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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.'"
While publishers are middlemen, at least they are at least some level of quality control. As an Amazon top reviewer, I get several times a week solicitations to review a book self-published through Amazon, and the vast majority of these are appallingly bad -- mispellings and grammatical errors abound, the typesetting is goofy, and in terms of style these authors could not write themselves out of a paper bag. An established publisher would reject the majority of these, saving consumers the time spent finding out that they are dreck, and for the small minority of authors with fledgling talent, there would be an editor who could propose changes for the better.
Furthermore, the publishers also provide some level of advertising. Often the books I am asked to review are hyped through a marketing agency that the author had to hire at his own expense, and considering how unreadable some of these books are, I highly doubt the authors will make enough money back to compensate for what they paid on marketing. For the vast majority of authors, the new economy is just money down the drain with nothing to show for it compared to the old model.
Stross's novels are an extrapolation of contemporary science and culture into various futures. As a geek, you should be able to recognize the beginnings of Stross's fantasies--crypto currencies, IT culture, malware, MMORPGs, maker culture, -- and laugh as these trends are taken to their logical conclusion in the various universes he has devised.
Now, I seek out and read hard SF. The trouble with classic works of this subgenre, (the vast bulk of which is still under copyright protection) is that it becomes obsolete. For instance, take the Bussard Ramjet-- a relativistic spaceship that was (at least for the time)theoretically possible without breaking physical laws. The Bussard Ramjet enabled a host of authors, most notably Poul Anderson, to write stories about Relativistic Time (twin paradoxes, and the like) But IIRC, the fuel density in the interstellar medium is insufficient for the Bussard scheme to work. So all those stories suffer from a patina of obsolescence.
To avoid this, it's necessary to acquaint yourself with the writers of the here and now. Stross is one such writer.
I can't believe this was modded up. Just because there are plenty of good old titles doesn't mean one shouldn't read new titles. Following your logic nobody should bother writing at all. Let's just give it all up.
Talk about drivel. Your post has it in spades.
Publishers don't just put the ink to the paper, they also do other things like edit the books. As a slashdot reader, you're probably unfamiliar with what editors actually do, so the confusion is understandable.
CR, you've turned this into a "paper vs ebook" argument, but I think you miss Strosss point: Amazon's monopolistic stranglehold on distribution forces the price down which puts publishers out of business. This results in Amazon being the dominant publisher, working directly with authors. But it also allows Amazon to dictate to authors what they will pay, just as they did with the traditional publishers. This is not "free market", it is a monopoly no less than Microsoft was, and it's not good for consumer choice.
Second point: It may not seem like it here at Slashdot, but the desire to have and to hold and to read "real" books is not dead. Certain segments of the current generation might feel that way, but I don't see it. The bookstores in my town are always busy, the library in my town is always busy, and many of the books (of the so-called "dead tree" variety) are often on hold by several library patrons before I get to check them out. I suppose you're going to say "What a quaint idea! To check out a book!", but many people still enjoy the experience of turning pages...
I know I'm probably the minority, but when I buy a technical book in electronic form, I immediately print it out and put it in a three-ring binder, much easier to locate what I'm interested and flip back and forth between sections... And here's the high-tech sacrilege: I print them out single-sided with wide margins. I use the blank side for notes...
Now get off my lawn.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Many authors would rather write than worry about finding and paying for editing, proof reading, cover art, advertising, promotional travel, etc. They are capable of it, but would rather spend their time doing what they do best, which is write. Also, they would rather work under contract with some guaranteed income rather than shoulder all the risk themselves.
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.