3 ms·

I must say congratulations to Amazon, punish the authors in the midst of a recession whilst having no effect on the publisher. Bravo!

boredguy8 17y ago
Authors don't have to publish via Macmillan. I honestly don't understand why so many people see Amazon as being a moral failure here.
- rgrove 17y ago
  That's an incredibly short-sighted viewpoint. The vast majority of authors don't get to choose their publisher, and are very lucky if any publisher agrees to publish their work. Furthermore, authors tend to build long-lasting relationships with their publisher, so even a well established and popular author isn't exactly free to just switch to another publisher that Amazon has decided gets to continue to exist.
  - boredguy8 17y ago
    Why are we talking about this as though we still live in a world where it takes a Macmillan-like relationship in order to publish? Why do people love their print publishers, but music publishers get ranted at? And in the world of blogs, in the world of independent publishers, and in the world of self-publishing (whether through Amazon or some other resource), holding fast to a publisher like people seem enamored of doing--it's just confusing.
    - electromagnetic 17y ago
      Please get a grip, this isn't web 2.0 bullshit, for the authors affected here it's their lives. No one worth a damn self-publishes for very simple reasons, self-publishing doesn't pay out over a years salary in a single check to enable you to work on your next title. Self-publishing doesn't pay for your advertising and publicity or even getting your books into a single bookstore anywhere on the face of the planet. For most authors their job is to write, that's what they're good at and hence is why they do it. They're not marketers, advertisers, or anything. They're writers by definition and occupation. Macmillan is trying to increase the prices it can sell its ebooks for to what they're considering realistic prices. Whether this is true or not isn't the matter of debate here. The question here is the unethical behavior of preventing the distribution of titles from ~25 publishing houses, all subdivisions of the Macmillan Publishers group, despite already agreeing to said groups terms. Amazon has already quite clearly stated they're accepting raised prices. Obviously this bargaining ploy was never going to hurt Macmillan in the first place, but it's seriously hurting many genre writers who rely on the online booksellers like Amazon to provide the selection mortar-based stores cannot. Macmillan has bestsellers for sale, which are predominantly bought off the shelves in mortar-stores. Either in real bookstores or through Walmart, and even drug stores. However, it's the genre writers who have relied on Amazon to distribute their books to their fans, search their websites and, until now, their titles would most likely have been exclusively amazon-linked. Amazon, well aware it sells the predominant amount of Genre books on the market, was willing to pull Macmillan books, including its imprints like Tor/Forge, Minotaur, Griffin, etc. who cater exclusively to genre. You come off as simply ignorant of the publishing world if you truly believe 'self-publishing' is an alternative to mainstream writers. It never will be an alternative. Novels published exclusively as E-books in the near future will still go through an update of the original process where advances are paid, or it'll never catch on as anything more than a tertiary market like audio books.
- Frazzydee 17y ago
  Because Amazon didn't work the PR machine like they should have.
onedognight 17y ago
The authors are fighting Amazon, so of course Amazon attacks the authors. Macmillan is just the middle-man. In this case they are acting like the author's union and doing collective bargaining. Amazon shut the factory down because the workers asked for what Amazon thinks is too much. Some workers like the hardball their union is playing and some don't, but changing their union affiliation is hard.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  There's a huge difference between Macmillan and a writers association that you clearly don't understand. Macmillan buys a finished product, refines it and mass produces it. No different than buying iron ore. Amazon is a distributor. This is an argument between Macmillan and Amazon, all the authors under discussion are already locked in binding contracts. The authors may get some benefit out of the increase in e-book prices. However 90% of Macmillan's income isn't coming from its genre imprints, it's likely coming from its imprints that handle their 'best sellers', that won't get many sales through amazon and will be getting virtually none through e-book sales. Why you'd assume Macmillan is acting as the 'union' for less than 5% of its authors is rather strange. This is what the specific writers associations do.

boredguy8 17y ago

Authors don't have to publish via Macmillan. I honestly don't understand why so many people see Amazon as being a moral failure here.

rgrove 17y ago
That's an incredibly short-sighted viewpoint. The vast majority of authors don't get to choose their publisher, and are very lucky if any publisher agrees to publish their work. Furthermore, authors tend to build long-lasting relationships with their publisher, so even a well established and popular author isn't exactly free to just switch to another publisher that Amazon has decided gets to continue to exist.
- boredguy8 17y ago
  Why are we talking about this as though we still live in a world where it takes a Macmillan-like relationship in order to publish? Why do people love their print publishers, but music publishers get ranted at? And in the world of blogs, in the world of independent publishers, and in the world of self-publishing (whether through Amazon or some other resource), holding fast to a publisher like people seem enamored of doing--it's just confusing.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    Please get a grip, this isn't web 2.0 bullshit, for the authors affected here it's their lives. No one worth a damn self-publishes for very simple reasons, self-publishing doesn't pay out over a years salary in a single check to enable you to work on your next title. Self-publishing doesn't pay for your advertising and publicity or even getting your books into a single bookstore anywhere on the face of the planet. For most authors their job is to write, that's what they're good at and hence is why they do it. They're not marketers, advertisers, or anything. They're writers by definition and occupation. Macmillan is trying to increase the prices it can sell its ebooks for to what they're considering realistic prices. Whether this is true or not isn't the matter of debate here. The question here is the unethical behavior of preventing the distribution of titles from ~25 publishing houses, all subdivisions of the Macmillan Publishers group, despite already agreeing to said groups terms. Amazon has already quite clearly stated they're accepting raised prices. Obviously this bargaining ploy was never going to hurt Macmillan in the first place, but it's seriously hurting many genre writers who rely on the online booksellers like Amazon to provide the selection mortar-based stores cannot. Macmillan has bestsellers for sale, which are predominantly bought off the shelves in mortar-stores. Either in real bookstores or through Walmart, and even drug stores. However, it's the genre writers who have relied on Amazon to distribute their books to their fans, search their websites and, until now, their titles would most likely have been exclusively amazon-linked. Amazon, well aware it sells the predominant amount of Genre books on the market, was willing to pull Macmillan books, including its imprints like Tor/Forge, Minotaur, Griffin, etc. who cater exclusively to genre. You come off as simply ignorant of the publishing world if you truly believe 'self-publishing' is an alternative to mainstream writers. It never will be an alternative. Novels published exclusively as E-books in the near future will still go through an update of the original process where advances are paid, or it'll never catch on as anything more than a tertiary market like audio books.
Frazzydee 17y ago
Because Amazon didn't work the PR machine like they should have.

onedognight 17y ago

The authors are fighting Amazon, so of course Amazon attacks the authors. Macmillan is just the middle-man. In this case they are acting like the author's union and doing collective bargaining. Amazon shut the factory down because the workers asked for what Amazon thinks is too much. Some workers like the hardball their union is playing and some don't, but changing their union affiliation is hard.

electromagnetic 17y ago
There's a huge difference between Macmillan and a writers association that you clearly don't understand. Macmillan buys a finished product, refines it and mass produces it. No different than buying iron ore. Amazon is a distributor. This is an argument between Macmillan and Amazon, all the authors under discussion are already locked in binding contracts. The authors may get some benefit out of the increase in e-book prices. However 90% of Macmillan's income isn't coming from its genre imprints, it's likely coming from its imprints that handle their 'best sellers', that won't get many sales through amazon and will be getting virtually none through e-book sales. Why you'd assume Macmillan is acting as the 'union' for less than 5% of its authors is rather strange. This is what the specific writers associations do.