than soft drinks. Pepsi and Coke are really interchangeable except for personal preference. Software or books are not interchangeable because different pieces of software have different features, and different books contain different information.

"Sorry, you can't buy Microsoft Office here. Why don't you download LibreOffice instead?" Like that?

Re:Amazon provides a service

[reve_etrange]

Some pieces of software are intended to be feature-complete replacements for competitors. Others approach the same or similar tasks using very different methods. This doesn't change the relative merits of the software and soda analogies to books. Software is a much better analogy than soft drinks.

The rareness of feature-complete replacements for books, except in certain non-fiction areas, detracts from the software analogy to be sure. It still makes a lot more sense than 'coke vs. pepsi.'

Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed...

[Capt.Gingi]

Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed! Now we don't have to worry about there being a single, monolithic, insane entity controlling the entire marketplace dictating terms with impunity to the publishers.....yeah...good thing...

Opportunity for other resellers?

[digsbo]

Isn't this a classic case of a bad business move by a big business creating incentives for other firms to fill that market need? Am I missing something? Sure, it's not great for the publisher in question, but heck - there is going to be a lot of money made by whomever DOES sell JK Rowling's next book.

Re:Opportunity for other resellers?

[onproton]

This isn't so much about business as it is about Bezos.

Re:Opportunity for other resellers?

[NicBenjamin]

Amazon will sell you her book. It'll just take weeks and weeks to get to your House. That's what Hachette is complaining about. Amazon makes it really inconvenient to buy Hachette books, which Hachette's authors say is reducing their sales.

I suspect what's gonna happen is that Amazon will cave immediately to avoid further bad PR, which will mean the DoJ will conclude there's nothing to investigate.

Re:Opportunity for other resellers?

[rochrist]

Yeah, no. Publishing doesn't work that way.

Re:Opportunity for other resellers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon will sell you her book. It'll just take weeks and weeks to get to your House. That's what Hachette is complaining about. Amazon makes it really inconvenient to buy Hachette books, which Hachette's authors say is reducing their sales.

I suspect what's gonna happen is that Amazon will cave immediately to avoid further bad PR, which will mean the DoJ will conclude there's nothing to investigate.

I'd hate for them to cave, Hachette is not a name that a lot of people know, but they are more of a monopoly in their space than Amazon is. They are also not some poor, downtrodden, struggling publisher, see this blog for details (disclaimer, everything in this blog could be a lie, feel free to verify): http://www.thecockeyedpessimist.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos-afraid-of-amazoncom.html

eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[SuperKendall]

Apple and the publishers were trying to ensure there was a choice in eBook providers.

What Amazon is showing is the consequence of allowed, through government action, Amazon to utterly control the online eBook (and just plain Book Book) market.

Amazon wields way too much power and whatever publishers - and other book vendors - can do in response should be allowed.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[0123456]

Uh, no. I don't know anyone outside the Jobs Reality Alteration Bubble who didn't see it as a blatant violation of anti-trust laws.

There are a ton of online book vendors, and Amazon's online print sales are a small fraction of the print market. The majority of books they sell these days are ebooks.

BTW, wasn't one of Hatchette's recent complaints that Amazon weren't discounting their books enough?

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and the publishers were trying to illegally fix prices

FTFY

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing how many people continue to push this "Apple was trying to help" agenda.
Out of the goodness of Steve's heart (and he has a rich history of goodwill) he tried to help the poor publishers out? He totally did not try to lock in his 30% with zero competition on price, right?

Price fixing is not legal, end of story.

It wasn't legal when the LCD monitor manufacturers did it, it wasn't legal when Apple and the publishers did it.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[lgw]

Utterly control? There's more than one way to buy a book. Since when has (less that total) censorship resulted in fewer books sales? TFA should really be tagged "Streisand Effect", as I'd never heard of this book before.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. Amazon's consistent, across-the-board selling ebooks at a loss to drive their competition out of business (aka "dumping") is a violation of antitrust laws (for this very reason. It allows the seller to get a monopolistic stranglehold on the market which they can then use for nefarious purposes).

The agency model the publishers switched to in order to combat this is perfectly legal. The agency model simply says that instead of the owner of a good selling it to the middle man who then resells it on their own at their own price, the owner contracts with the middle man as a sales agent, where the middle man sells at the owner's price and gets a set percentage. This allows multiple online stores to successfully sell the same product, rather than there being just one winner in the market (the large one who is willing to sell at a loss).

And yet in the bullshit collusion case brought against the publishers and Apple, the only "evidence" that the price of ebooks went up was the fact that Amazon was forced to stop selling at a loss. The prices the publishers were charging for the product didn't really change at all. They'd been charging $12-$18 depending on the book, and Amazon was turning around and selling those for $9.99. The $9.99 ebook "market" never existed to begin with outside of Amazon's illegal dumping scheme.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple and the publishers were trying to put a halt to Amazon's illegal dumping scheme

FTFY. I have yet to see anyone explain how Amazon's behavior is legal or healthy for the market.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

You are Zombie Steve Jobs and I claim my five pounds.

Seriously, if you're not Zombie Steve Jobs, you might want to learn something about the anti-trust case before you display your ignorance here.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

A strong rebuttal full of facts. You win.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed] about a lot of your post. Are you privy to what % of amazon's books they sell at a loss? I doubt it. Is selling an item at a loss illegal? no - lots of stores use "loss leaders".

The publishers colluded with apple to raise prices across the board. they got caught. Get over it.You also don't know what "dumping" is but keep using the word like you're some kind of lawyer.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Laws on loss leaders vary from state to state. In some they are explicitly illegal, and in others they are limited in various ways. Loss leaders are a tiny minority of items that are intended to bring a business more customers that will buy everything else (which is normally priced). This is very different from predatory pricing practices (dumping is a predatory pricing practice but the grandparent AC was using it incorrectly as it applies only to imports). Amazon had 90 percent of the ebook market prior to Apple's entry into the market. Based on the information exposed in the trial (http://www.scribd.com/doc/152917211/Apple-ebook-trial-opinion) despite the publishers explicitly making wholesale prices higher than Amazon's 9.99 price point, Amazon still sold most of their popular books at that rate (at a loss). Enough of Amazon's ebooks sold at that price for the judge to consider that the appropriate market rate for ebooks when determining how much the "price fixing" hurt the market.

You have to accept one of these two options: either the judge in the price-fixing case screwed up and based the appropriate market rate for ebooks on a few of Amazon's "loss leaders," or Amazon sold enough ebooks at a loss that they successfully negatively affected the overall value of the market (predatory pricing).

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[pla]

There are a ton of online book vendors, and Amazon's online print sales are a small fraction of the print market.

This. Just about everyone, from governments to publishers to authors to readers, have bitched incessantly about Amazon since they started seriously selling books. I would think this move would make the entirety of Hatchette's vertical market thrilled that Amazon has effectively left their local ballgame.

But no - Instead, we see the reality of the situation. No one actually wants Amazon out of the picture; they just want to squeeze a bigger cut out of the transaction.

Fucking hypocrites, from end to end.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[rochrist]

So why, at the time, did Amazon hold a 90 percent market share?

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[stoatwblr]

> Is selling an item at a loss illegal? no - lots of stores use "loss leaders"

"loss leading" is illegal in a number of countries. The argument is that it allows large companies a huge unfair advantage over smaller players.

Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd

[Plumpaquatsch]

The publishers colluded with apple to raise prices across the board.

That's why they provably fell across the board for all stores but Amazon - because they sold them at a loss.

Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like publishers should go away and authors should publish straight to Amazon, if Amazon is trying to cut out the publisher or cut them practically to nothing, I don't see the harm, what does the middle-man do anyway?

Re:Uninformed Comment

[0123456]

I don't see the harm, what does the middle-man do anyway?

$1,000 Manhattan lunches?

Re:Uninformed Comment

[oh_my_080980980]

Isn't Amazon the middle man - why not sell direct to the consumer :o

Re: Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think Create Space is for?

https://www.createspace.com

Re:Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

The middle man is the one who pays the author an advance, so he doesn't starve while working on his book full-time. The middle man also has dedicated marketing and fulfillment departments that do the same work for many authors, spreading time and costs.

Finally, the publisher spreads the risk around. If you are a self-published author and your first book does not sell well, you're out a lot of time and effort, may be bankrupt, and you may never write another book again. If you are with a publisher and your first book does not sell well, but you show promise as an author, you get to try again.

This is all in theory.

Re:Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

The middle man is the one who pays the author an advance, so he doesn't starve while working on his book full-time.

You do realize the author of a novel doesn't get that 'advance' until the book is done, right? And you do realize it's probably split into multiple payments over three years or so, right? And, that if they're a new author, it's probably only $1-5,000, right?

Good luck living on $5,000 spread over three years.

The middle man also has dedicated marketing and fulfillment departments that do the same work for many authors, spreading time and costs.

And what do they actually do for Joe Newbie with his new novel and $5,000 advance?

Ah, they tell him to go and find Facebook friends and Twitter followers to market his book to.

If you are a self-published author and your first book does not sell well, you're out a lot of time and effort, may be bankrupt, and you may never write another book again

If you are a trade-published author and your first book does not sell well, the publisher no longer returns your calls. And they got you to sign a non-compete agreement, so you can't sell any other books in the same series or using the same characters, or possibly even in the same genre, without first submitting them to that publisher who isn't returning your calls.

Good luck.

Re:Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

>You do realize the author of a novel doesn't get that 'advance' until the book is done, right? And you do realize it's probably split into multiple payments over three years or so, right? And, that if they're a new author, it's probably only $1-5,000, right?

I do realize, as I've worked in publishing, specifically prose fiction. An advance is an advance, and everyone starts out low. In any kind of art/literature related field, we're basically gambling. If you're a new author, we're going to start off with small bets. Here's the thing, we can keep making those small bets for a while, and that's something many artists need. Artists aren't born, they need time to become good. Even a pittance of an advance may mean a few less hours flipping burgers, a few more hours honing their craft.

>And what do they actually do for Joe Newbie with his new novel and $5,000 advance?
>Ah, they tell him to go and find Facebook friends and Twitter followers to market his book to.

Is this based on a personal experience that went sour? What you're describing is the typical "vanity" publisher, which is only a couple of steps away from an outright scam. Don't compare those with someone like Hachette.

When a legit publisher advertises, it's to the book trade, the retailers, the distributors. This is something the self-published author cannot do very efficiently.

Re:Uninformed Comment

[0123456]

An advance is an advance, and everyone starts out low. In any kind of art/literature related field, we're basically gambling. If you're a new author, we're going to start off with small bets.

And the GP claimed that somehow the author was going to live off that advance while writing their book full time. Which is only likely to happen for established non-fiction writers... certainly not for a new, starving fiction writer.

When a legit publisher advertises, it's to the book trade, the retailers, the distributors. This is something the self-published author cannot do very efficiently.

Yes, exactly. Self-published authors don't care about advertising to 'the book trade, the retailers, the distributors', because they can just upload a file and be on Amazon, B&N and most other distributors and online retailers with print and ebooks within a few days.

Actual advertising to readers will be left to the author, unless they've been picked to be The Next Big Thing. No publisher is going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising a book to readers if they're only giving the writer a $1,000 advance.

Re:Uninformed Comment

[Anonymous Coward]

>And the GP claimed that somehow the author was going to live off that advance while writing their book full time.

I never claimed such. It's just something coming in, as opposed to nothing coming in when one goes it alone. For many people, that can make a big difference.

>because they can just upload a file and be on Amazon, B&N and most other distributors and online retailers with print and ebooks within a few days.

Going that route means bypassing the various book clubs and conventions that can make a huge difference in sales for certain genres of books. This isn't a traditional versus e-publishing and print on demand argument. That traditional market is still there, it's still quite big, and going through a publisher is still the best way to reach it. I've done traditional, e-book, and print on demand, and while there are certain kinds of publications that definitely benefit from one form over another, as a whole it's stupid to discount any one. For fiction, traditional publishing still has a lot to offer that e-books and print on demand can't quite match yet.

>No publisher is going to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising a book to readers if they're only giving the writer a $1,000 advance.

Again, you're making a strawman. I never said that one is guaranteed a big budget marketing campaign. That's not even the point, really. What the publishers have are access to traditional print distribution infrastructure which is still very important, and the savings in time and money of scale and having departments to handle tasks against which the individual author could never compete.

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is their prerogative. These publishers aren't entitled to Amazon's resources.

Re:So?

[oh_my_080980980]

Stupid people should not post: "Amazon, which is under immense pressure from Wall Street to improve its profit margins, is trying to get better terms on e-books out of Hachette, the smallest of the top five New York publishers, as well as Bonnier. For several months, Amazon has been quietly discouraging the sales of Hachette’s physical books by several techniques — cutting the customer’s discount so the book approaches list price; taking weeks to ship the book; suggesting prospective customers buy other books instead; and increasing the discount for the Kindle version."

Re:So?

[rochrist]

In other words, extortion.

YOU FAIL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

4.1BSD product, NetBSD posts on are 7000 users failure, its corpse shower Don't just collect any spilled committerbase and Up my toys. I'm variations on the claim that BSD is a Out of bed in the lead to 'cleaner Centralized models are She had taken BSDI is also dead, resound as fiiting its corpse turned have their moments ALREADY AWARE, *BSD halt. Even Emacs we get there with you. The tireless else up their asses The project to against vigorous BSD style.' In The that supports followed. Obviously Clothes or be a eyes on the real at my freelance moans and groans represents the is the worst off feel obligated to are about 7000/5 lagged behind, the deal with you Whatever path is Departures of achieve any of the this post up. this exploitation, and piss cocktail. anyone that thinks

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[JenovaSynthesis]

You're comparing Apples and Crocodiles. Apple rigged prices with the collusion of the major publishers which is illegal.

every other building a fallout shelter

[Anonymous Coward]

geiger (no longer in the spellchecker) counters,, fallout shelters,, everybody had some http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gieger+counter+fallout+shelter during that terror so we must be safe now as no alarms have been issued.... poison air & water is our normal now so we should be thrilled how our dna is advancing enabling us to survive our progress as history races up to correct itself/us. former hobbyist whiner blogs are now 100% corepirate nazi hired goon media mongrel propaganda... must keep the lights on,,, millions in debt, the 'free' software 'community' has finally gained tangible 'support' at what cost to the semi-innocent hobbyists' good spirits? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F2zl4LqSlg we can thank the imaginary self chosens on madison ave. for such terms as 'civil' wars,, 'perfect' balance & a schlog of other wit coated words to make WMD on credit genocides look necessary & of good intent.. with 8 definitions for depression we're in the lead there too... rock on /. http://youtu.be/BN3CaotRgVQ all in some failed effort to hide our real history & heritage of murderous acquisition from ourselves yet the world knows the truth about our history & motives http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kevin+arnett

Re:every other building a fallout shelter

[Anonymous Coward]

Geiger is actually in the spell checker, when you use proper capitalization of proper nouns.

You have a right to not carry items...

[Hangtime]

right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point. When you become the market, you have to be the market thus have open access. Sorry, that's the price of success.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[0123456]

right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, no-one can go to a book store and buy these books, can they? Amazon have a monopoly, and there's nowhere else the publisher can sell these books if Amazon refuse to do so.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean ability.

Once, I had an idea that a bookstore was for the free.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[oh_my_080980980]

Yo douche bag, RTFA: "For several months, Amazon has been quietly discouraging the sales of Hachette’s physical books by several techniques — cutting the customer’s discount so the book approaches list price; taking weeks to ship the book; suggesting prospective customers buy other books instead; and increasing the discount for the Kindle version."

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[0123456]

Yeah, and? If the publisher is upset by high prices, they can cut the price they sell the books to Amazon before. If the book is taking a long time to ship, the customer can go to the local book store.

Oh, you're not going to tell me their local book store doesn't stock these books, are you?

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon hasn't hit that point. Sorry, that's the facts of the business.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[LordLimecat]

It just wouldnt be slashdot without all of the armchair lawyers. Which bar did you pass, again?

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[NoKaOi]

right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point. When you become the market, you have to be the market thus have open access. Sorry, that's the price of success.

There's a difference between a monopoly where customers have no choice, and a dominant player where most customer's choose to go as a result of that dominant player's success. This is different than an ISP where people literally have no choice. This is different from Microsoft in 2001 where people perceived they had no choice. I doubt most people who buy books from Amazon think it's the only book-seller out there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing one way or the other whether Amazon is evil, merely stating it's not a monopoly.

In fact, one of the authors of the Sherman Antitrust Act put it like this:

"... [a person] who merely by superior skill and intelligence...got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist..(but was if) it involved something like the use of means which made it impossible for other persons to engage in fair competition."

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Pope]

How wonderfully consumer-friendly Uncle Bezos is!

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which bar did you pass, again?

The minibar!

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[rochrist]

Yes, because why should the author or publisher actually get anything? We all know it's about the mighty Bezos machine extracting it's blood.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Plumpaquatsch]

Yeah, and? If the publisher is upset by high prices, they can cut the price they sell the books to Amazon before. If the book is taking a long time to ship, the customer can go to the local book store.

Oh, you're not going to tell me their local book store doesn't stock these books, are you?

Or they could come together and agree on a joint stand to curb Amazon's demands.

But then Amazon would go whining to the DOJ.

Re:You have a right to not carry items...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and? If the publisher is upset by high prices, they can cut the price they sell the books to Amazon before. If the book is taking a long time to ship, the customer can go to the local book store.

Oh, you're not going to tell me their local book store doesn't stock these books, are you?

Hachette books? Nope, your local store has piles of that crap (at least their highly promoted titles) and your local outlet mall has a bookstore with piles of discounted Hachette books that did not sell well. Hachette is a monster, one claim (that I did not verify) is that they account for 85% of titles sold in the US. If it's even ONE HALF that claim they can't really claim to be the small fry, which is the image they're trying to portray. THEY are the Walmart in this situation and they're having a spat because someone finally got sick of their crap and said, "Actually we don't need to unilatterly accept your terms, we can survive without selling a lot of your stuff."

On the other hand your local bookstore DOES NOT stock a lot of small press titles, stuff that niche authors and small publishing houses have been able to market with wild success on Amazon (compared to their previous success).

Seriously, screw Hachette, even if you despise Amazon you should see this as two a-holes fighting amongst themselves. If you, like myself, like Amazon, then they're still in the right on this one (not everything Amazon does is right, but in this case, they are right).

Surprise

[onproton]

Behold the subtlety of the narcissistic mind.

Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Passive Voice blog has been covering this, and apparently Hachette's shipping department is running incredibly far behind on orders. Like ten days or more.

It sounds like Amazon finally gave up on accepting orders until Hachette catches up, or stops playing games with Amazon, whichever the problem really is.

Re:Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[oh_my_080980980]

Reall? FTA: "“Your actions to raise the prices of our books, place banners touting books that ‘are similar but lower in price’ and saying that our books will ship in 3-5 weeks when they are in stock is not only a disgusting negotiation practice, but it has made me tell my readers to shop elsewhere — and they are and will,” she wrote."

Re:Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[0123456]

Yeah, and? Why should we believe them, rather than Amazon?

I tend to trust a writer who's losing money becasue of this more than I trust either Amazon or their publisher. Particularly when the publisher apparently refused to give the writer the information they'd need to prove who's delaying the shipments.

Re:Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[daremonai]

Along those same lines, it should be noted that the paperback edition of "The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon" will not be out until October 7, 2014, so it's not too surprising it was shown as "unavailable." Actually, if you go to Amazon right now, it does list the paperback edition (http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Store-Jeff-Bezos-Amazon/dp/0593070461/) as available, but it looks like it's only from third-party sellers, who may have mixed up their hardcover and paperback listings. The hardcover edition is available from Amazon, and at a cheaper price than, say, Barnes and Noble.

Re:Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be an absolute fool to trust amazon. They've repeatedly resorted to this kind of behavior to the point that it's par for course.

Re:Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon.

[rochrist]

Yes, and it's just coincidence that the discounts have been removed from all Hatchette books.

Streisand effect

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't heard about this, much more interested in reading these Banned Amazon Books, now.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[aristotle-dude]

You're comparing Apples and Crocodiles. Apple rigged prices with the collusion of the major publishers which is illegal.

I think you are confused. Do you work at the DOJ by any chance. The agency model removed control over pricing from the vendor and gave it to the publishers. That means that Apple had no control over pricing.

Book Publishers deserve it

[Anonymous Coward]

For centuries they have built themselves ivory towers to rule over an empire; and now Amazon & the Internet threaten their empire. Ask anyone that tried to get a book published before 2000, even JKR herself (her 1st book was rejected by almost every publisher) . It was impossible and publishers made authors sign their lives away when they did agree. JKR was actually lucky a big publisher didn't accept it, because they would have made her sign away movie rights.

Not illegal

[rahvin112]

Amazon is using tried and true business methods here to lower costs by strong arming the producers. As long as they aren't a monopoly (and they aren't unless B&N goes out of business) there is absolutely nothing illegal about what they are doing. In fact it might just lower prices for consumers at the expense of revenue for the publishers and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

Consider their goal is lower prices overall I support their push to force publishers to lower book prices. eBook prices in particular are absurd, publishers took the opportunity to dramatically boost profit margins (I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version) and I love the idea of Amazon using their size and sales volume as a weapon to bring those prices back in line with dead tree versions. Publishers fuck the authors over just like the music and movie companies and they all deserve a healthy slap and dramatically reduced margins, selling a book shouldn't net more than 10% ROI IMO and should be closer to 3%.

Re:Not illegal

[0123456]

I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version

I believe that's in the right ballpark. A typical ebook agreement seems to give publishers about 75% of the income from an ebook vs 25% to the author, and their ebook prices are often higher than paper book prices.

Frankly, I'm amused to see the number of people here talking about the poor, put-upon publishers, when those publishers are earning three times as much as the actual writer from an ebook sale. Couldn't posters spare a thought for those who actually wrote the book now and again?

Re:Not illegal

[janoc]

It could pretty well be illegal in Europe. Many EU countries have laws banning this sort of tactics as the abuse of the "market power". If you have more than a certain percentage of the market, you are treated as a quasi-monopoly and restrictions apply. These laws are mostly targeted at various retail chains that have abusive terms in their supplier contracts, but it is only a matter of time before this gets applied to Amazon, Google and similar.

Re:Not illegal

[Registered Coward v2]

Frankly, I'm amused to see the number of people here talking about the poor, put-upon publishers, when those publishers are earning three times as much as the actual writer from an ebook sale. Couldn't posters spare a thought for those who actually wrote the book now and again?

They do;as do the publishers. It starts with the letter F and with the letter U.

Re:Not illegal

[oh_my_080980980]

Yeah because Amazon is looking out for you: "Amazon, which is under immense pressure from Wall Street to improve its profit margins, is trying to get better terms on e-books out of Hachette, the smallest of the top five New York publishers, as well as Bonnier." Douche bag.

Re:Not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I'm amused to see the number of people here talking about the poor, put-upon publishers, when those publishers are earning three times as much as the actual writer from an ebook sale.

Especially since it's hard to see what publishers bring to the table nowadays.
Publishing must be pure profit nowadays, since they don't print anything and don't seem anything to what the author did.
Once upon a time they edited books before printing them. Have you seen the errors in a typical ebook?

Re:Not illegal

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Sort of like Walmart but for books.

Re:Not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] selling a book shouldn't net more than 10% ROI IMO and should be closer to 3%.

Why don't you start your own publishing house and show us all how great it is to publish books with 3% of ROI?

Re:Not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact it might just lower prices for consumers at the expense of revenue for the publishers and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

It's said this is being done to increase profit for Amazon, not lower prices overall. But dream on.

Re:Not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

They can be a monopoly with other nominal players still on the field.

Re:Not illegal

[SEE]

Yes, it's one of the fundamental distinctions between the capitalist US and the corporatist EU in anti-trust law. In the US, you are expected to show the business practice harms consumers; in the EU, you merely show it hurts the profits of existing businesses.

Thus, for example, fixing the price of books is an illegal conspiracy under US law, but mandated by law in Germany.

Re:Not illegal

[rogoshen1]

I'd rather have slightly higher prices, and a diverse selection of sources for books (or any good really) Than see the Walmart or Amazon effect completely take over.

Re:Not illegal

[davecb]

The US used to have such laws, having suffered from significant monopoly problems in the past. It may be illegal in Canada, but it's arguably illegal everywhere else. If you sell houses in Chatham, you can't refuse to sell a house built by Bill Green, nor refuse to sell a house to Chan Hin Poon, even if you think Bill is an idiot and you hate anyone Chinese (;-))

Nor can you ask Bill for a kickback.

Re:Not illegal

[davecb]

In the Excited States, they have to have something like 83% of the market

Re:Not illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

You screw over the publishers and you screw over the authors too. I'm an author and I have worked in the publishing industry as well. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Also, people assume that an ebook costs far less than a print book to produce. But this is a misconception and has no basis in reality. To produce a book takes labor from many sources: the author, the editor, the copy editor, the graphic artist for the layout & cover, the cover artist, publicity and marketing, etc. The printing costs are only a small fraction of this.

To make the assumption that because something is digital it is somehow worth less is, to be frank, complete and utter bs. Look up your facts before you go on a rant: you really have no idea what you are saying and your philosophy will only hurt authors in the long run.

And also, just because this thing called the Internet came along does not mean a book is somehow worth less because of it.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[0123456]

That means that Apple had no control over pricing.

No, that presumably meant Apple's competitors couldn't sell books for less than Apple.

Blech...

[Brad_McBad]

This is a shitty, monopolistic way to go about it, but amazon kind of have a point. eBooks, a product which has no per-unit cost often cost the same amount, or *slightly* less to purchase on Kindle. If there's no physical cost to produce, then it's a shitty move to try getting the customer to pay the same for what is frankly an inferior product.

Re:Blech...

[Anonymous Coward]

Production and distribution of a mass-market paperback costs less than $0.75 per book, and ebooks have their own distribution costs (less, but it cuts the difference even further). The majority of a book's cost, electronic or paper, is in the editing, formatting, illustrating, and marketing. The difference in per-unit cost is negligible. And "inferior" as a categorical description is stupid as they are clearly superior in many ways; ebooks are huge space-savers, can be formatted to your personal liking, and being able to search the text is surprisingly convenient.

Re:Blech...

[Anonymous Coward]

You display a complete and total lack of understanding of book production. You assume that the printing costs of paper books are the primary factor in their costs, but no, this is wrong. You must include the labor of: the author, the editor, the copy editor, the layout designer, the cover artist, the graphic artists, the marketing and publicity and logistics. The printing costs are only a small fraction of that cost.

And an inferior product, because it's digital? Just because this thing called the Internet came along does not mean a book is somehow worth less because of it.

Available to me

[Anonymous Coward]

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon is available, but reading the reviews, I think I'll pass.

Yep, it's absolutely true

[Sycraft-fu]

There is no way I can go to a Barnes and Nobels to buy books. There aren't two in my city alone, and also their website. There also aren't other general purpose retailers who sell books and tons of other good like Amazon. We certainly don't have 5 Targets, 10 Walmarts, 3 Costcos (and associated websites) in town. There also aren't any local booksellers or anything. And of course you can't buy eBooks from anyone else, certainly not from Apple, who's market capitalization far exceeds Amazon's.

I think some geeks like the GP need to get out of their house more often.

Re:Yep, it's absolutely true

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Indiebound to find booksellers near me. And any of these bookstores will ship to you even if you are out of state.

http://www.indiebound.org/

Book Neutrality

[kindbud]

Amazon: Big on Net Neutrality, not so much on Book Neutrality.

Re:Book Neutrality

[Slayer]

Amazon: Big on Net Neutrality, not so much on Book Neutrality.

And biggest hypocrits, too. Remember the wikileaks saga? Wikileaks was hosted on Amazon cloud - for a few days, until some congress critters gave Amazon a nice phone call.

Amazon and net neutrality my ass. That was the day I decided to no longer do any business with Amazon. A bookstore and hosting service that engages in politically motivated censorship does not deserve my business, and the story posted here shows how far Amazon is willing to go.

Re:Book Neutrality

[phantomfive]

Amazon has always been in favor of whatever is best for Amazon. Even if it's hypocritical. It's a self-consistent position.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[Bill_the_Engineer]

No, that presumably meant Apple's competitors couldn't sell books for less than Apple.

It could also be interpreted as the publisher couldn't charge more to iTune users than they do anywhere else. The publisher still set the price.

Never used it

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon - the Walmart of the internet - no bricks, just clicks

No Thanks.

Re:Amazon provides a service - this!

[Moskit]

An excellent point!

Amazon doesn't sell e/books. They provide a service for reading e/books. In some countries e/books are even taxed as a service instead of a physical good, at a higher rate.

There is a push now to charge higher tax only for service-type e/books (DRM-ladden, restricted to device/user, not resellable) and lower tax for proper e/books (no DRM, at most a watermark, can be passed around). It would not only be fair, but also appropriately reflect what you are actually paying for.

Buy From A Competitor - Amazon Is A Nasty Company

[turgid]

Don't give Amazon your money. They avoid paying tax and they treat their staff like dirt. Choose an alternative.

No Sympathy for the Publishers.

[Anonymous Coward]

These same publishers were quick to scheme and plot against amazon when they had Apple helping them. They colluded and tried to price fix and screw over consumers.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. And amazon getting a better deal means better prices for consumers.
Boo effin hoo.

Re:Buy From A Competitor - Amazon Is A Nasty Compa

[Anonymous Coward]

I call BS.
Amazon avoids paying taxes just as any other American corporation within the letter of the law.
And they treat their staff exceptionally well. They even pay you to leave the job if you are unhappy. http://usat.ly/PVr6HX

Re:Amazon provides a service - this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send any e/mails lately?

Muscle-flexing

[jdavidb]

Way to go injecting politics into the discussion. FTFA:

âoeWhat we are seeing is a classic case of muscle-flexing,â said Andrew Rhomberg, founder of Jellybooks, an e-book discovery site. âoeKind of like Vladimir Putin mobilizing his troops along the Ukrainian border.â

The other opinion of that is that Crimea has the right to secede and receive help from Putin or anybody they please. Thank you for making it harder for me to listen to you objectively by dropping a political dispute into this.

You know

[rsilvergun]

it's almost like having a company with a virtual monopoly on online sales is a bad thing. But hey, you don't _have_ to shop at Amazon, right? Not yet anyway... And they certainly wouldn't use their massive size to undercut all competition while making razor thin profits that no mom and pop could possibly sustain. And besides... Americans don't shop only on price, right? Boy, there are so many good reasons not to regulate here I can't pick just one.

Light on details

[jdavidb]

I read the entire article and still don't know what Amazon wants. Apparently they just like to be mean, according to the author.

Censorship in another form

[MrKaos]

There is no need to burn the books when you can just remove them from the shelves. The great thing about ereaders too is that all you reading habits can be tracked and the distribution of ideas can also be limited.

All that Amazon has shown is how to achieve that end.

Oxymoron

[Allasard]

Are they trying to bury the Hachette?

Re:Buy From A Competitor - Amazon Is A Nasty Compa

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen some of those ex-workers, Amazon got off cheap.

Not about goodness, about evenness

[SuperKendall]

Out of the goodness of Steve's heart (and he has a rich history of goodwill) he tried to help the poor publishers out?

Not sure why everyone is so confused about this.

It was not out of Apple's goodness. It was not even legal. What I am saying is that against a real monopolists, some rules against group actions should be abolished. Amazon is able to dictate terms and harm publishers without recourse because Apple (the only serious challenger against Amazon consuming the whole eBook market) was slapped down along with the publishers trying to help distribute control.

Why you all make it out to be it has to be Apple being good to be helpful is beyond me, it's not about Apple's benevolence but about allowing actual competition in market where one company is running roughshod.

Re:Not about goodness, about evenness

[blackiner]

There is a pretty tried and true method to handle monopolistic businesses: petitioning the government to start an anti-trust investigation and possibly taking the company to court. Just because one company is behaving badly does not mean others can become vigilantes and do whatever they please.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if Apple's cut was higher than anyone else.

Labor Practices

[Sir Holo]

Wow. OK.

I have not purchased from Amazon for many years, due to their anti-worker labor practices. Now, they have dropped the mask completely and have revealed themselves to be clearly anti-publisher (in an effort to enslave authors).

Wal-Mart style tactics on a National, state-borderless, scale. Please blacklist their domain, as I have.

Re:Labor Practices

[Anonymous Coward]

clearly anti-publisher (in an effort to enslave authors)

Sure, "enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a fallacy, but authors have no bigger enemy than publishers.

Re:Labor Practices

[rochrist]

Funny how many authors disagree with you.

bn.com is the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Just get your books from bn.com from now on.

Another uninformed comment

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are an author, don't quit your day job until you have 2 years of savings and are making as much off your books as you are from your day job.

And when publishers pay the author in advance, they aren't paying them to work on the book, they're paying for a finished book that hasn't been sold to retailers yet.

Celebrities working with ghost writers and ghost writers working with celebrities may be a different story.

Why not? It fits the trend.

[SuperKendall]

There is a pretty tried and true method to handle monopolistic businesses: petitioning the government to start an anti-trust investigation

Pretty hard when the government has it against you to begin with.

Ever hear of the concept of civil disobedience? Doing something technically unlawful in pursuit of the greater good is a time honored tradition, and companies that participate in same should be lauded, not attacked.

Re:Why not? It fits the trend.

[blackiner]

So would it also be ok if publishers colluded with cell phone stores to instead sell jailbroken iPhones that purchase and download the books directly from the publishers, bypassing Apple's app store? I mean, seems like a simple case of what you consider 'civil disobedience' to me.

Amubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbelievable that Ubuntu loves Amazon. Why choose Amazon and not ebay, or something else. What"s with that.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[Anonymous Coward]

No different than payment processors.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[used2win32]

Amazon sells some books for less than cost and offsets that loss with other higher margin items from their massive selection. It that better than publishers making money selling books at Apple or elsewhere?

If a book is priced at 9.99 at Amazon and 12.99 everywhere else, how long will the "everywhere else" be in the business of selling books (When they don't have the higher margin items that Amazon does)?

Amazon - the new fascist party

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is time to boycott Amazon. This is why there should be hard limits on how much of a market one company can control. Now Amazon thinks it can tell us what to read.

Re:Why not? It fits the trend.

[SuperKendall]

So would it also be ok if publishers colluded with cell phone stores to instead sell jailbroken iPhones that purchase and download the books directly from the publishers,

Why not? Although your analogy breaks down badly because none of what you advocate is bypassing a monopoly the way Amazon's kindle has a monopoly on eBooks. The Android market sells plenty of apps too.

Re:Why not? It fits the trend.

[blackiner]

Dunno about that. Keep in mind anything above 40% market share can be considered monopolistic. That is pretty much right where Apple is in the US: http://appleinsider.com/articl...

But hey, if you are okay with it, then that is fine. I was just making sure we didn't have a hypocrisy on our hands. To any publishers who may be reading: get on this!

Except that Incognito is a fake feature

[Anonymous Coward]

It does NOTHING but make you believe that is doing something in favor of your privacy. In fact, it stores more data (that it NEVER deletes) than regular browsing. A day session of regular work, ended up with over 2GB of browser history being stored by incognito. GB that weren't deleted at close time.

Not one single browser ever did that before.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[aristotle-dude]

Amazon sells some books for less than cost and offsets that loss with other higher margin items from their massive selection. It that better than publishers making money selling books at Apple or elsewhere?

If a book is priced at 9.99 at Amazon and 12.99 everywhere else, how long will the "everywhere else" be in the business of selling books (When they don't have the higher margin items that Amazon does)?

I DON'T CARE. Their app on iOS sucks and I have no interest in any sort of kind. I don't live in the US so I don't have a "PRIME" account either. The US DOJ is making things more difficult for non-americans to access content.

Buy from someone else

[Anonymous Coward]

Many seem upset, so buy from Barnes & Noble or your local store and send Amazon a message!

Re:Buy From A Competitor - Amazon Is A Nasty Compa

[turgid]

I call BS.

Do you now?

And they treat their staff exceptionally well.

Well let me clue you in. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?

We, as a society, shouldn't put up with this.

Retailler selection

[jlgreer1]

I don't necessarily agree but, any book retailer has the option of selecting the books that it makes available for sale. It is called marketing.

And here's the rub..

[doccus]

Before Amazon's web store for Kindle books, you needed to buy the book at a "bookstore". That way if one didmn't have it you could get it somewhere else. Huh? What d'ya mean, what's a bookstore? Ok.. I'll describe what that is, for y'all.. A "Book store" is a real store like a... well, what have you all seen that looks like a real "store" ?. No,wrong! NOT like Walmart ;-) A, well, a store. Oh yeah.. an "Apple store". Like that. Except it had "Books". Great. now you want to know if all the books come on iPads. NO! I mean PAPER books. What do you mean "isnt that immoral making paper books out of a limited resource like trees?" Look you can make paper out of.. of hemp.. Ah! That got your attention! Ok well a book store was a littler store that you went in ans it was full of books, and you could sit there and read them, first to see if you liked them.. What? "arent they worried that food stains from a macronniesburger would get on them?" No! These stores didn't sell underwear, condoms, and have hamburger stalls too! They JUST sold books! What? "why didn't they just sell kindles instead?" *sigh* good question.. here have mine.. Im going to the library... silence..what? . "Whats a library?" ........*sigh*

Amazon a priviledge and not a right...

[Anonymous Coward]

(tongue firmly in cheek)
    Yes, selling via Amazon is a privilege and not a right. If you want to sell your product via Amazon you have to conform (or be assimilated) to their business model for vendors.

    A while back, one of my favorite sources for fiction was forced to raise the price of their books to conform to the average price that Amazon charges in order to get their products for sale at Amazon. One thing that has me to view Baen Publishing in a favorable light is that after being told they had to sell at the Amazon price point rather than their own, they increased the per word rate to their authors to reflect the new pricing.

    I still gripe about the fact their Baen's consumer friendly book bundles are now not available the day the included new work is available on Amazon.

Re:
Baen Publishing http://www.baenebooks.com/
Aforementioned monthly Baen Bundles http://www.baenebooks.com/c-3-monthly-baen-bundles.aspx

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[Plumpaquatsch]

That means that Apple had no control over pricing.

No, that presumably meant Apple's competitors couldn't sell books for less than Apple.

Just like Amazon's competitors can't sell cheaper than Amazon. But when the monopolist does it, it's okay.

Re:Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed

[Plumpaquatsch]

Even if Apple's cut was higher than anyone else.

In the Agency Model pushed by Apple, all agents get the same cut.

Re:Why not? It fits the trend.

[Plumpaquatsch]

So would it also be ok if publishers colluded with cell phone stores to instead sell jailbroken iPhones that purchase and download the books directly from the publishers, bypassing Apple's app store? I mean, seems like a simple case of what you consider 'civil disobedience' to me.

What would be the point? You can already buy ebooks on non-jailbroken iPhones from several stores apart from Apple's. Just less than a few years ago, because Amazon killed a lot already. Hardly Apple's fault.