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Japanese Publishers Lash Out At Amazon's Policies
Nate the greatest writes: Amazon is in a bitter contract fight with Hachette in the U.S. and Bonnier in Germany, and now it seems the retail giant is also in conflict with publishers in Japan. Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees), leading to complaints that Amazon is using its market power to blackmail publishers. Where have we heard that complaint before?
The retailer is also being boycotted by a handful of Japanese publishers who disagree with Amazon offering a rewards program to students. The retailer gives students 10% of a book's price as points, which can be used to buy more books. This skirts Japanese fixed-price book laws, so several smaller publishers pulled their books from Amazon in protest. Businesses are out to make money and not friends, but Amazon sure is a lightning rod for conflicts, isn't it?
The retailer is also being boycotted by a handful of Japanese publishers who disagree with Amazon offering a rewards program to students. The retailer gives students 10% of a book's price as points, which can be used to buy more books. This skirts Japanese fixed-price book laws, so several smaller publishers pulled their books from Amazon in protest. Businesses are out to make money and not friends, but Amazon sure is a lightning rod for conflicts, isn't it?
Once you sell something to me, it's none of your business if I choose to re-sell it. In particular, the price I charge is none of you business.
Halve your margin and triple your sales.
>NO BREAKS TO ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY STUDENTS
It's like they're begging for piracy to happen.
--
BMO
Time to compete.
Oh and by the way, welcome to capitalism.
Every marketer and customer gets some easy benefit from a single marketplace to go with the most customers(for marketers) or marketers(for customers), maximizing the competitiveness of their respective markets. In the physical world, this naturalmonopoly is mitigated more than a little by the utility of physical proximity.
It's a bit like how social networks are successful because that's where all your friends are, but more complex since it involves multiple kinds of participants.
Amazon has filled that role online, particularly for books. And that advantage is can be leveraged for quite a premium. I'm not sure I see a nice clean solution to the problem either.
Time to sue Apple again and make sure there is zero viable competition remaining for eBooks. Make that rubble bounce.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Boycot Amazon. I do, and a lot of people here in central Europe do ( although almost all of the boycotters do live in large cities, with easy access to book stores ). It is actually a physical delight to go, in persona, to a a book store, browse, take your time, and buy -- or place an order for something they don't have in stock. In the latter case, getting the phone call that "your book has arrived, Mr. Faustus" is delightful, too,
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Apple was only ever competing in the eBook industry on their own devices - and they were hurting the rest of us reading eBooks on other platforms.
When I can read my Apple eBooks on anything other than an IOS device, then they are in competition, until then they are just a negative on the industry as they are treating IOS as the entire market when dealing with publishers, which affects me over here on a platform Apple will never touch.
That's what I do, pretty much if there's something I know I can get somewhere else than Amazon, I get it there. Books, clothes (for the most part), games, computers, etc.
Oh wow, on an *Apple* computer.
That makes all the difference! There is competition in the market!
Of course it fucking matters if the competition is only within one very small segment of the market, it means a much higher cost of entry for the consumer - to read my Amazon Kindle book all I had to do was download the free Kindle reading app on any one of my Android phone, Android tablet, Apple phone, Apple tablet, Windows Phone, Windows 8 device, Apple computer, Windows 7 computer, Blackberry or a web browser for the web reader. Or buy a Kindle.
To take advantage of your "competition" I would have to buy an Apple device...
If you can't see why that is important, then you are a retard.
Amazon is providing the better service, and they are doing it without meaningful competition. Apple are locking you into their hardware ecosystem and were raising the price I have to pay on another platform to do it.
Again, if you can't see why that is important, then you are a retard.
Apple brings no competition to the market at all, they compete in one relatively small segment and have no interest in providing any service to those not using Apple devices. Fuck them.
Apple was competing? I thought they got sued for doing the opposite?
You can also read it on any Apple computer.
"any current" yes, "any" no. If I could drag out my IIGS (joking) or even an older Mac, that'd be one thing, but it needs to be a sufficiently recent Mac.
to read my Amazon Kindle book all I had to do was download the free Kindle reading app on any one of my Android phone, Android tablet, Apple phone, Apple tablet, Windows Phone, Windows 8 device, Apple computer, Windows 7 computer, Blackberry or a web browser for the web reader.
True of books but not video. The only phones that stream Amazon video are the iPhone and Fire Phone. And because the Fire Phone is exclusive to AT&T, that's reduced to one if you happen to live outside AT&T's 4G coverage.
Is BN.com really that much more expensive than Amazon?
Amazon's "monopoly/market power" doesn't hurt consumers
He who ignores history is doomed to repeat it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Book publishers who overprice books and take a big cut for filling an increasingly valueless role vs. retailing supergiant. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer people read books.
There is NO barrier to entry so the protectionist rackets will have to come down. The end of their era is over
Or at least it will be in three years and change. That's how much longer the 1-Click patent family (U.S. Patent 5,960,411 and foreign counterparts) has left, based on the priority date of 1997-09-12 and the common worldwide patent term of twenty years.
What that does not help you with at all is that time ten years hence when no competition remains even on niche platforms, and Amazon decides the price should really be 10 what you are paying now...
Fewer and fewer people read books every year. In 10 years, the market will be much smaller than it is now.
Plus, you're trying to pretend there will somehow be a monopoly on books. Or on electronic distribution of text. Because no one could possibly figure out how to print a book or distribute text without Amazon -- so they'll pay 10x what they're paying now. It's not even the tiniest bit realistic.
Every marketer and customer gets some easy benefit from a single marketplace
Until the single marketplace uses its market power to exclude sellers entirely from a market. This has allegedly happened in the markets for iOS apps and console games. What editorial power does Amazon exercise over its Kindle store, other than to remove obvious copyright infringements and erotica? Is the "preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs" a way of dealing with the likes of VDM and 30 Percent Fewer Shades of Grey?
Established authors depend on the publishers to limit the availability of books. In the Amazon world with no incentive to limit the number of published books, and to limit titles to those who will sell many copies, many authors are going to be working at a loss. That may explain why evidence that authors are bieng paid less matters less that the thought that Amazon may be in control.
So there are no good guys and no bad guys here. Just people trying to make money. When books are gone we the next generation is going to miss then no more than we miss leather bond, gold leafed books with each section having a faux-hand-drawn calligraphy character.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
An agile publishing start up company can do everything the old dinosaurs do thanks to digital publishing.
Including promotion? Even if its illustrators and editors work on an hourly or fee for service basis, how would a startup publisher establish a reputation of sorting worthwhile books from not-so-worthwhile ones? Otherwise, it could be seen as more of what some people might call a "vanity press".
It doesn't matter if you personally "can't" take advantage of the competition that Apple provides; there are hundreds of millions of people who do, which is a large enough group that Amazon had to take note. (Shame on Amazon, their collaborators that inevitably included Google, and the corrupt or incompetent parts of the American legal system that have perpetuated their monopoly.)
Japan is a heavily business-oriented society, but not in the free market way that we tend to assume. Most consumer markets are locked up by an oligopoly of the largest players. Competition is considered less important than tradition, and the everyday consumer considers it his patriotic duty to pay more for everything he buys so that the Japanese economy can be promoted. The only way for Americans to imagine what this system is like is to think of the US prescription drug model, extended to every market you shop in. Imagine paying pharmacy prices for computers and cabbages.
When you go there to live, you will be besieged by friends and relatives asking you to buy cameras and electronics "at Tokyo prices" for them. You need to tell them at the outset that a Nikon or a Sony product is a lot cheaper ordered through Amazon right at home than it would be in Japan. THIS is what those Japanese publishers fear from Amazon operating on their own soil.
Or could be that they offer better pricing when dealing in bulk.
Most businesses will give a discount when ordering in large quantities. Someone needs 10 shirts, the get to pay $20 each, someone else orders 10,000 then they pay only $12 for each; is that somehow unfair to first person?
Wither larger quantities there can be less man power required, and less estimation on the part of everyone so economies of scale come into play.
The summary says:
"Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees)."
This is the main point of the post and yet there are not even a mention of how this rating system manipulation works in the articles linked? Online search just shows sites copying the same line from each other and again w/o explanation. Does anyone know?
As someone who is into ebooks... i see your point and unfortunately you are misting a few negatives:
- Publishers ability to remove books (amazon, 1984).
- DRM
- Inability/restrictions sharing a e-book, which is artificial and the real "paper" book doesnt have this issue.
- Many ebooks actually cost more then the paper version.
- Some publishers demand library's repurchase ebooks to account for the fact the paperback would have worn out.
Halve your margin and triple your sales. >NO BREAKS TO ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY STUDENTS It's like they're begging for piracy to happen.
Text books in Japan aren't actually very expensive. A typical text book might be about $20~$30 and doesn't include bullshit attempts to circumvent your ability to resell it.
a physical delight to go, in persona, to a book store, browse
Unless you encounter bookshelves where the fantasy and vampire stories are mixed with the science fiction. I get the urge to go mix the romance shelves with the mysteries in retaliation
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Its not just Japan, France and many other countries seem to have laws that limit discounting of books or fix their prices. Why do governments continue to maintain these restrictions?
Which is why you are posting a response as AC so I won't notice and hurt you anymore... riiiiiiight.
Glad you realize when you have met your better - at least you've learned to retreat well. Next time make an argument that doesn't suck.
Hint: Multi-platform does not mean Amazon is competing against itself... what a tool.
I'll let you have the last response as idiots will go on without end or purpose.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, I got a new hit on Google, it explains the rating system:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
User ratings are not changed. Instead, this is a rating system internal to Amazon. Based on your internal Amazon rating, it will chose how to promote your book. I'm assuming this means advertising on other pages, items in the "featured" section, etc. In other words, Amazon is saying that they will more heavily promote books that make them more money.
To tell you the truth, I'm surprised they don't do that already. I always assumed featured items were paid advertisements (i.e. they get a commission if you click and make a purchase) and/or high-margin items. Anyone know if that's the case with Amazon in the U.S. already?
"You can also read it on any Apple computer."
I can most certainly guarantee your ass my Motorola-powered OS7 Apple laptop can not and will not read those files.
Also, now days there is no such thing as "an Apple computer" because it's an x86 piece of shit like every other computer out there.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ is a good one for older books.
But the ebook thing isn't an issue for me. I buy hard copy for like 90% of my books.