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That was a dispute about bigotry. It was a dispute about Amazon restricting access to books based on their content, and the private lives of the people who wrote them.
The current dispute is in some ways very different. It is an economic dispute between a retailer and a wholesaler. But it affects readers and writers all the same, and the fact that it can happen at all is worrying.
On the face of it, it doesn’t actually make much difference. If I want to buy a John Scalzi book there are plenty of places I can do so. I don’t have to go to Amazon. For Scalzi and his fellow authors it is somewhat more annoying. They won’t lose sales to existing fans, but they will lose sales from casual browsers who are looking for “a book” on Amazon. For the staff at Tor and other Macmillan-owned imprints it is very serious indeed, because it is going to mean a major hole in their company revenue. I’m not surprised that they are unhappy, though maybe they should be more angry with their management than with Amazon, because it is a fight I don’t think Macmillan can win.
What I guess Macmillan’s management was banking on is that there would be general outrage around teh intrawebs, just like there was over the LGBT issue and the removal of 1984 from Kindles. But in both of those cases it was clearly a dispute between Amazon and the consumer. Consumers were outraged, and said so. In this case Amazon has the consumers on their side. All they have to do is say, “you deserve ebooks for $9.99 or less,” and the masses will be out on the streets yelling, “vive la révolution!” Authors can complain all they like, but mostly what they’ll get in return is, “string the greedy bastards up from the lamp posts.” Because, just as “everyone knows” that Kevin and I have made a fortune from running Worldcon, “everyone knows” that once you are a published author your life is one long stream of expensive apartments, beach houses, private jets, cocaine and movie star girlfriends.
So what’s actually going on here?
Well, Amazon are in the retail business. They started out selling books, but now they sell lots of other things, and it can’t have escaped their notice that selling music is a darn sight easier than selling books. No warehouse, no logistics, all you need is a web site. Books could be sold that way too, and Amazon could make a lot more money, if only the damn book buyers would play ball. Unfortunately for Amazon, us book buyers have an irrational attachment to piles of paper. We say stupid things like, “it is easier on my eyes,” or even, “but I like the look of a shelf full of books.” So they need to persuade us to buy books electronically. One of the ways they can do that is by cutting the price.
With this in mind, Amazon says to the publishers, “we want to sell ebooks really cheap so that sales of ebooks, and incidentally our ebook reader, take off.” Macmillan says, “we’d rather maximize our revenue from ebooks than subsidize your hardware business.” And Amazon says, “Gee but that’s a nice little publishing business you have there, it would be sad if it were to accidentally get, you know, broken…”
There are two rather worrying things about this. The first is that a single retailer has become so dominant that it is able to bully a large, multi-national publisher in this way. That sort of market dominance is dangerous in any business. The second is the speed and efficiency with which Amazon can move against an opponent. As I said at the beginning, this is an economic dispute between two businesses, but exactly the same technology would be deployed against a new opponent for entirely different reasons (and indeed may have been already if you prefer not to believe Amazon’s protestations about a programmer error).
Personally I don’t have a huge stake in this. Despite what “everyone knows”, I don’t make a fortune out of Amazon. My income from Amazon links is around $10/month. I’d have no qualms about losing that. But I don’t have Amazon links on my sites to make money for myself, I have them there to encourage you lot to buy books. The best way to do that is to point you at Amazon. That’s true because they are a better book seller than anyone else. In my experience, they have what I want in stock, at a better price, and they deliver promptly without mistakes. (I note that I’m talking about Amazon US here, I gather from other people that Amazon UK is nowhere near as efficient.) Also Amazon’s affiliate program is more friendly and easier to use than anything else I have looked it.
I’m not a big fan of monopolies (state or private) and I prefer to see them broken down if possible. Therefore I would like to see Amazon have some decent competition in online bookselling. That’s especially true because Amazon appears to be wedded to the ambition to transform bookselling so that customers only ever rent books, they can never own them. I’d be happy to switch to using a different online store if I thought that they would provide as good a service, and be as easy for me to deal with, as Amazon are. It can’t be rocket science, surely?
Well said Cheryl. Personally, I think it’s time for all the other publishers to grow some balls, stand up for their industry and macmillan and withdraw their books from amazon in solidarity with macmillan… Of course, that’s not going to happen…
I don’t think John Sargent was thinking about Twitter, Facebook, or blog support at all. He has to deal with unreasonable demands from chain retailers all the time and some times he has to say no. Amazon made this particular disagreement public through their response.
Well maybe he should have been. He’ll only win this if Amazon suffers financially from their boycott his books, and if the consumers are mostly supporting Amazon that’s not going to happen.
Macmillan has a better chance of winning now that Apple is entering the field, though I agree it will be a hard fight.
But no one seems to be mentioning much about the writers beyond their books not being on sale through Amazon. If Macmillan wins and can charge more for its e-books more money will flow to the authors. For many this may be worth the risk they’re taking.
Read Toby Buckell’s post that I linked to at the top of my post. This is all about fixed costs, not variable costs. There won’t be any more money for writers if Macmillan win.
Amazon.ca is very fast and is still selling MacMillan books.
This battle is restricted to the US market so far.
“In this case Amazon has the consumers on their side.”
They might, if this were just a price dispute. I’m not sure whether Amazon’s or Macmillan’s position on this is in the long run better for the authors, the book industry, and/or the customers.
But a dominant retailer that uses, as you note, Mafia-like tactics to just arbitrarily delete the entire line of a major manufacturer with whom they’re having a dispute about one class of products – that’s not a retailer that can be trusted. And, as you also note, they’ve used this tactic before in other circumstances, attempting ham-handed censorship.
Not a company I want to do business with, no.
“I’d be happy to switch to using a different online store”
Have you tried B&N?
Your sentiments are admirable, but I don’t think you are a typical customer.
I’ve looked at B&N before. Lou Anders on Twitter this morning (UK time) was bemoaning the fact that he finds B&N’s affiliate scheme much inferior to Amazon’s, so I’m not encouraged to look again.
In your original statement, you didn’t say “typical”. “The customers on their side” + I’m not on their side = I’m not a customer.
I get a little tired of sweeping generalizations that tell me that I do not exist.
I also doubt your generalization. People like lower prices, but what most customers are going to see first is that there’s a heck of a lot of popular new books, from a lot of different imprints, that they suddenly can’t buy. Print books too, not just e-books. They’re not going to know why. One LJ poster sent a complaint and got an answer that would have been appropriate for an unexpected programming glitch. Amazon hadn’t even yet formulated a reply to complaints.
Oh for goodness sake stop whining. You are making me feel sorry for Amazon.
So complaining about giant Retail Fail is “whining” now? Gor blimey, you really do live in a universe of your own.
No, painting yourself an oppressed victim because I didn’t bother to take special account of you in my post is whining. There are large number of people who I failed to give special treatment to. I didn’t make an exception for people who don’t live in the USA, even though they are not affected by this. I didn’t make an exception for people who don’t have an Internet connection, or are too poor to afford books, even though they are potential Amazon customers. But you, a reasonably well off, middle-class white male, have the cheek to come here and demand special treatment because anyone who doesn’t keep your special needs in mind is cruelly oppressing you. One of us is not living in the real world, and it isn’t me.
All I said was, “I get a little tired of sweeping generalizations that tell me that I do not exist.” That’s not whining. Nor did I ask for “special treatment” or claim that I was being “cruelly oppressed.” That’s ridiculously overstated. All I ask is for sweeping generalizations not to automatically assume that variations do not exist. That’s sloppy writing that happens frequently, and deserves correction.
It wasn’t serious, and I didn’t say it was. It gets serious when people make generalizations that forget that my minority religion exists, which also happens frequently.
You really have no idea how offensive you are being, do you? Here’s a clue. You are not welcome back here.
To get back on topic, I am all for Amazon here. I don’t trust McMillan to actually have dynamic pricing because I don’t see them having it now. I also don’t want an IPad and I have no desire for Apple to set pricing (and I say that as I type in a MacBook). Delay the Kindle pub two months if you want, to allow the lower price and the time value of the HC, but 7 months delay is just punitive. Then better bring it out low and make certain the price gets even lower after the PB is out. I am a reader and I say that I lose value with the loss of a physical book to be lent out, given away, sold or donated. Selling a Kindle book for more than the PB is just darned offensive.
Let McMillan try to sell w/o Amazon- I went out to buy an Orb book and 90% are unavailable in e-format to read on a Kindle. If I’m going to crack DRM, I’ll buy for even less, to make up for the trouble. And really- f you aren’t Pratchett, I don’t need you on pub date at HC prices.
That’s pretty much where I am as well, but I wonder how typical I am. I have this awful feeling that Amazon lives in a world where they see their typical customer as someone who buys books to read on a plane, or on the beach, and throws them away afterward. That’s the market that people like supermarkets cater to. It is the market you have to reach to generate a best-seller. And if the market is driven by best-sellers, then us book lovers become collateral damage.
I don’t know enough about the business to know if this is true or not, but I do know enough to understand that I’m not a typical Amazon customer, and that their business plan won’t be geared around my needs.
You’re getting the details wrong. Right now there *was* variable pricing. My old books via Macmillan are (well, were until friday at 5, now they don’t exist) cheaper than a paperback, but the one newest book was 12.95, cheaper than hardcover, but more expensive than the mythical 9.99.
The 7 month delay was for the program only if Amazon didn’t go with a program just like Apple’s. You’re getting the details very wrong.
Just an FYI.
I didn’t delve into the details and byways of the Amazon “gay” deletion, so there are people better informed than me, but as a computer person, the original explanation, that it was a peculiar accident, seemed plausible. It could have happened that way. And when the outcry began, they reversed themselves pretty quickly. iirc
This Macmillan thing is quite different. This is an expression of corporate strategy and due deliberation.
All the more reason to say, “screw ’em!” but istm the parallel with that particular earlier cockup isn’t as close as might be.
I stopped using Amazon completely when I found out how they were ripping off authors.
There are much better on-line retailers out there. Some of them are even cheaper than Amazon, once you take Amazon’s exorbitant mail charges into account.
Which ones do you recommend?
I’ve been a satisfied customer of The Book Depository for a few years now. I especially like it that shipping is already included in the price — I don’t need to do any extra calculations or wait until I have a certain amount of books in my shopping cart to minimize the postage. I’ve had good service from them, and while the prices have gone up a lot from what they were a couple of years back, I still find them very reasonable (especially when compared to Amazon’s international shipping costs).
The selection isn’t probably on par with Amazon’s but I’ve found most books I’ve wanted to buy in their catalog.
I also think they’ve got their ordering workflow right: you don’t need to start by registering and giving them lots of information. You can dive right in with selecting books. After the purchase, you can choose to create an account to remember your details and track your orders, but it isn’t mandatory even then.
On the minus side, I don’t think they have an affiliate program (last time I looked, anyway). And I wish they had a system like Amazon’s which would automatically tell me, “Hey, you bought books 1, 2 and 3 of this series in paperback. Book 4 is now out, would you like to purchase it too?”
Aha! That looks very promising. And they do have an affiliate scheme. Thank you!