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Author Charles Stross: Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil?
An anonymous reader writes "Sci-fi author Charles Stross has a post providing insight into Amazon's recent bullying tactics against a major book publishing group. He puts the fight into perspective for the two most important parts of the book market: author and reader. He says: 'Amazon's strategy (as I noted in 2012) is to squat on the distribution channel, artificially subsidize the price of ebooks ("dumping" or predatory pricing) to get consumers hooked, rely on DRM on the walled garden of the Kindle store to lock consumers onto their platform, and then to use their monopsony buying power to grab the publishers' share of the profits. If you're a consumer, in the short term this is good news: it means you get cheap books. But if you're a reader, you probably like to read new books. By driving down the unit revenue, Amazon makes it really hard for publishers—who are a proxy for authors—to turn a profit. Eventually they go out of business, leaving just Amazon as a monopoly distribution channel retailing the output of an atomized cloud of highly vulnerable self-employed piece-workers like myself. At which point the screws can be tightened indefinitely. And after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job. TL:DR; Amazon's strategy against Hachette is that of a bullying combine the size of WalMart leaning on a much smaller supplier. And the smaller supplier in turn relies on really small suppliers like me. It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read.'"
The cancer analogies are VERY apt.
Go to the store and buy them! They're ace! And you can give them to your friends afterwards.
I downloaded a crapload of them, he's really good.
Am I making it harder or easier for him to make a living?
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
The title of this comment may be provocative, but after buying a Kindle Paperwhite, something that Amazon does really well (and just keep it in airplane mode all the time so you don't have to deal with Amazon's ecosystem), I have found myself with such a huge choice of classic literature titles from either Project Gutenberg or pirate ebook sites, that I feel I'll never catch up with all the old stuff, let alone hunger after anything new. For Mr. Stross, I'm sorry, but you're competing with the past, and there are a myriad of science-fiction writers like yourself that already have more books out there than anyone can read.
have your publisher stop selling through Amazon entirely. Convince other publishers to do the same. Not a damned thing in the world says you have to use Amazon. Walk away from them and use iTunes, Barnes & Noble, or hell open your own store and control the distribution channel yourselves.
Seriously, manufacturers walk away from Wal-Mart all the time. Nothing stopping book publishers from doing the same. Optionally jsut provide your crap b-list titles and in every single one of those provide info how to get your more popular stuff.
Don't complain they are bullies, walk away from their marketplace. If no one uses them, they either go under or come back to the table to negotiate in better faith.
Sorry.. But blaming the Amazon is stupid.. Blame the publishers.. There are a number of different channel partners out there. Amazon is not the only one doing eBook or physical books. If you want to compete with Amazon, goto a competitor and lower the DAMN Price of eBooks. When I see Physical Book costing more then eBook, then I know something is screwed up in the publishing world. I don't know how it works, but I don't think the Channel partner gets to say how much a book is sold for. A number of publishers are selling direct these days and the price of a eBook is still outrageous. May as well buy the physical book and take to to a second hand store to trade in.... An eBook is pure profit for a Publisher and Author.
Yes, Amazon wants no more publishers to get a cut, just them and the author. And yes, they will want to lower the author's incentive to the minimum necessary for them to write., But not lower than that.
The publisher's aren't just representing the author. They are middle men.
Amazon will simply replace them with one vertically integrated company.
Worse for authors, maybe, but it owuld be beyond stupid for them to make it worse than the alternative.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Anybody who uses Kindles to read DRM'd books has no appreciation for knowledge or art, and any author who relies on this customer base is making a grave mistake.
The author's intentions could be summarized as, "Does this false dichotomy make me look smart?"
Not seeing why, if a publisher doesn't want to sell though the Amazon store, they can't as easily sell though their own website or even though traditional brick and mortar stores. For that matter, I don't see why an author can't do that themselves and cut out the other middleman, unless they are tied into an exclusive contract.
kindle books are just files - you can sell them from anywhere.
-=DaveHowe=-
Hachette has been around for quite some time. Their entry to the US market was by way of buying Time Warner books. They've bought Hyperion books too.
So it's probably not a struggle between the big mean web store and the innocent niche publisher. I don't think either of them are even slightly concerned with your interests.
Amazon is being condemned for the same tactics publishers used for years. If publishers are not smart enough to keep up with the times then they have a problem.
And the smaller supplier in turn relies on really small suppliers like me. It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read.
The music giants are anti-musician, and will deprive you of the varied artists you want to listen to.
The television giants are anti-creativity, depriving you of anything that doesn't have the same old Tropes.
Ditto for movies.
The technology giants are anti-programmer, anti-architect, anti-inventor, wanting only more monkeys to churn out more cogs and more cog-making machines, depriving you of TRUE innovation.
Really it could all be summed up as:
The corporations are anti-worker, depriving you of a dignified and satisfying occupation, as well as the ability to make a meaningful contribution to your own society.
TFA accuses Amazon of being a monopsony , not a monopoly.
Squeezing your suppliers' profit margins is never a good long-term strategy. Amazon is not yet powerful enough to completely dictate to publishers; if they band together and reject Amazon, Amazon will soon be left with no worthwhile content.
If Amazon needs more money, it can raise its prices slightly. There are effectively no viable competitors in the online book market and Amazon's prices are very low, so it does have some room to move without annoying its suppliers.
Yes, that's too bad if you buy books, but in the long run it's better for everyone to get a fair share of the profits.
and the musican for that matter create their own distribution websites. Seriously there's power in numbers especailly with the connection and access to instant customers they already have. They just need to accept the fact that people will pirate like people will shoplift. Make the products price reflect the production/distrubution costs and don't treat you customers as criminal and they will buy.
Even though I don't read books that much these days I do watch lots of movies/shows and if I could "buy to own" new releases that play cross platform with out some special player for say $10 and older movies for $4-5 there would be WAY less money in my bank account.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The consumer (reader in this case) hardly suffers from the loss of the middle market keeping prices artificially high. You, as the author are competing not against Amazon, but against other Authors for position on a consumer's device. The loss of publishers in my opinion, is a good thing. It allows for competition (um, free market anyone?) and anyone, of any size can get their book to the reader. If you cannot get enough of a lion's share to keep afloat, then it is likely you are not popular enough and indeed should consider writing more of a hobby. This is the equivalent of the music industries problem of promoting only certain people over others. Itunes (online music distribution) showed how broken the old model was.
I guess you're wrong. NEXT!
Amazon is grabbing publishers share of the profits? Why do we care? Publishers are just middlemen leaches. They used to add value because publishing used to be expensive. Now people could easily publish their own given a marketplace which wasn't controlled by publishers (like... amazon?).
Amazon might drive the publishers out of business, or cut into their profits? Good.
"Malignant - Or Just Plain Evil" is asking if Jeff Bezos is still beating his wife.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Should not the analogy continue a bit further with:
and when there are no more Charlie Stross novels, the customers can not buy them, making Amazon's incomes diminish. At which time they have to pay more to the Charlie Strosses out there.
Is this not just precise how capitalism is supposed to work?
I'd make a reasonably educated guess that he's a good deal brighter than you are.
Flawed premise. From my perspective the sale value of creative works has yet to correct it's self for the lowered production and distribution costs associated with modern electronic computing.
Publishers are not "proxys for authors". They are another obsolete industry group fighting the inevitable for their survival, no different than the RIAA.
Assume there is a world where I as an author can contract with a third party for proofreading and editing at a fixed cost, and then "self publish" to Amazon and other eBook providers, without a man in the middle publisher eating up my profits, I can sell the books far cheaper and interact directly with my audience. Many authors are flocking to self-publish nowadays and the number is just going to keep growing.
Any organism will try to dominate its environment.
Corporations are the same; they will work to optimize the merger for themselves. Then either they will dominate, or someone will come along and outcompete them, and they adapt or die.
Let's remember that publishers Mr Stross is bemoaning have themselves acted as plutocratic gatekeepers to the public reading markets for a century or more themselves.
Amazon's just doing it better now.
I'm sorry if an author feels he can no longer make a living being a writer, but he isn't entitled to that occupation. He can either keep doing it because he loves it, it he can, as he said, get a real job. Sorry if capitalism is painful that way.
-Styopa
Amazon isn't forcing DRM on the publishers. They would be quite happy to let them sell ebooks without it.
That and the publishers "share" of profits is exactly zero. Anything above that is a market inefficiency.
It hasn't been that long since publishers formed a cartel with Apple and tried to stick it to Amazon.
It was TLDR, so my uninformed comment.
The underlying question is one worth thinking about, is this circle of writers, publishers, distributors, readers at risk of a Tragedy of the Commons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Will the Amazon model effectively squelch the number and quality of valuable literary works? I think the answer is yes.
The current trend is toward uniformity in cultures, even globally. Larger shared experiences require more and more uniformity.
But will it really become a tragedy? Perhaps not. Knowledge and art have be expressed in many ways. Recent example of Industrial Design in the news.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/motorcycle-design-history-books
captcha: shocks
Good blog post, but he forgot that Amazon can sell product for almost zero margin for an indefinite time until all their competitors are gone. Other businesses need profits to survive. Amazon apparently can exist indefinitely with no real profits. Their whole purpose is to destroy margin and remove the ability to make a profit from retailing. They're apparently going to destroy all other businesses, and I guess commit suicide when they're the only ones left? I don't know how investors think what Amazon is doing to retail is a good thing, since there's no way to ever make money if your goal is to destroy all margins. Eventually, there's no way any other retailer like Barnes and Noble could survive without making money, but Amazon can. How do you compete against a company which is subsidized by investors who allow it to not make money? I haven't figured it out yet.
Publishers demanded that Amazon use DRM... and now whine that readers are locked in to Kindle because that DRM prevents them from moving those books to a different ebook reader.
Any publisher who wants to can upload DRM-free ebooks to Amazon.
The Justice Department slaps Apple with an antitrust lawsuit for abuse of their iBookstore for negotiating a favoured nation contract with book publishers resulting in the industry switching to an agency model rather than a wholesale model making it possible for other digital booksellers to compete with Amazon.
Amazon strong-arms major publishers, pulling their content from their store unless they accept their truly questionable terms. Amazon is the overwhelmingly dominant digital bookseller and one of the most dominant physical booksellers in America. Justice Department does nothing.
Yeah.
Ok.
Someone bought the right politicians...
Amazon is just your standard psychopathic corporation.
It has no "conscience" and it focused only on making more money. At times this is good or bad for consumers and suppliers.
It exploits workers (good for consumers, bad for workers, good for profits).
It (mostly) exploits suppliers (good for consumers, bad for suppliers, good for profits).
It exploits government tax rules (sales tax, corporate tax, etc.)... (bad for tax revenue, good for consumers in the short term, good for profits)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
As far as I can tell, if it's legal, available, and a little profitable, Amazon will sell you any damned thing they can get their hands on.
They're not overly concerned about what you buy from them, just as long as you do.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't see a problem. I can take any file, convert to MOBI (or use PDF) and upload it to my Kindle or Kindle App. So there's nothing stopping Mr. Stross from selling me his e-books from his own web site, or starting a collective with a bunch of other authors. (SFWA?)
What I interpret him to mean is that he wants to do the same as Amazon, (a) charge me the same price for a file I download as if I bought a hardcover book, and (b) still wrap it in highly restrictive DRM so that having bought it, I don't own it, and my ability to read is at the mercy of whatever DRM configuration they dream up and only as long as they continue to support it.
Take a lesson from the music industry (strange to hear anyone say that!). They tried all sorts of restrictive DRM, but today you can buy a song for a dollar as an unrestricted MP3 where you used to have to buy the CD for $10 or more. Supposedly, they are still making money that way. The price is lower, but purchase is become an impulse thing rather than a big expenditure.
If I buy a paperback off the rack in the drugstore for $8.99, how much is the author getting anyway? Better to sell the ebook for $2 and pocket the majority of that. If Amazon won't give you that deal - sell off your own website.
It's a bit duplicitous to criticize Amazon for using DRM, when the primary reason you wish to sell your book on Amazon is to take advantage of their DRM for your ebook. Non-DRMed books from any source can be converted to work on the Kindles just fine. Set up your own website, sell ebooks there, and retain 100% of the profit. Yeah a lot of people shop on Amazon, but they search with Google, BIng, and Yahoo. If your website is the primary source for your ebooks, it's almost guaranteed to rank in the top 3 search results and people will find it.
Oh, but you want DRM on your ebooks when people read them on a Kindle? Well, just as you have the right to use DRM to restrict what readers do with your ebooks, Amazon has the right to use DRM to restrict how authors sell their books if they want to be readable on a Kindle. Sorry, them's the breaks. Live by DRM, die by DRM. Don't expect me to shed a tear because someone is arbitrarily restricting your options, when that's exactly what you're doing to me.
Tor and Baen don't do DRM. That's a very good start.
There may be others, too, but it's remarkably hard to find out who they are without buying a book to find out you can't read it. Anyone care to contribute to the list?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
But... the guy before me got free bread!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
https://www.createspace.com/pu...
The reality is publishing is a dying business. It used to be that the only way an author could sell to the mass market was by begging publishers to take it to print. Naturally because it limited competition it tremendously benefited big, established authors like Stross. Another unfortunate side effect was that it severely limited books about skeptical topics like debunking paranormal nonsense. It's no accident that in book stores there's usually only a handful of science related books and row upon row of new age spirituality books, because that's what the PUBLISHERS decided was popular. Amazon and other e-publishing platforms changed all that. Now we're seeing an explosion in lower priced books with far more variety than could be conceived before. What Stross is really saying is that people should pay more and have fewer choices about what they pay for. Let's not pretend it's anything other than a cynical ploy to turn people against a system that has so far proven to be far more pro-consumer for his personal gain. Shame on you Mr. Stross, shame on you.
Every light carries a shadow
Publishers, especially Elsevier, deserve a good kicking. They've profited by screwing authors and customers. They've done all in their power to hold back progress, for the sake of their antiquated and extremely inefficient business model. They've crossed the line repeatedly, suing customers, clinging hard to bad logic (copying = stealing, DRM is good and it works). and spewing propaganda based on it.
Authors, whom one might expect to be just a little wiser, a little more in touch with reality, have, with a few notable exceptions, fallen for publisher bull. It's hard to be sympathetic to the struggling authors who insist that their customers stick with dead trees or wear DRM chains because that's the only way they can think to make the system work so they can earn a living. Telling fans that not wearing DRM chains is somehow unfair to authors is a fast way to lose them. That's logic from the same murky depths of religious dogma that says because the Bible is the Word of God, and it says God created the World and everything in it in 7 days, so therefore evolution is false. I talked with a number of authors at a GenCon, and found a mix of denial, despair, and anger over their imagined plight. I was quite disappointed with Nebula Award winning author Ursula LeGuin when she complained about Cory Doctorow over a usage issue. Many of her works are very liberal, and to see that apparently old age has turned her into not just a conservative on this issue, but a wrong-headed one, is sad. Good authors are supposed to be progressive thinkers, supposed to challenge our dogma, our assumptions, and help us take the tints off the glasses through which we all view the world.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Are those my only choices? I mean, Amazon is not a monopoly, because I can buy all that stuff at other places, so that just leaves plain evil. So I guess I am forced in to answering that Amazon is just plain evil?
I have to agree with this, the need for a publisher is disappearing just like the need for a recording label. Stross should self publish and then cut a direct deal with Amazon. He'd probably end up with more money that way.
And if Amazon ends up with over 80% of the market and starts dictating prices, regardless of whether Stross like it or not, then what?
Publishers may be middle-men, but at least there are a few of them so there's some competition from an author's perspective.
Thanks US DoJ, for going after Apple, who could have acted as a counter-force to Amazon, but now can't.
In the simplest terms, markets (in free economic systems) are constantly be reshaped by innovators. The book market is only becoming more efficient and all authors will have to price their wares according to demand, not some artificial pricing structure based on the authors reputation (i.e. I wouldn't value something ghost written for Hillary Clinton or Al Franken as toilet paper).
Metastasized.
Fixed that for 'ya.
Other than that -- Amazon, they sell MTB tires, I discovered today,
by way of a Google link.
Still trying to figure out why that gave me an uneasy feeling.
I may in fact concur.
This "psychopathic tendency" that you speak of is really just business as usual. Its completely normal for businesses to be ruthless, psychotic, psychopathic, murderous, malevolent, greedy, lying, and manipulative. They even break laws whenever they can, so long as it benefits them or harms others. That's all 'just business'. And since corporations are people, and money is speech, we need laws to prevent these entities from causing harm to society. Business people will argue otherwise, but I believe the APA behaviors of the company affect the people who work at them.
Amazon is not close to being a monopoly; they sell about 30% of all books.
Another issue is that of course Amazon wants to keep authors writing new books. Without a good flow of new titles Amazon won't sell as much and their business will decline.
What Amazon does want is a larger share of the profits in the book market. A good part of this is Kindle of course. Getting customers hooked on Kindle vs physical books is a big deal.
Take a look at Amazon's patent history. First, they kill Barnes and Noble with one of the most obvious and trivial patents ever issued, the infamous 1-click patent, and now they've patented a photo on a white background. Very nice. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
There are already far more books "out there" than one person could ever read. Adding to that pile is more of a marketing feat than it is filling a need (apart from the author's need to make money).
The same applies to TV programmes. We have many more channels broadcasting repeats than we get new material. In percentage terms most programmes have been broadcast before - either a day or two before, or months / year before (and in the case of Friends or some other "channel stuffing" series, are broadcast on many channels, multiple times per day and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
So what's the point in making more? Either TV or books. The amount we have seems to be sufficient for our needs, and if we ever get bored with the constant repeats on TV, we could always pick up a novel ... a 50 or 100 year old novel. AKA "a classic".
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Yes. You're right. Let's halt all cultural progress because you have all the books you'd ever want to read. Fuck new authors!
Yeah, that's right. If you write a book when you're 20 years old, it will probably *still* be solely, wholly, and completely yours, including all interpretations and derivative works, for ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS.
Even at Amazon's low wages, we (the people) have granted you 150 years to earn that living. Perhaps you would like to re-negotiate the terms on both sides of this agreement?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
RTFA. They won't sell you books from publishers they're trying to fuck over.
Cory Doctorow is quite successful and he's thus far refused to jump on the DRM band wagon. On the contrary, all his books are available under a Creative Commons license, and I think part of his success is due to this. Personally I'm much more likely to support an author who believes in freedom of information and I have happily bought some of his books to give away to friends, a while after I had read freely available versions on some electronic device.
My new KoboGlo is far better e-reader with no DRM for $20 more than the Kindle. You lose, Kindle :)
http://www.kobo.com/koboglo#ov...
...the Singularity is near and will eat Amazon, too.
There's already tons more people on the Earth than you could meet in a lifetime. Should your parents have bothered having you?
The Amazon store certainly makes it easy to buy an ebook, and it has an advantage in that it's built into the Kindle. However, it is certainly possible to get ebooks from other sources. What is stopping the publishers from simply refusing to sell through Amazon? It's not *that* hard to install a book from somewhere other than Amazon on a Kindle. I mean, things are tough all over for mid-list authors, and have been for a long time. But if George RR Martin were to sell his next book exclusively through his web site, I'm sure his fans would jump through whatever minor hoops they needed to to get his book.
I'm sorry, but when books are priced significantly higher in Canada than the US for no reason but that 'they can be', I have no lover for publishers or the 'old system' that made/makes this possible. And if an author is any good, there are many ways, many people, & many avenues to get a book out to readers who will pay a 'reasonable amount' for said book (let's say $1.50). No author is owed millions of dollars or an extremely comfortable living just because they write a book. If an author is truly any good, he/she will make money, it won't be several millions of dollars & they might actually have to be fairly prolific to ensure a steady stream of income, but gee, the rest of us have to work daily, have daily output from our jobs to make good money so we can live reasonably well off. No one deserves anything from anyone else, especially for 'self created output'. Price books at a reasonable price & there won't be any problems, DRM would be entirely unnecessary.
So the current party line is that record companies are bad but book publishers are good. The record and publishing industries will have to content themselves with lower profits simply because the costs of digital distribution is orders of magnitude less than the physical distribution of plastic and paper. The starving artist conundrum has always been with us it and has little to do with technology. Writing books, performing music, acting or painting have never been a path to wealth for the vast majority of practitioners . Perhaps the greatest of American writers Herman Melville and Edger Allan Poe both died broke. Write books because you have something to say not because you expect fortune.
I've noticed that some sci-fi publishers on Amazon are offering ebooks that are DRM-free. It's not Amazon forcing it, the listings explicitly say it's DRM-free on behalf of the publisher's request. These ebooks don't have to be sold on Amazon. Give people an alternative and show them how to use it. You can email an ebook to a Kindle, publishers or authors could have their own site where the customer provides that email address, and there you go. Nook probably has the same thing, if it's still being sold.
I like Stross's stories, but I also like my Kindle Paperwhite. This reminds me of the television wars where innocent subscribers end up losing access to networks while the mega-corps battle each other over contracts. Here's hoping hostage-taking doesn't spill over into book distribution.
Charlie's a smart guy who knows the publishing trade inside and out, and I generally agree with him. But to keep this entirely in perspective, let's keep in mind Amazon's dispute is with Hachette, which is Charlie's publisher, with whom he has a very friendly relationship. He's not an impartial observer, even as an author.
Amazon big screw-up with the Kindle was completely missing the big takeoff of crowdfinding sites like kickstarter.com.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/...
"Authors are choosing to crowdfund their work, and there are now options for them on which platform to use. The question is: Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Pubslush? To explore the pros and cons of those platforms, I interviewed a successful author from each of them to find out why they chose it and how they succeeded....
Amazon Kindle & DRM strategy needed to end up with authors completely dependent on the Amazon for their income. Amazon either missed the birth or takeoff of crowdfunding sites for as a new important revenue source for creative occupations.
An entire generation of Americans (generally, but also many non-Americans) who've either forgotten the past (and the most-basic lessons of security) or who've never been educated have fallen into the dual traps of "the cloud" and "digital distribution". If YOU do not control the storage of YOUR stuff then it's not really your stuff at all. Too many people are going for convenience and surrendering total control - and then they get upset by the absolutely predictable obvious down-sides. Don't want to have and store your own physical DVDs and books? Ok, let Netflix and Amazon do that for them - but then DON'T complain when they lock you down, manipulate your access, manipulate the prices, charge you lots of little "fees" and lock "your" content to their devices etc.
The ENTIRE POINT of the microcomputer revolution of the 70's and 80's was to show people that they could have total ownership of thier computer hardware and software and complete control of their data storage and archives. We all celebrated that big businesses like DEC and IBM were no longer able to control ours data and rent it back to us. It's very sad to see one generation of lazy idiots reverse an entire revolution and run into the arms of corporate big brothers who've come up with a few fluffy buzzwords. If your data is "in the cloud", it's NOT your data anymore and it's absolutely NOT secure (the FIRST principle of data security is that you control the hardware and ALL access to it). As for streaming media and E-books .... it's like the diff between being a homeowner and a renter; the one has a home and the other is only deluding himself; he owns NOTHING and the rent can go up, or he can be evicted at any time.
Yeah a lot of people shop on Amazon, but they search with Google, BIng, and Yahoo.
For media content, and even commodity manufactured items like guitar pedals and toasters, I search at Amazon. It's the easiest way to get a description and picture of the item, and sometimes the reviews are even helpful.
When using a search engine, mostly what you get for media and consumer products is offers to sell it. That only adds a step in the search. Easier to just go to Amazon. Once I've found it there I can use my wishlists to remember it and camelcamelcamel to tell me if it goes on sale.
. . . I fully agree with everything he says.
Read Simon Head's latest book for the Amazon lowdown (Mindless), but recall that Jeff Bezos, besides attending those yearly meetings with the international finance and banksters doods, the Bilderbergers, was also with that famous junk bond firm, and when he went to Wall Street for more reinvestment in Amazon some years back, he claimed that they then had a global market reach, when in actuality Bezos was shipping random books to random Euro addresses and eating the damage. (Plus, there is that CIA cloud contract . . . )
Here's a newer "hard" science fiction work (http://www.amazon.com/The-Alchemists-of-Mars-ebook/dp/B008AZ5NTK) that hasn't gotten any traction on Amazon for two reasons; 1) Amazon wants authors to price their ebooks at $0.99, so many do, and these are the ones that are sold. 2) There's a lot of very good content available for free on the Internet (For some real fantasy, read some of the many "proofs" of the Riemann hypothesis on arXiv).
Stross seems to take Hachette's side of the fight with Amazon. Some other authors see it differently:
One author/publisher's take, and another's view.
Typical dialog from "artists" who think that the entire economy should be stacked in their favor, and when they find out it isn't, whine about how something evil is behind it. Guess what buddy, you're no different then anybody else. When the distributor is bigger than the supplier, the supplier get's squeezed. Only an author/artist would think that their amazing "work of art" is somehow so important that the supply chain should twist itself to accommodate their notions of how valuable their work is. You make widgets, your widgets happen to be books. You can either sell them to big retailers or not. You will get rich or not. But your whining will not change the economic landscape.
Fixed that for you.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
I think Amazon&Kindle is great for finding authors, especially self-published authors that I'd never have found otherwise. Or even new books from authors I do like - because I'm not going to sign up to 100 newsletters to find out when the next book is.
Sure, quite a bit of self-published stuff is dross, but the 10% sample feature (usually) allows me to weed them out.
I can understand that other people may have different points of view and find the occasional typo, grammatical error or bad typesetting upsettings.
But OTOH, self-pub is often less than 50% of the price of a traditional book, and when you read ~150 books a year, that makes a difference.
Yes
As a life long reader and book buyer, this is of more than passing interest to me. I've been reading a book, (i.e. "The Wal-Mart Effect" by Charles Fishman), which details the true cost of "low prices" that Wal Mart constantly advertises as their chief virtue.
There's a chapter in Fishman's book about a businessman, Jim Wier, who was the CEO of Snapper riding lawn mowers. He ran a company called Simplicity which bought Snapper in 2002 - or somewhere thereabouts. At that time, Snapper was selling 20 percent of their production to Wal Mart. The "problem" was that Wal Mart was constantly pressuring Snapper to lower their prices - to the point that Snapper would either have to compromise the quality of their mowers or make virtually no profit in order to continue selling to Wal Mart. Mr. Wier "ran the numbers" and came to the startling realization that you can go broke as a high volume supplier to Wal Mart, literally making no profit on huge volume. Accordingly, he made the tough decision to pull the plug on Wal Mart. (The chapter of the book is entitled: "The Man Who Said No to Wal Mart".) Interestingly, Wal Mart has done this same thing to other suppliers - including Vlasic pickles and orange juice suppliers. They've wrung all the profit out of the business while simultaneously running the supplier out of business!
Reading about Amazon.com and the squeeze they're putting on publishers, it looks like Amazon is adopting Wal-Mart style tactics to the book publishing business. The only way I can see for authors to combat this would be to form a kind of "authors union" of some sort which would not deal with Amazon at all. In effect, they (and their publishers) would do the same thing Jim Weir did to Wal Mart - just say no.
He's full of it. Charles Stross is an excellent writer, whom I will seek out and read. If he's not on Kindle/Amazon at some reasonable price THEN I WON'T BUY FROM AMAZON. Its just like you say here with buying a paperback, I will buy an iPad or whatever the heck it takes to get Charlie's books.
The TRUE analogy here would be ESPN and Comcast. Every so often ESPN TELLS COMCAST how much they're paying for their channel, AND COMCAST PAYS IT. So, Charles, this is what you do, you tell Amazon what you ARE GOING TO GET for a royalty, and they will pass it on to me, or someone else will. Its just that simple.
Honestly, I don't see how Amazon has more or less leverage than any other publisher has ever had. Publisher's have a good bit of weight in the market and they pretty well dictate what up-and-coming authors are going to get (and hint, it was always crap in case you forgot Chuck). However when you're Charles Stross or Steven King, etc then you pretty much have the shoe on your foot and do the kickin'. Just like Ace is going to suck it up and pay a nice advance and a good royalty or else you'll go to Tor, so Amazon will to or else you'll go to Apple.
As time goes on this becomes less and less of a problem as well because eReaders are now pretty much a generic hardware commodity and little private walled-gardens like Apple and Kindle are really fairly silly. The whole book technology stack just isn't that daunting, In a week a guy like me can have a publisher up and running with an app that will let their customers pay for and access ebooks over the net. Yes, Amazon is big and they are slick and they'll always be an attractive marketplace, but the barriers to entry are now too low to let them rake everyone over the coals and get high monopoly rents.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
If all the authors go out of business because they can't make a living and have to get day jobs then Amazon has no new books to sell. So Amazon has a vested interest in keeping at least some authors afloat. It may well be that Amazon can do without Stross, however, and a great many other authors. But creating an environment in which nobody bothers to write books anymore isn't in Amazon's best interest.
Amazon fights against eBook publishers who charge usurious rates for their eBooks, with prices often higher than hardcovers... and Amazon is the bad guy here? I'm confused. And a little tired of paying $16 for an eBook when the hardcover costs $12.
He should self publish and distribute them himself if he feels "You probably want to read NEW books".
I get all my used books through Amazon and I am thrilled with that.
From Jerry Pournelle, "In my case I get a reasonable income from eBook sales, but of that, 90% comes from Amazon, and only 10% from all its competitors combined. Amazon is the 800 lb. gorilla here. I have to say that Amazon has acted very fairly with authors: three months after an eBook is posted on Amazon, they begin to pay monthly royalties, and they continue to pay monthly, not just after credible threat of lawsuit. Of course they pay it to the publisher. Now if that publisher – the one who posted it on Amazon – is me or my agent, as it is whenever our contracts allow that, the money comes directly to me. If it goes to one of the Big Five publishers, they collect the money, and collect the money, and collect the money, and after a year they send a check for the amounts collected during the period of one year to six months ago; then they wait six months to send any more. Sorry. I’m getting off the subject. But the point is that Amazon has publicly said that one of their goals in the book selling business is to keep authors happy. I do not believe that any of the Big Five publishers has that as a goal."
Everyone talks about how great more competition is. They rail about industries like music and movies adapting to the new digital world. Amazon started small as a mail order business online. People liked it and bought things. Amazon expanded into other industries and the competition helped to lower prices.
The problem with publishers is they think that a new release ebook should still cost $18-$24 even though they don't have to print, store, or ship any physical copies of them. They justified prices of hardcover new releases in the past by going on and on about the cost of the physical materials and printing. So when they could sell copies of the books without all of that extra cost why didn't they charge less for the electronic version?
Good for Amazon if they can force those greedy publishers to change their business practice or fail. That is what competition in a free market is. Companies work to get customers by giving them the best value they can. Paying $20 for an ebook isn't a value to anyone except the publisher and author. When the books go to soft cover they cost $7.99 to $11.99 in a book store. That used to be what they charged for the ebook version as well when it wasn't a new release only available in hard cover. Once again why didn't they pass any of those savings on to the consumer? Because they didn't have any competition so they didn't have to. Now they want everyone to feel bad for them because they didn't adapt their business practices to the market.
I don't want a single source for anything. That just makes prices go up. The sole source will decide to take a bigger cut. Customer service will suffer because there is nowhere else to go. In the digital age authors shouldn't need a huge publishing house. In the past they were there to put the money forward to get the book printed and distributed. We don't need that as much anymore. Anyone can write and release a book online. If that book is profitable and popular they shouldn't have any trouble getting the book made and distributed. When you can market and sell directly to anyone in the world with the internet you don't need a middle man to step in and get his share. That is the bottom line of digital distribution. That business model is not valid anymore.
If you want to get upset at monopolies get mad at the Apple store or the other mobile stores. They take 30% of every sale and 30% of every extra in app purchase. That is a monopoly and abusive business practice. Taking nearly a 1/3 of every purchase and not allowing any competition is something the government would have come down hard on 40 years ago. It's something that organized crime would have been proud to call their own. Amazon doesn't take near that much. If you want to rage at something being unfair, get mad at those guys.
So it sits there. Unpublished by anyone. I'll never know if nobody likes it until I hit the go button. But I'm also scared to learn that I suck at something I enjoy doing.
I went through a similar process to yours, with agents liking (but not taking) my novel. My wife has won literary awards for works agents wouldn't take because they couldn't see her stories becoming best sellers. Not just doing well (which they admitted they would do), but becoming best sellers! The entire publisher/agent thing is a bad joke on creative talent. These self appointed gatekeepers of our culture often miss the next big thing and are rarely looking for a new, different voice despite what they claim, but rather the next celebrity ghostwritten tripe where they can make a quick buck.
I can relate to your fear of rejection...I share it...but I'd encourage you to go for it. Make sure your book is professionally edited and proofread (this is absolutely critical, and far too many self-published authors don't do this). While you're doing that, figure out a promotional strategy. For example, line up bookstores in your area for signings, create a presence on goodreads, participate in book fairs, lit fests, and conventions applicable to your genre, etc.
Don't be too disappointed if you don't sell a ton of copies (it is very hard to get noticed), and don't measure yourself on that...measure yourself on how well people enjoy your work. That is the real metric on how well you write, and how good your work is. My novel Autonomy received all kinds of good reviews (from people I've never met!), but it's still not a "best seller." Just put your edited, polished work out there and if those who read it love it, then you don't "suck at something" you enjoy. Quite the opposite.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Publishers are evil and powerful. They lobby, they manipulate public opinion, they get lousy IP legislation passed, and they rob authors and customers alike. Politicians are scared of publishers because they have so much power. If Amazon manages to destroy publishers and the current business model of publishers, we all win.
Let Amazon work at destroying publishers a little longer. We can still figure out what to do with Amazon after the publishers are gone.
And what are our needs? If it's merely "something to put in front of our eyes for momentary distraction", sure, there's more than enough. If it's "something that speaks to the human condition as it exists today, that evokes an aesthetic experience, that's a different matter.
Also, of course, there is the joy and reward of having created something. I hope to sell a lot of copies of my book, but even if it never sells more that 100 copies I learned a tremendous amount in the process of writing it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Are those the only two choices?
Some books are classic because they stood the test of time and are still enjoyable to read and possibly have something valuable to say. Sometimes I think most books are 'classic' because people think they should have found them enjoyable and edifying, rather than actually did find them so....
I think I may never have been more disappointed than when I finally read "From the Earth to the Moon."
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It's an irony that the once-powerful book publishing companies that lobbied for the "insane" idea of copyright will finally cease to exist soon. They were dinosaurs. Now this weird combination of Amazon (running on a basis of OSS-licensing, which uses copyright against itself), trade-secrets (their software is not available), and DRM (no need for copyright there) supersedes them.
One possible result is fewer industries have a need to maintain copyright (yay), though usually because something much worse and monopolistic replaces it. Now it's just Disney & Friends that want copyright. There's also music studios, though I expect them to go like the book publishers soon.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
This is nonsense. Amazon lets me read reviews of books and preview them before I buy them so I know what books I actually do want to read. I don't have the time to hunt down the perfect book at in the limited bookstore selection. I can quickly find and explore new books with Amazon and I can easily buy a digital copy and read it at my convenience. Amazon has got me reading more than I ever have before and I'm sure I can't be the only one to say that.
Amazon help fill a gaping hole in digital book delivery that publishers couldn't figure out themselves. They're not the bad guy for innovating while the publishing companies sat trying to protect their own delivery monopolies and fighting digitization of content. Amazon is what it is because the innovated and changed an industry.
Another reason this is nonsense is Amazon makes money on selling books. If author's aren't publishing books then Amazon isn't making money. They aren't going to choke their revenue stream to the point where people just don't publish books anymore. That just wouldn't make any financial sense now would it.
Also, have they stopped beating their wife yet?
It's not just Amazon. Back about 1985, James Madison University's associated hospital got a "cancer center". By 1988, the hospital had tripled in size. By 1992, I saw cancer centers at hospitals throughout the state. By 1998, most hospitals had tripled in size.
Then the other specialist centers started popping up.
But it's also in education. It's in research. It's in banking. It's in central banking. It's in real estate. It's in investment houses. It's in computer software.
And yes, it HAS metastasized.
Let me name it for what it is: chesterton professionalism. When justice fails, then people learn that they can get paid only for doing the opposite of their job, and holding society hostage. When each group learns how to do that, then they take over thir profession, and the cancer has just spread to another organ.
It
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Amazon was once a book seller, now they are evolving into a publisher. They just do not rely on paper, and ink. Should they become a monopoly no, but they are big and powerful because they give the customer what they want. Publishers do not. I greatly tire of paying $200-$300 dollars for a thin paperback textbook for school. Every evolution has bumps, I will gladly take the bad with the good. I am sorry for your issues, but have you thought of approaching amazon directly to sell your books? Perhaps they will cut you a better, more profitable deal. Or are you like another well known writer that does not believe in the evil electronic books, and will fade into oblivion like the T Rex one day..
Is Chuckie Stross a drooling imbecile, or just a retard?
"hard for publishers—who are a proxy for authors" I don't see the validity in that statement. As NPR Moneywatch points out, authors have never gotten such a lion's share of the revenue. Any author who want's to sell his book to customers as a PDF can. The buyer could put it on his kindle if he wants. The walled garden is only a foot high. I had much more trouble scaling Apple's walled garden.
God forbid the market is competitive.
Look, Amazon is not a monopoly. They might be a large market share holder, but they have competition:
B&N
iBooks
Google Play Books
Kobo
Smashwords
The problem is that Amazon is doing a better job than all of them. They are selling 90% of the eBooks. I am not sure about the print books. The other companies aren't doing anything different. They are using DRM. If you buy ebooks through them, you are pretty much locked into using their app.
Amazon is making plenty of money off of indie authors and they don't need publishers. So this is not bullying. It is simply business.
Why should Amazon add books that will make them less money?
In what business does that make sense?
It is time that authors realize that publishers are no longer what they once were. Why?
1. Good editors are everywhere and cost $2000 or less.
2. Good book cover designers are everywhere and cost $500 or less.
3. Good print layout designer are $500 or less.
4. Good publicist/marketer is $500 a month ($6k a year)
5. Distribution is easy. Now distribution is done online through all the stores I just mentioned. The last remaining distribution channels that publishers have are brick and mortar stores (which are declining) and libraries, which are now including the ability to checkout eBooks, even from indie authors.
So publishers are realizing that their only value are these:
1. One time upfront cash infusion (cost of editor/cover/print layout)
2. They can send an email to their large contact list.
3. A sense of quality.
If an author builds their own contact list, then #2 is canceled out. That means all a publisher is anymore is one time service. Why would any author give up 80% to 90% of profits for nothing more than a one time service? Hire your own editor, your own cover artist and your publicist. You pay $9k and you own 100% of your work. You get %70 from all eBook sales on amazon.
The final feature, quality, is not going to last. Indie authors can write quality. Check out this: http://scififantasyreaders.com...
Pretty soon, there were be quality standards that indies follow. What will be left of the publishers? If they don't change and adapt, they will all go out of business and only their names in the books they once printed will remain.
Neither. But I expect that you might be both.
Stross is a Bitcoin hater, so I could give a toss what that fossil thinks. Doctorow isn't much better, with his "Haunted Mansion" obsession and blogging about Disney every other day. We get it, you had this wonderful privileged childhood. Now please, shut your trap about Disney, who is a massive copyright abuser, because your child-like efforts support their monopolistic practices.
That is the problem with some authors, they lead these sheltered existences, completely detached from the reality of regular working life, so they tend to fashion their own mental bubbles where the universe makes sense through their distorted reality filter. All they have to do is sit cloistered at their writing machine of choice, and cobble together 25,000 words or so.
In short, screw them and the horse they wrote themselves to ride in on.
No. Just ask an indie author now making a living!
Welcome to the future that you write so much about Mr. Stross...
BTW. This is something musicians and videographers have had to deal with for over a decade now...
Yes, as the channels of distribution become free and readily accessible from anywhere in the world, YOUR monopoly of publishing houses is no longer necessary. And yes, you might have to get a (better) paying job as well as write books.
"You have to go the heart of the WalMart." (It's behind the plasma screen television).
Season Eight - Episode Nine of South Park
Tracy Johnson
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BT
Not all authors will agree with that, having someone take care of the business while a writer focuses on writing has value.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
The good thing about digital distrubution is its a lot cheeper hard copyies and its marker any one can jump into
..when Amazon is both ?
No they're not. Explain how you came to this conclusion. Please reference your sources.
-Reddit
It's hard to take this comment as anything other than mild trolling, even if it's unintentional.
Is Amazon a Malignant Monopoly, Or Just Plain Evil?
The question is disqualified on the grounds of being viciously leading.
Or, to put this in more common language, any argument starting with this much bias is nothing more than worthless propaganda.
Let an author release first book in public domain. If readers really like that work, there will be enough fans to fund the next work which can again be released in public domain (as it has already been paid for).
Had this model been an ancient and well established old model of publishing all works of art there was never a need of IP or any domain other than public domain.
Publishers that can't make money don't sign authors. Authors that can't get published get day jobs and you never see their books. THat leaves only old stuff, and absolutely nothing new, and no motivation for authors to write anything but cheezy "womens pxxn" setting the bar so low we'll become a nation of complete and total dumasses...
One pint for being a damned good SF author whose ink-on-paper books I've enjoyed.
Second pint for being a clear thinker and vocal speaker on this - and many other - points.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"