History Repeats Itself: KDP Select Is Amazon.com's 'Payback For Playback' 70
New submitter brennanw writes "Anyone who was active on mp3.com during the late 90s/early 2000's will find Amazon.com's KDP Select awfully familiar: authors who make their works exclusive to Amazon compete for a pool of money. Any time someone 'borrows' one of their books, they get a cut of a monthly sum (700K in January, 600K for February) based on how many of their books were checked out vs. how many other author's books were checked out. This is almost identical to the 'Payback for Playback' service MP3.com provided musicians a little over a decade ago. Payback for Playback effectively destroyed the original MP3.com artist community, and I don't think KDP Select is going to be much different for the self-publishing community that is growing on Amazon."
Dead Tree Exclusivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from the kickback ( is that legal or does it get into the anti-competitive arena? ) aren't dead tree books exclusive to one publisher?
While i would like choice of format as much as the next guy, the precedent has been around for a LONG time.
Um, it's not free this time (Score:3, Insightful)
The money is for the books being borrowed by paying customers (Prime members); and one per month at that, so while it's still possible to game the system, it'd be rather tricky.