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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."
Think they're flexing their muscles now just wait for the drones!
Next, we'll hear he's patented not selling books on the Internet.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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.
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?
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%.
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.
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.