Authors' Amazon Awareness 174
Geoffrey.landis writes "Many book lovers were surprised this week when Amazon.com removed books from the publisher Macmillan from the shelves (later restored), including such popular imprints as St. Martin's, Henry Holt, and the science fiction publisher Tor. But readers shouldn't have been surprised, according to the Author's Guild. The Author's Guild lists a history of earlier instances where Amazon stopped listing a publisher's books in order to pressure them to accept terms, dating back to early in 2008, when Amazon removed the 'buy' buttons for works from the British publisher Bloomsbury, representing such authors as William Boyd, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling. In response, the Author's Guild has set up a service called Who Moved My Buy Button to alert authors when their books are removed from Amazon's lists."
Amazon's actions have generated ill-will on the parts of many authors, who — being authors — are only too happy to explain their viewpoints at length. Two such examples are Tobias Buckell's breakdown of why Amazon isn't the righteous defender of low-prices they claim to be and Charlie Stross's round-up of the situation.
30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal (Score:5, Informative)
Do some research. There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.
If an author dumped their publisher, went with Amazon, and happened to sell a lot of books, 30% wouldn't be a bad deal, in my opinion.
See the above statement. Who do you think are stirring the pot here? Authors or Publishers?
Yes, there is very much an RIAA type of situation here, where the publisher often does promotion and advertising, but a big name could write a book and go straight to Amazon with it.
Now they could get their own servers, marketing team, etc, and go it on their own. How much time and money do you think all of that will cost?
Amazon isn't spotless in the situation, DRM and all, but a lot of publishers treat their authors like the RIAA treats its artists.
Re:Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but... (Score:2, Informative)
They still have to PRODUCE the original book that becomes an ebook.
This requires:
an editor, proofreader, any cover art, conversion to ebook format and some quality checks, oh, and an author to spend near a year working on the book.
Hence, they want new books to cost more. It's called "return on investment." The publishers also want older ebooks that have made the costs back tobe LESS than Amazon's mandated 9.99.
Publishers deserve to make some money, too, because they do a great favor for us all: They reduce the noise and increase the signal. Otherwise you could just read stuff put on the 'net with no filter, no quality checks, proofreading, etc...
How is it not preventing this (Score:4, Informative)
Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent?
Yes.
Which it is.
Unless you've been under a rock, Apple is doing a book store. And Barnes & Nobel is too, along with the nook reader... Why do you think Amazon *had* to capitulate?
free market economics works just fine but it doesn't fix things instantly. Over the long run though things will be fixed and arrive at a natural state. Regulation always serves to create an artificial plateau of being that you'd never find otherwise...
Prepare to Troll in 3... (Score:2, Informative)
Forgive the AC login, but I need to remain behind it as I work for Barnes & Noble. Also, Disclaimer: I work for Barnes & Noble.
With any ebook reader that you can attach to a computer, you have control over the ebook you've purchased. With a certain oddly named ereader in particular, you can move the ebook to your computer. Yes, it does still have DRM, which is regrettable, but you have control over the file. The Kindle is a licensed device where you view licensed content, and their Terms and Agreements spell that out, albeit it briefly.
This past Christmas, more ebooks were sold then physical books. I expect this year will have a thousand and one problems as publishers try to figure out how to place ebooks in their publishing schedule. There has been some talk about having the ebook be released at the same time as the trape paperback, as to not impact hardcover sales as much as they have. Although this would alienate a very large reading audience, such actions have occurred before when companies look to their bottom line.
Authors make money from their up front payments, bookstores make money from their bargain sections. The publisher sets the price of the books when they are released, and they make their money by selling X number of books. When you buy a book in the trade section of a bookstore, almost every cent of that goes to the publisher. Ebooks don't return the same numbers as trade books to the publisher, but I am unsure of the specifics of that.
We'll see how it goes.
Authors Guild burned up a lot of respect for me... (Score:4, Informative)
When the President of the Authors Guild went on a rant about how text to speech was infringing on authors "audio rights".
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com]
I won't go into the arguments, but suffice it to say I sure as hell don't just automatically trust whatever the authors guild is trying to push. Even if you think he's right, was this issue SO important he had to write a very public article about it in the NYT?
On the other hand, Amazon isn't the must trustworthy company in the world either. The incident with 1984 on the Kindle comes to mind. This incident only makes it crystal clear that the Kindle is essentially like renting books, not owning them. It's just kind of amazing that the entire e-book world is rife with anti-consumer paranoia.
The entire e-book industry is doomed to failure unless they're significantly cheaper than the paper version. How many people really want to buy a book on technology platform for only a little less? We all know these are essentially throw-away devices. In 2 years there will be some Great New "gotta have it" book reader platform that'll make anything right now obsolete. In 5 years Kindles will be essentially worthless and people will turn their noses up at them like it's a Palm Pilot. Meanwhile the paper book holds essentially the same value as it did 100 years ago. So which medium should I buy? If I don't need a new version of a recent book, I can get a used copy on Amazon for next to nothing, or deeply discounted. The e-book I can't re-sell, easily loan to a friend, etc. Inferior technologies can only compete on price.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology. I just consider "paper books" to be technology (a competing technology of course). Newer doesn't mean better, and it's difficult for electronics to compete with paper when the content is completely static.
Re:Amazon sucks anyway. (Score:5, Informative)
Why? I value my time and I like to spend it doing other things. Amazon makes it incredibly easy for me to purchase the books I want, new or used. In fact, I have a few books that I could not have found if not for amazon.com.
I see amazon, like any other store, as my agent who aggregates the buying power of consumers to negotiate a price from manufacturers/publishers. I applaud whatever they do to get prices down for me. Authors' rights? That's for them to defend, not me.
Re:Free Market? (Score:3, Informative)
Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market.
Nice to think so, but it's not true.
Anti-trust laws were written to break up the big 19th- and early 20th century trusts-- essentially groups of large businesses collaborating to drive smaller ones out of the market so that they could set prices-- for example, Standard Oil's agreement with the railroads, which was not merely that the railroads would give them low prices (that's standard business practice), but that the railroads had to agree to not give smaller competitors good prices.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Amazon is rarely the sole distributor (Score:1, Informative)
What, like the ability to sell e-books worldwide?
Imagine being an Amazon Kindle customer who lives in or moved to the UK or Australia. You change your shipping information, planning to continue using the service you liked to use. But wait - there's a catch. Amazon can ship you physical book no matter where you live, but doesn't have international digital rights. Suddenly you're angry with Amazon and its publishers because you can't buy the books you want.
This isn't an imaginary situation. I have this problem today. Because I'm not a US customer, publishers won't let Amazon sell me their books. Brilliant.
I'm not seeing impaired, dyslexic, nor do I enjoy listening to books, but if I were, I'd be pretty pissed if random books I wanted to read didn't have text-to-speech because the publisher didn't feel like it, even when they had no immediate intention of creating an audio-book for it.
Those "caveats" are also beneficial to Amazon's customers, if you hadn't noticed. The publishers clearly have no interest in what's best for their customers and, in some cases, even selling their books.
Re:Free Market? (Score:3, Informative)
Governments did pass laws and implement policies that favored Standard Oil over competitors.
Most local telecom monopolies were created by local government policy... AT&T then bought the local monopolies creating a national monopoly.
You appear to think that only the Federal government intervenes in the market to create monopolies. Most of the 19th and early 20th century trusts came into being as a result of local and state government intervention in the market place.
Good discussion: (Score:3, Informative)