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Amazon Dispute Now Making Movies Harder To Order
trazom28 writes: Hachette books aren't the only products that are now harder to order on Amazon — the online retailer is going after movies, too. Amazon has turned off the preorder function for DVDs of prominent Warner Bros. films as it seeks to raise pressure on the company during negotiations. The Lego Movie, for example, is listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon. Set for release in the home video marketplace on June 17, there is no option to place a preorder."
To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.
I see that I can preorder The Lego Movie in the Amazon UK website, with a release date on July 21, so looks like this is limited to the US market.
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
Just saying....
;-)
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This may be a reasonable as a negotiating tactic, but one of the things that has lead Amazon to a position of prominence is that it seemed like just about anything a person wanted was available for purchase. If this ceases to be true, Amazon risks alienating customers. There may not be a good online one-stop-shop alternative now, but the more they distance their customers the more they open up the possibility for others to come in and fill the void.
Oh noes! How shall I be entertained!
As oppose to book publishers that want you to pay the same for an ebook as a hard copy?
It's easier to just go through life when you realize that ALL companies are evil, vile companies and they are all out to maximize THEIR profits at the expense of others.
If publishers and distributors don't want to deal with Amazon, don't do business with them. Amazon's not the only ecommerce site on the internet. Yes you may lose sales from people who want to buy it on Amazon but can't. But Amazon also loses the sale. And if people want your product, if you make it easy for them to get it elsewhere they'll still get it. If I REALLY wanted to go buy The Lego Movie and Wal-Mart didn't have it, I'd go to Best Buy. Or Target. Or some other store. This is no different.
Fortunately, torrents are not subject to contract disputes.
Amazon, Warner, Hachette and others seem determined to drive everyone to torrents.
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
for the 2 disc blu ray with the Ultraviolet digital copy
you can even pre-order it but the shipping is a little slower. or just stop by store during lunch or after work
I'm fairly sure the customer is.
..is for picking up freshly-released movies. Don't have to wait for the postman. Just drive up, park in the mostly empty parking lot, go into the mostly-empty store, pay your monies, go home, stick in player, relax.
With all that empty, though, I can't think BB will be around much longer..
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Not everybody has a 25-40 mbit connection for good quality video streaming.
what happens if your internet goes out?
what if i don't want to turn on my macbook or PC to stream movies to my apple TV all the time
what if i don't want to buy a SAN and spend time ripping movies and paying the electric bill for it being on all the time
what if i want to see the best quality on my HD TV
The more evil they are, the more I punish them by lack of patronage. If everyone did this, all corporations would be good.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Love the childish condescending tone. Some of us actually like to OWN what we buy. If I like a movie I will get in DVD/blu-ray because I don't have to worry about the cloud, licensing, proprietary this or that, some clause on the 37th page on the EULA etc. Shockers... I even still buy CDs for music for the same reason.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
https://www.stallman.org/amazo...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Yeah, those jerks must like quality or something.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
With Hachette, I think Amazon is trying to ... crush is not the right word ... but marginalize marginalize traditional publishers. Amazon already has a jumbo-sized self-publishing business for small and independent writers, but less well known is Amazon's publishing business, http://www.apub.com/ . The tin-foil hat wearing me says that Amazon might be squeezing the publisher in order to get at the writers, either for self-publishing or to build up APub. I.e., Amazon might be trying to eliminate the middle man in a play to get at all the revenue in the book trade, save that which goes to writers and printers (for dead tree versions).
The full on conspiracy theorist side of me says that the scary thing is that, if Amazon does become something like a traditional publisher with a stable of writers, other retailers will have to buy stock from their largest competitor.
That's the bit that sends shivers up my spine.
With Warner, it seems different. I don't think Amazon wants to make blockbusters; something else is at play. It could be that Amazon senses blood in the water since the physical media business, while lucrative, is slipping away. Maybe, just maybe, Amazon is trying to squeeze Warner on physical media in order to get favourable terms on streaming or digital sales. 48 hours of availability ahead of iTunes? 2 weeks of availability ahead of Netflix?
Dear God! I can't get in my preorder for the Lego movie? Oh, the humanities!
The fact that this is a problem says a lot more about our society than it does about either Amazon or Warner Brothers.
Proverbs 21:19
Actually, there is a good online one-stop-shop available: Google (other search engines are available). If I want a book, DVD or pretty much anything else I Google to see who has it available and at what price. If Amazon don't, hey, I probably won't even notice; I'll be busy comparing price and delivery options for the companies that do.
Even better - get same-day delivery if you happen to be in a GSX market. Even more limited supply than Amazon, but same-day has resulted in some pretty awesome results when it comes to almost-forgotten last-minute birthday/anniversary gifts :)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Sure, but it's Amazon's right to try and get better prices for their consumers. And Hachette has a right to tell Amazon to get bent. And it's equally the rights of the consumer to tell Amazon to get bent, stop the Wal-Mart style strong-arming of suppliers and buy from more respecting shops. But this is America where people are only concerned about the almighty dollar and instant gratification, so they will instead continue to buy from Amazon and Wal-Mart who ultimately decimate the local economy. (full disclosure: I buy from Amazon occasionally, but more often shop at my local brick and mortar book stores)
Movies, books, boardgames, etc. are usually 50%-75% off by then. Sometimes more.
I might pop forward to present time for a very few select items.
But I stopped buying DVD's every week when they came out back around 2002.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yesss...yesss...feel the power of the Dark Side flowing through you...hate those who would defy you...squeeze your suppliers, force them to cut costs, wages and benefits in order to remain profitable. Make them in turn go to even cheaper sources for low-quality parts and materials. Soon you will join me by my side and together we will rule both retail and online and crush any so-called worldwide labor movement!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
what happens if your internet goes out? - Except for occasional phone home, you can play content offline that is stored on your Mac or PC from iTunes.
what if i don't want to turn on my macbook or PC to stream movies to my apple TV all the time -- You don't have to. The Apple TV can stream TV and Movies from your device directly. If you have iTunes match, the same is true for music.
For me it's about avoiding the storage space of physical media. I have a lot of DVDs and some blu-ray (mostly for 3d content) and it's getting to be a hassle to save space. I saw the big reduction with ebooks and it just makes sense to store everything on an external hard drive now. I can download most of it again from iTunes and I also have a backup on a second hard drive through Time Machine.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I don't need Amazon. When I want to buy it - I go as far upstream as I can.
No need to have more hands touching the product, adding actual if not communicated costs.
Why isn't this a losing strategy for Amazon in this bullying?
Have you examined the pattern of misprints? Maybe they're there to uniquely identify your copy of the e-book. That way, if the text pops up on a torrent stream, you can expect a knockin'-at-the-door.
It's even easier when you realize no company is evil. or good.
They are companies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I grew up the days where most kids would be down the record store every saturday to pick up that weeks "top 40" leaflet and spend their pocket money on singles. At one time I had a couple of hundred vinyl albums and a stack of singles, then everything went digital and I collected 100 or so CD's. Once the CD's took over it became almost impossible to buy needles for my turntable so there was some overlap in the CD/Vinyl titles. I love music more than most people my age but I haven't bought a single track this century, I mainly listen to radio/CD when in the car, and my old vinyls via a "full album" search on youtube when at home.
Personally I've never seen the point in owning a movie, once I've seen it I normally have no urge to see it again for another decade or so. Most movies that I have bought or been given in the past I've simply given to someone else after having watched it. I know that sharing physical media is an anti-capitalist thing to do but somehow I just can't feel ashamed about doing it.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Then why are paperbacks usually cheaper than hardbacks? Of the same story, I mean.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
And other things, like resale value and secondary markets. If you remove that sort of stuff, the price should drop accordingly. The same is also true of other media.
...
To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Seems like we've moved beyond the Wild West days on the net, and now we're in the Robber Barron stage...
The more evil they are, the more I punish them by lack of patronage. If everyone did this, all corporations would be good.
s/all corporations would be good/nobody would ever be able to buy anything/
I have a teensy bit of experience simply writing little stories I send to friends. Word processing: I've used Wordperfect, MS Word of various versions, and now use Open Office. Pretty much they are all pretty good with what-you-see-is-what-you-get. I'm old enough to have used a TRS-80 with their word processing program. How would you like only being able to see 1/3 of the screen width and have to move the screen cursor left and right to read anything.
Back to the modern era. You would think that moving an MS Word or Open Office document back and forth would be simple. Nope. Changes are made. Or, cutting and pasting into gmail or yahoo mail and sending it. Nope, changes are made (gmail loves to double a blank line into to two blank lines when have a blank line at the end a chunk of text, for some reason). Fonts, font sizes, colors, and don't get me started on automated correction.
I've investigated self publishing, Lulu is the big simple one. There are quite a few that will host your fiction on their site. Alert! Read the fine print; on a lot of those sites you could end up giving away ownership, or publishing rights etc.* Anyway, investigation into those also show a lot of hinky things come up. Basically, you would think that with text, it would/should be so easy to send then a document, or a pdf, and what you send is what you get. But, the technology and software seems to butt up with proprietary issues, or maybe just bad or hunky software somewhere.
I figure, I have put in my 10,000 hours becoming good at writing. Now, do I have to put in 10,000 hours becoming good at doing what publishers used to do? And, of course, Lulu and a many of the other self publishing sites will sell you packages, programs to help you along, or you can pay an editor...
This has been going on for ages. Several times in the 70's and 80's I submitted stories to what looked like legit site, and what I got was advertising brochures about the products they sold to help you break into being a published author. I was smart enough to only fall for that twice!
New business model: the new internet age publisher, who does all that for the writers (not really).
I think what it comes down to is automation is wonderful, if the tech is mature, and if it is "broad" enough to encompass everything thrown at. We aren't there yet.
* Not to mention auto-correct, --sometimes I want to invent a word, or use the English (UK) spelling for a colour vs color, censoring issues, etc.; some have been written about here on /.
I'm just curious, why have such publishers chosen to OCR the already printed book rather convert the electronic document used in the editing/layout of the book (I'm assuming the publisher is using equipment more sophisticated than a typewriter and letter press). Any modern book should have gone through some electronic process even those whose original manuscripts are written in longhand. Conversion from those electronic formats should be a bit more flawless than brute-force OCR.
Talk about first world problems, people can buy it on release day if they're so impatient
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I welcome this change by Amazon. I was getting sick of the sheer amount of titles I "could" buy in the future instead of offering me recommendations of stuff I can have right now.
Because you can buy the hardcover when it comes out, or you can save money and buy the paperback later. It's a way of extracting more money from those who want to read the book ASAP while still getting money from those who are willing to wait for a cheaper price. Having the distinct physical difference makes it seem like you're getting a higher-quality product with the hardcover, and makes the early purchasers feel better than if the bookstores just dropped the price over time (even if they sometimes then sell the leftover hardcovers at paperback prices).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Actually, I saw the Lego Movie last Saturday in a really nice theater. Hardly great cinematography, but it was fun.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes