Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Publishers 218
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from the NY Times:
"Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle. The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling's new novel. The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.' In some cases, even the pages promoting the books have disappeared. Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel, The Girls of August, coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition. Only the audio edition is still being sold (for more than $60). Otherwise it is as if it did not exist. Amazon is also flexing its muscles in Germany, delaying deliveries of books issued by Bonnier, a major publisher."
and soon they'll have their own drones (Score:5, Funny)
Think they're flexing their muscles now just wait for the drones!
Paywalls (Score:2, Offtopic)
Two links, both to paywalled articles.
Fantastic.
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Two links, both to paywalled articles.
Fantastic.
Weird. Both Times articles opened fine for me. I'm in the US, and I don't have an NYT subscription.
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They also seem to send daily ads out pressuring you to get a subscription to their website, if you've given them your e-mail.
I wish content providers trying to sell their content would focus on their content instead of the money. Else what the heck are you selling?
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I don't necessarily see that putting in workarounds that allow a few pageviews a month for a non-paying user as being dishonest - it's advertising. 'If you like these articles, we have more that you would need to pay for' - and they usually tell you exactly that when you hit the free limit.
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Two links, both to paywalled articles.
Fantastic.
Weird. Both Times articles opened fine for me. I'm in the US, and I don't have an NYT subscription.
You get a couple (5, IIRC) free articles A month.
They enforce it via cookie, so it's pretty trivial to work around.
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Fuck Jeff Bezos (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder how all this will affect my upcoming book Why Jeff Bezos Is More Awesome Than Elon Musk (working title).
Amazon provides a service (Score:5, Insightful)
I happily go to O'Reilly and pay $40 for a physical and unencumbered PDF copy of a book. What publishers aren't doing is moving with market forces. The value of book is not what it used to be. The average American is not making what was the previous expectation. We are in a deflationary period. Amazon is under pressure to show a better return on investment. They do not have to sell products when the supplier wants excessive value. It is like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola products. SOme don't because Pepsi cuts a better deal.
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True. But Amazon cannot blackmail the publisher using its marketing clout either. It would be like Microsoft making it so Windows will not run a certain company's software.
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Amazon sells books. It does not write them or publish them.
This is not strictly true, at least with respect to publishing. Amazon owns CreateSpace, which is a publisher. As such, it is in direct competition with other publishers, or soon will be.
CreateSpace is currently aimed at the indie/print-on-demand market (for example: https://www.createspace.com/47... [createspace.com]) but Amazon has expressed an interest in branching out into mainstream publication.
As such, it is positioned to dominate the publishing and distribution vertical completely, and people are worried about this, f
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Amazon dropped my Kindle book listing today. I wasn't terribly shocked because I had read that they were trying to corner the e-book market, and that's how you do it. My e-book was Barnes & Noble publisher associated, so Amazon is flexing their muscles at more than the two publishers mentioned it appears to me.
Certainly will have me shopping around other book store sites now.
Re:Amazon provides a service - this! (Score:2)
An excellent point!
Amazon doesn't sell e/books. They provide a service for reading e/books. In some countries e/books are even taxed as a service instead of a physical good, at a higher rate.
There is a push now to charge higher tax only for service-type e/books (DRM-ladden, restricted to device/user, not resellable) and lower tax for proper e/books (no DRM, at most a watermark, can be passed around). It would not only be fair, but also appropriately reflect what you are actually paying for.
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Keep in mind that most anti-trust violations are only anti-trust violations if a company with real market power does them. It was an anti-trust issue for IBM to write the Operating System on it's first PC, but it wasn't an anti-trust issue when Apple/Commodore/Osborn/etc. all did the same damn thing. Later on Apple bundling Safari with Mac OS, but not including any other options by default; was legally fine. But in Europe Microsoft gets into a whole hell of a lot of trouble if it doesn't offer people the op
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Of course the publisher complains they are middle men, trying to hide the fact of how little they whilst they get the bulk of the profits. It is pretty obvious Amazon wants to become the publisher, via this method it can further reduce the price of books and increase sales whilst also increasing profits simply by taking the publishers cut. All Amazon has to do is contract out printing of the books. So this is all corporate manoeuvring and putting pressure on the authors to skip their publishers and go dire
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Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed... (Score:2, Funny)
Thank God Apple's e-book "monopoly" was crushed! Now we don't have to worry about there being a single, monolithic, insane entity controlling the entire marketplace dictating terms with impunity to the publishers.....yeah...good thing...
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You're comparing Apples and Crocodiles. Apple rigged prices with the collusion of the major publishers which is illegal.
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You're comparing Apples and Crocodiles. Apple rigged prices with the collusion of the major publishers which is illegal.
I think you are confused. Do you work at the DOJ by any chance. The agency model removed control over pricing from the vendor and gave it to the publishers. That means that Apple had no control over pricing.
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That means that Apple had no control over pricing.
No, that presumably meant Apple's competitors couldn't sell books for less than Apple.
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It could also be interpreted as the publisher couldn't charge more to iTune users than they do anywhere else. The publisher still set the price.
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Amazon sells some books for less than cost and offsets that loss with other higher margin items from their massive selection. It that better than publishers making money selling books at Apple or elsewhere?
If a book is priced at 9.99 at Amazon and 12.99 everywhere else, how long will the "everywhere else" be in the business of selling books (When they don't have the higher margin items that Amazon does)?
I DON'T CARE. Their app on iOS sucks and I have no interest in any sort of kind. I don't live in the US so I don't have a "PRIME" account either. The US DOJ is making things more difficult for non-americans to access content.
Opportunity for other resellers? (Score:2)
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Amazon will sell you her book. It'll just take weeks and weeks to get to your House. That's what Hachette is complaining about. Amazon makes it really inconvenient to buy Hachette books, which Hachette's authors say is reducing their sales.
I suspect what's gonna happen is that Amazon will cave immediately to avoid further bad PR, which will mean the DoJ will conclude there's nothing to investigate.
eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple and the publishers were trying to ensure there was a choice in eBook providers.
What Amazon is showing is the consequence of allowed, through government action, Amazon to utterly control the online eBook (and just plain Book Book) market.
Amazon wields way too much power and whatever publishers - and other book vendors - can do in response should be allowed.
Re:eBook anti-trust against Apple was absurd (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, no. I don't know anyone outside the Jobs Reality Alteration Bubble who didn't see it as a blatant violation of anti-trust laws.
There are a ton of online book vendors, and Amazon's online print sales are a small fraction of the print market. The majority of books they sell these days are ebooks.
BTW, wasn't one of Hatchette's recent complaints that Amazon weren't discounting their books enough?
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This. Just about everyone, from governments to publishers to authors to readers, have bitched incessantly about Amazon since they started seriously selling books. I would think this move would make the entirety of Hatchette's vertical market thrilled that Amazon has effectively left their local ballgame.
But no - Instead, we see the reality of the situation. No one actually wants Amazon ou
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Apple and the publishers were trying to illegally fix prices
FTFY
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Utterly control? There's more than one way to buy a book. Since when has (less that total) censorship resulted in fewer books sales? TFA should really be tagged "Streisand Effect", as I'd never heard of this book before.
Not about goodness, about evenness (Score:2)
Out of the goodness of Steve's heart (and he has a rich history of goodwill) he tried to help the poor publishers out?
Not sure why everyone is so confused about this.
It was not out of Apple's goodness. It was not even legal. What I am saying is that against a real monopolists, some rules against group actions should be abolished. Amazon is able to dictate terms and harm publishers without recourse because Apple (the only serious challenger against Amazon consuming the whole eBook market) was slapped down
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Why not? It fits the trend. (Score:2)
There is a pretty tried and true method to handle monopolistic businesses: petitioning the government to start an anti-trust investigation
Pretty hard when the government has it against you to begin with.
Ever hear of the concept of civil disobedience? Doing something technically unlawful in pursuit of the greater good is a time honored tradition, and companies that participate in same should be lauded, not attacked.
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So would it also be ok if publishers colluded with cell phone stores to instead sell jailbroken iPhones that purchase and download the books directly from the publishers,
Why not? Although your analogy breaks down badly because none of what you advocate is bypassing a monopoly the way Amazon's kindle has a monopoly on eBooks. The Android market sells plenty of apps too.
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But hey, if you are okay with it, then that is fine. I was just making sure we didn't have a hypocrisy on our hands. To any publishers who may be reading: get on this!
You have a right to not carry items... (Score:2, Insightful)
right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point. When you become the market, you have to be the market thus have open access. Sorry, that's the price of success.
Re:You have a right to not carry items... (Score:4, Interesting)
right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point.
Yeah, that's true. I mean, no-one can go to a book store and buy these books, can they? Amazon have a monopoly, and there's nowhere else the publisher can sell these books if Amazon refuse to do so.
Yep, it's absolutely true (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no way I can go to a Barnes and Nobels to buy books. There aren't two in my city alone, and also their website. There also aren't other general purpose retailers who sell books and tons of other good like Amazon. We certainly don't have 5 Targets, 10 Walmarts, 3 Costcos (and associated websites) in town. There also aren't any local booksellers or anything. And of course you can't buy eBooks from anyone else, certainly not from Apple, who's market capitalization far exceeds Amazon's.
I think some geeks like the GP need to get out of their house more often.
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Yeah, and? If the publisher is upset by high prices, they can cut the price they sell the books to Amazon before. If the book is taking a long time to ship, the customer can go to the local book store.
Oh, you're not going to tell me their local book store doesn't stock these books, are you?
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How wonderfully consumer-friendly Uncle Bezos is!
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It just wouldnt be slashdot without all of the armchair lawyers. Which bar did you pass, again?
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right up and until the point where you wield monopoly power. In this case, Amazon has hit that point. When you become the market, you have to be the market thus have open access. Sorry, that's the price of success.
There's a difference between a monopoly where customers have no choice, and a dominant player where most customer's choose to go as a result of that dominant player's success. This is different than an ISP where people literally have no choice. This is different from Microsoft in 2001 where people perceived they had no choice. I doubt most people who buy books from Amazon think it's the only book-seller out there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing one way or the other whether Amazon is evil, merely st
Or rather, Hachette stopped shipping to Amazon. (Score:5, Informative)
The Passive Voice blog has been covering this [thepassivevoice.com], and apparently Hachette's shipping department is running incredibly far behind on orders. Like ten days or more.
It sounds like Amazon finally gave up on accepting orders until Hachette catches up, or stops playing games with Amazon, whichever the problem really is.
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Yeah, and? Why should we believe them, rather than Amazon?
I tend to trust a writer who's losing money becasue of this more than I trust either Amazon or their publisher. Particularly when the publisher apparently refused to give the writer the information they'd need to prove who's delaying the shipments.
Not illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is using tried and true business methods here to lower costs by strong arming the producers. As long as they aren't a monopoly (and they aren't unless B&N goes out of business) there is absolutely nothing illegal about what they are doing. In fact it might just lower prices for consumers at the expense of revenue for the publishers and I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.
Consider their goal is lower prices overall I support their push to force publishers to lower book prices. eBook prices in particular are absurd, publishers took the opportunity to dramatically boost profit margins (I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version) and I love the idea of Amazon using their size and sales volume as a weapon to bring those prices back in line with dead tree versions. Publishers fuck the authors over just like the music and movie companies and they all deserve a healthy slap and dramatically reduced margins, selling a book shouldn't net more than 10% ROI IMO and should be closer to 3%.
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I wouldn't be surprised if eBook pricing had boosted profits triple their dead tree version
I believe that's in the right ballpark. A typical ebook agreement seems to give publishers about 75% of the income from an ebook vs 25% to the author, and their ebook prices are often higher than paper book prices.
Frankly, I'm amused to see the number of people here talking about the poor, put-upon publishers, when those publishers are earning three times as much as the actual writer from an ebook sale. Couldn't poste
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Frankly, I'm amused to see the number of people here talking about the poor, put-upon publishers, when those publishers are earning three times as much as the actual writer from an ebook sale. Couldn't posters spare a thought for those who actually wrote the book now and again?
They do;as do the publishers. It starts with the letter F and with the letter U.
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It could pretty well be illegal in Europe. Many EU countries have laws banning this sort of tactics as the abuse of the "market power". If you have more than a certain percentage of the market, you are treated as a quasi-monopoly and restrictions apply. These laws are mostly targeted at various retail chains that have abusive terms in their supplier contracts, but it is only a matter of time before this gets applied to Amazon, Google and similar.
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Yes, it's one of the fundamental distinctions between the capitalist US and the corporatist EU in anti-trust law. In the US, you are expected to show the business practice harms consumers; in the EU, you merely show it hurts the profits of existing businesses.
Thus, for example, fixing the price of books is an illegal conspiracy under US law, but mandated by law in Germany.
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The US used to have such laws, having suffered from significant monopoly problems in the past. It may be illegal in Canada, but it's arguably illegal everywhere else. If you sell houses in Chatham, you can't refuse to sell a house built by Bill Green, nor refuse to sell a house to Chan Hin Poon, even if you think Bill is an idiot and you hate anyone Chinese (;-))
Nor can you ask Bill for a kickback.
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I'd rather have slightly higher prices, and a diverse selection of sources for books (or any good really) Than see the Walmart or Amazon effect completely take over.
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Blech... (Score:2)
Book Neutrality (Score:3)
Amazon: Big on Net Neutrality [huffingtonpost.com], not so much on Book Neutrality.
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Amazon: Big on Net Neutrality [huffingtonpost.com], not so much on Book Neutrality.
And biggest hypocrits, too. Remember the wikileaks saga? Wikileaks was hosted on Amazon cloud - for a few days, until some congress critters gave Amazon a nice phone call. [arstechnica.com]
Amazon and net neutrality my ass. That was the day I decided to no longer do any business with Amazon. A bookstore and hosting service that engages in politically motivated censorship does not deserve my business, and the story posted here shows how far Amazon is willing to go.
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Buy From A Competitor - Amazon Is A Nasty Company (Score:2)
Don't give Amazon your money. They avoid paying tax and they treat their staff like dirt. Choose an alternative [ethicalconsumer.org].
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I call BS.
Do you now?
And they treat their staff exceptionally well.
Well let me clue you in [theguardian.com]. Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
We, as a society, shouldn't put up with this.
Muscle-flexing (Score:2)
Way to go injecting politics into the discussion. FTFA:
âoeWhat we are seeing is a classic case of muscle-flexing,â said Andrew Rhomberg, founder of Jellybooks, an e-book discovery site. âoeKind of like Vladimir Putin mobilizing his troops along the Ukrainian border.â
The other opinion of that is that Crimea has the right to secede and receive help from Putin or anybody they please. Thank you for making it harder for me to listen to you objectively by dropping a political dispute into this.
You know (Score:2)
Light on details (Score:2)
I read the entire article and still don't know what Amazon wants. Apparently they just like to be mean, according to the author.
Censorship in another form (Score:2)
There is no need to burn the books when you can just remove them from the shelves. The great thing about ereaders too is that all you reading habits can be tracked and the distribution of ideas can also be limited.
All that Amazon has shown is how to achieve that end.
Oxymoron (Score:2)
Labor Practices (Score:2)
I have not purchased from Amazon for many years, due to their anti-worker labor practices. Now, they have dropped the mask completely and have revealed themselves to be clearly anti-publisher (in an effort to enslave authors).
Wal-Mart style tactics on a National, state-borderless, scale. Please blacklist their domain, as I have.
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the question is; is it abusing a dominant market position?
I don't know enough about law to answer.
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Informative)
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> The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.
This would be disturbing if true.
I just did a search, All editions are available and in fact I just bought the Kindle edition now.
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Interesting)
The market position is 'bookstore' - so the question is 'is refusing to carry one book or one publisher's book out of dislike for the subject abusing it's position as a bookstore'?
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Informative)
Like many things in law, it probably comes down to intent. Refusing to carry a book critical of their CEO is likely protected in most cases, since they aren't a "common carrier" required to deliver any content a customer requests. Refusing to carry or demoting the books of a given publisher unless they get paid more is trickier, if they are found to be abusing their effective monopoly to force those concessions.
Of course, if they are found to be abusing a monopoly, the resulting settlement could include requirements that they carry all books from certain publishers, which could then lead to them carrying books like the one critical of Bezos against their will.
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:5, Informative)
The article summary appears to misrepresent the situation.
The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J.K. Rowling's new novel.
They made it sound like JK Rowling's novel is on the market and Amazon deleted its page. That's not the case. Amazon kept the page intact [amazon.com], but they stopped accepting PRE-ORDERS
The publisher wants them to start taking orders for an item that is not even available to ship yet, because the publisher has not released it yet.
The paperback edition of Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon [amazon.com] — a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it — is suddenly listed as 'unavailable.
Again.. the page says in stock and available to order.
Anne Rivers Siddons's new novel, The Girls of August, coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition.
A page for the physical book came right up [amazon.com], when I searched for it; stating unavailable with an option to e-mail me when it becomes available.
I think it's clear that what we have here is a MARKETING dispute. For one reason or another; Amazon has decided to stop collecting pre-orders on some books. Perhaps because the Publisher has not signed the proper contracts or made the proper agreements with Amazon, required for them to offer that publisher's books on a pre-order basis.
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That's part of the dispute.
But if you read the article the meat of the dispute is that after you hit "buy" Amazon says the books won't be available for weeks, and wouldn't you like to buy from someone else? Hachette swears it's shipping orders to Amazon the same as it always did. Amazon swears Hachette isn't sending them books. And a bunch of authors swear their royalty checks are shrinking.
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Refusing to carry or demoting the books of a given publisher unless they get paid more is trickier, if they are found to be abusing their effective monopoly to force those concessions.
What on earth would an "effective monopoly" look like in online retail?
How would you even "muscle out" the competition?
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By selling at cost, becoming dominant in the field, and forcing other players to negotiate steep discounts with you. Now when you sell at cost it's below everyone else's cost. Amazon does the first. That's pretty much the entire point of Amazon. They also do the second, and even have the muscle to force shippers to change their business practices. OTOH, pretty much any big online retailer tries to do the same damn thing.
When they stop being a hard-ball retail company that sticks up for it's customers, and b
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By selling at cost, becoming dominant in the field, and forcing other players to negotiate steep discounts with you. Now when you sell at cost it's below everyone else's cost. Amazon does the first. That's pretty much the entire point of Amazon. They also do the second, and even have the muscle to force shippers to change their business practices. OTOH, pretty much any big online retailer tries to do the same damn thing.
So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?
If they decide they're a "monopoly" and jack up their prices - what do you think happens in the realm of online retail?
Let me get to the point. I don't think an "effective monopoly" is remotely possible in online sales, absent government intervention.
Is Amazon going to buy out all the search engines so people can't find cheaper retailers? How can Amazon jack up their prices, earn "monopoly pr
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You have a lot of very solid logic, backed by wonderful theory, that makes perfect sense. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the reasoning you used, or the facts upon which said reasoning is based.
That doesn't mean it's not BS. Like all theories a single data point that doesn't fit with the theory totally destroys it, no matter how tight the logic.
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner.
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Insightful)
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.
Monopoly is not defined as "power to `hurt' customers" or "customer faces a reduced number of choices", so all the rest of your post is a red herring.
No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:
"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"
We can engage in a 10th-grade level grammar debate over whether "Monopolized" only means "the act of being a monopoly," or it can also mean "having monopoly power," or you can respond to my post on reality with something besides theory.
Hachette books does not have an innate right to use Amazon to sell their wares. If they don't like the level of service provided by Amazon, Amazon can do NOTHING to stop Hachette from creating an online store for their readers and shipping books by their choice of USPS, UPS, or FedEx. They could even sell their readers ebooks and not deal with the logistics of killing trees and moving them around.
The rights of a monopolist are red herring.
You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.
Or if that's too much work for Hachette, there a myriad of other online retailers who will gladly work with them to sell their wares.
The very idea of "muscling" in the online realm is ridiculous. Amazon can take their ball and go home but they can't force anyone else to use their ball.
If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are certainly technically correct. Amazon is not a monopoly. However, they are the 800-pound gorilla, and we've seen this script before.
Essentially their market power allows them to dictate price and the price they demand is well below what the publishers can sustain themselves (as they currently exist) at. This means that they cannot (and will not) give the same price to the competition. This happened with the independent and the chain bookstores as well, and it pretty much drove the vast majority of the independents out of business.
And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon. Being unavailable in Amazon is roughly equivalent to having Google search delist your website. Sure, you still exist, and a small number of die-hards have you in their bookmarks, but you're essentially a dead-man (site?) walking.
So, effectively for the publishers, Amazon *is* the only game in town, regardless of legal definitions, and Amazon is playing the Walmart game. This might work well for consumers, unless they're looking for a certain quality of goods, in which case, the practice is deeply worrisome.
If you are interested in lots of cheap self-published fan-fic, then the "Amazonization" of the book industry is not a problem. After all, Walmart serves a significant audience as well. However, if you are well-served by the *current* book market, where books aren't cheap, but you are willing to pay the publishers for quality control (and assume that most good authors would find gainful employment elsewhere if they're asked to write for near-free) , then yes, driving the publishers out of business is not a positive development.
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Essentially their market power allows them to dictate price and the price they demand is well below what the publishers can sustain themselves (as they currently exist) at. This means that they cannot (and will not) give the same price to the competition. This happened with the independent and the chain bookstores as well, and it pretty much drove the vast majority of the independents out of business.
And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon. Being unavailable in Amazon is roughly equivalent to having Google search delist your website. Sure, you still exist, and a small number of die-hards have you in their bookmarks, but you're essentially a dead-man (site?) walking.
The publishers don't have a right to exist as they currently are. Book publishing has changed and their model built when book publishing had high upfront costs doesn't work so well in an age where you can toss an ebook on the internet for practically nothing.
And no, as has been made pretty clear, the strong majority of customers won't look anywhere else besides Amazon.
That's not a monopoly. Every single one of those customers have the ability to choose any other Internet retailer. It's as simple as typing a new address in the browser. What is Amazon going to do, hijack their computer with a script?
There's mark
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So you're saying that book stores shouldn't be allowed to decide what books they sell?
I guess the local book store better build a big warehouse so they can store all those new books they're going to be forced to stock.
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Well, I was actually clarifying a question from two posts above me - where the poster specifically said they didn't know enough to answer. I'm in the same boat on the general question actually.
In general, yes a book store gets to choose which books to sell - as does any other store. On the other hand, if the store is the only store in town and there's no easy way to leave town, well that's what the anti-trust laws were originally written for. Market position matters: If you have a small slice of the mark
Re:Good news for BN? (Score:4, Interesting)
Under anti-trust law market-leaders have a lot of responsibilities normal companies don't have. Which means your analogy to the local store is irrelevant. Local book stores don't have to deal with the Sherman Antitrust Act*.
If you're a company like Amazon, and your policy is to stock damn near everything, including no less then 19 books by Hitler, you're not supposed to use your market power to screw anyone. You can use your power to a certain extent, but you can't abuse it. And yes, I'm fully aware that abuse is a relative term. That's kinda the point. If it wasn't, then a company could hack it's way around the objective definition very easily.
Keep in mind that if anti-trust law did not exist nobody would be able to read Slashdot unless they used Windows and IE, and that nobody would even have a computer running an open source OS because IBM would just have slapped IBM-OS on the original PC and Linus would never have been able to buy a machine capable of running a kernel he wrote himself.
*Internet factoid of the day: this is not named after the Civil War General, but after his brother, who became a Senator in 1861. He started as a Congressman, and almost became Speaker, but South Carolina managed to block him right before seceding, so he moved to the Senate. At the time William Tecumseh Sherman was known mostly as being Senator Sherman's brother. The loser third Sherman brother was Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.
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think of the old people and how hard it's to create an account on another website
remember how the old people ask you what you put into the name field, the address field, the zip code field
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I don't see the harm, what does the middle-man do anyway?
$1,000 Manhattan lunches?
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The middle man is the one who pays the author an advance, so he doesn't starve while working on his book full-time. The middle man also has dedicated marketing and fulfillment departments that do the same work for many authors, spreading time and costs.
Finally, the publisher spreads the risk around. If you are a self-published author and your first book does not sell well, you're out a lot of time and effort, may be bankrupt, and you may never write another book again. If you are with a publisher and you
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An advance is an advance, and everyone starts out low. In any kind of art/literature related field, we're basically gambling. If you're a new author, we're going to start off with small bets.
And the GP claimed that somehow the author was going to live off that advance while writing their book full time. Which is only likely to happen for established non-fiction writers... certainly not for a new, starving fiction writer.
When a legit publisher advertises, it's to the book trade, the retailers, the distributors. This is something the self-published author cannot do very efficiently.
Yes, exactly. Self-published authors don't care about advertising to 'the book trade, the retailers, the distributors', because they can just upload a file and be on Amazon, B&N and most other distributors and online retailers with print and ebooks within a few days.
Actual a
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