12 ms·

Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?

131 points by cstross 12y ago

facepalm 12y ago
And Amazon is interested in driving Charlie Stross out of business because? By the logic of the article everybody who negotiates a price is evil because they want to drive the other party out of business by aiming for lower and lower prices.
- stcredzero 12y ago
  Such tendencies are fine in your typical market. Monopolies make it a problem.
  - facepalm 12y ago
    Even if Amazon was a monopoly it would still need authors to create books.
    - KJasper 12y ago
      Ofcourse, but imagine that most/all publishers are out of business and Amazon will give you a very low margin, because they can...
      - facepalm 12y ago
        It's quite impossible in this day and age to put all publishers out of business. Everybody can be a publisher, a server costs just 10$/month.
    - pdonis 12y ago
      And there will be; it's just that it might be a different population of authors than we have today, e.g., Charlie Stross might not be among them. As another poster pointed out upthread, there will always be plenty of people who will write even if they get paid very poorly. Charlie Stross might not be one of them; if the pay he can get from writing goes down enough, he might, as he says in his article, have to stop writing and find another job that pays more. But there will be plenty of authors who will continue to write even under Amazon's self-publishing terms.
      - facepalm 12y ago
        That's just baseless scaremongering. If people value Stross' work enough, they will pay. Amazon can not become a monopoly, there are always other ways (like printed books, buying directly from the author, whatever). I don't think it would be in Amazon's interest to encourage alternate channels by driving quality authors away. They probably also can not just sell any crap that calls itself a book, so they need good authors (assuming books are even significant revenue for them anyway).
        pdonis 12y ago
        > That's just baseless scaremongering. I didn't say this will happen, nor did I say it would necessarily be a good thing if it happened. I just said it might happen. Stross himself appears to agree that it might; see below. > If people value Stross' work enough, they will pay. And if they don't, they won't. More precisely, the more it costs to get Stross' work, the fewer people are likely to pay. Will there be enough at a higher cost (such as buying printed books or buying direct from the author) for Stross to make a living at it? Stross himself didn't seem too hopeful in his article; if you think otherwise, perhaps you should tell him, not me. > I don't think it would be in Amazon's interest to encourage alternate channels by driving quality authors away. I don't think Amazon cares about quality authors as such; I think they care about selling what the public has shown, by its buying choices, that it wants to buy. If the public wants to buy the work of quality authors, Amazon will sell it--and try to undercut everyone else's price. If the public wants trash, Amazon will sell that--and try to undercut everyone else's price. > They probably also can not just sell any crap that calls itself a book, so they need good authors Maybe, maybe not. See above. It's not Amazon that's ultimately deciding this; it's us, the readers. > (assuming books are even significant revenue for them anyway). I don't know about revenue, but I think it's quite possible that books, or at least e-books, might be a significant portion of their profits. They have distribution costs down extremely low for anything digital, and the prices in the Kindle store indicate to me that there could be quite a bit of margin there.
  - cjy 12y ago
    Actually, a monopoly should remove problems like these. If Amazon is the only firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future. Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long term profit. For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will tend to overfish. They can't leave fish in the ocean to reproduce because other boats will catch them. If there is just one boat (or all boats are owned by the same company) it will take out the optimal number of fish so that the fishery remains healthy and pays the highest dividends in the future.
    - SapphireSun 12y ago
      w.r.t. fishing, I remember reading about this and while that approach works in theory, in practice people are subject to careerist tendencies. The fact that they will not be around as long as the company will be incentivizes them to extract wealth as fast as possible. I tried looking for the article that talked about this, but I couldn't find it. The conclusion of the article was that some form of regulation was necessary. My gut feeling is that the monopolist strategy can work, but only if the company's board implements strong internal controls and the executives don't get them changed. I feel that this is a bit of a gamble though as you have two powerful diametrically opposed forces. Also, members of the board could be looking for a quick exit from time to time as well. On another note, while I was looking for the article, I found this interesting article on the necessary characteristics for a Marine Protected Area to work: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature13053.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature1...
    - stcredzero 12y ago
      If Amazon is the only firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future. What are you saying? That media always tends towards higher quality, especially after consolidation? Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long term profit. There's no reason why this would preclude vast oceans of swill produced by isolated independent artists, from which a few mega-hits arise from time to time. (App Stores?) For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will tend to overfish. The problem here, is that in this discussion it seems that fish correspond to authors. I don't think that's correct. Authors of a given "species" aren't a partially fungible resource that is "killed" when utilized. (Unless the authorial landscape turns into a vast ocean of swill from which a few megahit one-hit wonders sometimes arise.) Please cite just one historical example where a media monopoly increased the quality of authorship in its domain.
  - mattchew 12y ago
    I don't think Amazon is a monopoly in the sense of controlling the market. They're certainly the dominant player, but it's easy enough to buy an ebook from somewhere else. I do not see how Amazon starts squeezing authors hard without losing them to somewhere else.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    Fortunately amazon isn't a monopoly. They are just popular.
stcredzero 12y ago
monopsony It's always a good sign when an article expands one's vocabulary. (Yes, look it up!)
- rahimnathwani 12y ago
  The first example of a monopsony I was taught at school was that of the market for teachers if all schools are run by the state. Then teachers can only be employed by the state (if they want to remain teachers).
icebraining 12y ago
if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse. Is this claim backed up by any actual evidence? Does Amazon pressure self-published authors the same way they pressure publishers?
- danmaz74 12y ago
  Isn't there a cause where you get MUCH better conditions if you price your ebook under $10?
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Is there?
    - Arkadir 12y ago
      https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0 https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0 If your list price is above $9.99, you get 35% royalties instead of 70%.
- michaelt 12y ago
  Even if Amazon doesn't pressure self-publishers on price today, a career writer has to think about where the market will be 10 or 15 years from now. The claim is not that Amazon is pressuring self-publishing authors today - it's that they could start in the future, as an ebook monopoly would give them have the means, motive and opportunity.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Amazon will never be a true monopoly, because shipping ebooks has no real barriers. There's no way that writers will be unable to sell their works elsewhere, and as Stross himself writes, novels are not commodities that can be undercut by another producer. The only authors that have to fear that future are those that produce works uninteresting enough that people won't look for them outside of the Amazon store.
mark_l_watson 12y ago
It is ironic that all of Charlie's books that I have bought have been on Kindle. That said, I basically agree with the premise of this article. When the price is comparable I prefer buying eBooks from publishers, with an advantage of getting multiple formats. Yesterday I bought one book on Kindle and another directly from the publisher. The book I bought on Kindle was unfortunately much cheaper from Amazon than the publisher's direct price.
edanm 12y ago
Great article, and I love getting an update on one of the more influential articles I've read about Amazon that has stuck with me over the years. But I'm left with a question - is Amazon stupid? They rely on new works coming out just as much as authors and publishers. Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term? It looks like a losing strategy for them.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Writing is like music: Someone will always do it, even if it doesn't pay. You can take the author's money and he'll still write. Being passionate about your job (which most artists are) in a market with abundant supply (which art has) means you are a career sucker. While art is not fungible in the sense that a free market would drive the margins to zero, a monopolist could still twist artists pretty bad before a significant portion of them stop writing.
  - pizza234 12y ago
    Yes and no; exactly like music, and say, cinema, artists will still produce without money, but quantity and quality will become mutually exclusive. In the article Stross says that "after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job".
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    My father wrote and had published a couple of books (obscure historical topics). He spent years writing them. He didn't care about making money off of them, he wrote them to establish his professional reputation. He's happy that people read them and cite them.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  "Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term?" Paying authors 70% rather than 15% is going to "drive them off"? Okay.
avoutthere 12y ago
Amazon is a great American success story that has improved the lives of many around the world. Only those of a particular political persuasion would characterize them as evil.
juniorcopywrt 12y ago
Ugh more whining from Stross. What a headline: Betteridge's Law and "Amazon, have you stopped beating your wife yet?" combined in one. Amazon's negotiating tactics are not unique and don't make them evil. B&N pulled the same tricks when negotiating with Simon & Schuster last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schuster-and-barnes-noble-reach-a-deal.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schus... It's a common incident in the television industry as well. Time Warner dropped CBS last year while negotiating a fee dispute: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-blackout-idUSBRE97309G20130804 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-... It doesn't matter that one party is in a stronger negotiating position than the other. That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game. p.s. The DOJ anti-trust lawyers never had a focus on preventing monopolies before the '80s. Their focus has always been on the prevention of the abuse of market power whether by monopolists or oligopolies. If Amazon should be targeted for having an ebook monopoly then Apple would have been on the hitlist first for having a digital music monopoly that they managed for half a decade before the Kindle.
- Anderkent 12y ago
  > That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game Well, yes, the point is that the game is broken.
- gress 12y ago
  > That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game. Try some other words in there and see how you feel: "That's fascism; don't hate the player, hate the game." At least it's clear that you wish to resolve corporations from responsibility for what they do.
  - pja 12y ago
    absolve?
    - gress 12y ago
      Thanks - that looks like it was an autocorrect typo and the edit window has closed.
ilamont 12y ago
One issue I seldom see mentioned in articles about ebook monopolies is how Apple -- which has many of the pieces in place to be a strong competitor -- has really dropped the ball. When I first began testing different ebook formats a few years ago, not only was the iPad hardware superior to the Kindles and Nook, the ePub reading experience in iBooks was vastly better than the same ePub on the Nook or the .mobi equivalent in the Kindles. Where Apple failed was in the purchasing experience (the iBookstore/iTunes mess) and some of the back-end tools for publishing. Other than updating the iTunes Producer interface for submitting new titles, and improving iBooks Author for Apple-only rich media ebooks, I haven't seen any significant improvements for readers or publishers who want to use the Apple platform over the past two years. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire has brought Amazon customers a slick alternative to the iPad at a much lower price point. I don't like having an Amazon monopoly, but some of the blame should be assigned to the erstwhile competitors who can't seem to get it together.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  It has been argued for years that network services is a weak spot for Apple (maps, network drives, etc). They hopefully will do better in the future. Personally, as a happy Amazon customer, one aspect is funny. I get insight into how satisfied Microsoft users must have felt in the 90s when the monopolistic criminality became widely known. :-) Edit: Any suggested alternative stores, which deliver paper books all over EU? (Sigh, I am happy with Amazon.)
  - tramtaram 12y ago
    http://www.bookdepository.com http://www.bookdepository.com is quite good. Might not be the cheapest though.
    - klackerz 12y ago
      Book Depository is also owned by Amazon though their worldwide delivery is awesome.
      - 12y ago
Turing_Machine 12y ago
"they supply editorial, production, packaging, marketing, accounting, and sales services and pay me a percentage of the revenue....I could do this myself, and self-publish, but I don't want to be a publisher, I want to be a writer: we have this thing called "the division of labour"" You can hire that done for a flat rate, without giving up 85% of your money in perpetuity. "will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms." What are these "extremely onerous terms"? There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month. No exclusive contracts. No Byzantine "royalty statements". Their accounting is quite clear. No signing over your copyrights forever. "if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse" This, of course, is pure nonsense. It may eventually come about that Amazon starts abusing authors, but that's certainly not the case now.
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  P.S. "rely on DRM on the walled garden of the Kindle store to lock consumers onto their platform," This is also nonsense. If your Kindle books are DRMed it's because your publisher insists on it. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. Amazon doesn't actually care if you add DRM or not.
  - rubinelli 12y ago
    How do you tell if a Kindle book has DRM or not? I searched all over the product pages and couldn't find it anywhere.
    - extesy 12y ago
      Here's an example of a book with DRM (look at the last line of book description): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DA6YEKS http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DA6YEKS
      - Turing_Machine 12y ago
        Actually that's an example of a book without DRM. :-)
vertex-four 12y ago
So, here's something that I want as an occasional reader. I want a service that'll let me buy a different small-ish bundle of e-books of various genres every week/month/whatever, Humble Bundle style. I've had a look for such things, and haven't really found anything which does it properly.
- 7799862 12y ago
  So you want a Humble Bundle, but for books? Maybe they could call it the "Humble Book Bundle"! And maybe they could give it a humblebundle.com URL too! Oh, it already exists... https://www.humblebundle.com/books https://www.humblebundle.com/books
  - furyofantares 12y ago
    There is no need to use sarcasm, you can just inform the person you are replying to without trying to belittle them
    - aidanf 12y ago
      The parent's tone doesn't come across as belittling to me - it seems more like a playful, joking form of sarcasm - although I guess tone is difficult to decipher on the web. Nevertheless, there's no harm in a little humour, and I prefer to give parent the benefit of the doubt.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Thanks, I've bought things from several Humble Bundles but I'd never heard of this one.
  - vertex-four 12y ago
    The Humble Book Bundle has only appeared fairly rarely (maybe that's changed now?), and tends to stick to "geeky" books, unfortunately.
hershel 12y ago
If they fear being left alone against amazon, why don't authors use their union to start directly collectively bargaining, or even starting business activities together ? In a world where a book store is just an app, there are a lot of opportunities open to authors, and they really hold the power in the book market, at least with regards to ebooks.
- Anderkent 12y ago
  Because they don't want to be publishers, they want to be writers. As said in the article.
  - hershel 12y ago
    They don't have to be publishers. They just vote once in a while, pay their dues , and the union does the rest.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      Union might not be the best example. Maybe a "writers' cooperative".
rwmj 12y ago
And what stops Charlie Stross from selling eBooks through his own website and taking PayPal as payment?
- moomin 12y ago
  His agreement with Hachette, which, as he has explained, he believes to be an agreement in his best interest. Seriously, has it been so long since Microsoft that people can't recognise straight up abuse of market position anymore?
  - rwmj 12y ago
    At one time you could practically not buy a computer without buying a Microsoft license. It's not as if you can't get internet without being forced to buy everything through Amazon. Anyone can still set up a website.
    - yardie 12y ago
      You could always buy a computer without a Microsoft license. What you could not buy was a computer minus the price of that license (small independent shops excluded). You can sell your books through Amazon. But you can't sell your books anywhere else cheaper than Amazon.
      - WalterBright 12y ago
        You can sell your books through your own web site and set your own prices. The internet is the great democratizer of commerce.
        moomin 12y ago
        I think you misunderstand what's involved in selling a book. A website that takes orders isn't enough, you've got to actually stock and deliver them. This is what Amazon is developing a stranglehold on.
wjnc 12y ago
The thing that resonates in this story for me, is that these monopsonies mostly harm producers (writers, musicians), not consumers. The monopsonists keep prices quite low and service quite high, compared to monopolists. It really feels like a problem for Stross, but not too generally for mankind (Stross-fans aside). Troubles on the producer side might force some producers out, but since this is in the creative sphere we cannot really know which Shakespeare we've missed because he "became a banker". I do feel sorry for Stross the writer that might have to switch publisher, or the artist who gets .002 cents per download, but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value. Other comments rightly add that in the transition from monopsony to oligopsony (: say Apple enters) producers might be able to retain more value, but then again, these producers still have to deal with the middle men. You have this stacked market here where each party would blame the others for not getting his / her 'appropriate' level of reward: producer (creative, high-risk endeavor, superstar effects) <--> publishing house (makes market, creates prints, less risky endeavor, but has competition in picking winners) <--> *platform Amazon (delivers product, makes userbase, pays per sale: least risk but low added value per sale)
- zcrar70 12y ago
  > but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value. They won't if there are no more good books to read/music to listen to, because the gains aren't worth the effort that goes into producing them. I don't think danger is books or music disappearing, but that the quality goes down, as the incentives for authors/musicians/composers to invest significant time and effort producing high quality work are reduced. This particularly applies to the 'avant-guarde' works which push the envelope creatively/intellectually, but typically don't correlate with high volumes.
- epsylon 12y ago
  It mostly harms the big name producers. There are plenty of niche writers and small-time musicians who are super happy to be published on Amazon and iTunes.
vosper 12y ago
There's a particularly good link to an insightful counter-argument from another author way down in the comments: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hachette-dont-believe-the-spin/ http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hache...
- moomin 12y ago
  I note that even after he includes other media in the size of these behemoths, the numbers he's quoting are factors of 5 or 6 smaller than Amazon (a number notably missing from his analysis) Yes, on many occasions these guys would be the scariest 12-year old in the playground. But this time they're getting picked on by Mike Tyson.
  - vosper 12y ago
    You're right that he doesn't mention that Amazon's revenues dwarf the publishers' revenues, though this [1] Guardian article suggests that Amazon's book revenues may be as low as 7% of the revenue figure that Stross cited. At any rate, the most interesting points in the blog post were that firstly it's not clear that Hachette aren't playing some shenanigans of their own with delivery times, and secondly that there's this whole background of court-ordered deal renegotiation that Stross didn't mention. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-escalates-battle-hachette-publishing http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-esc...
    - moomin 12y ago
      The problem is, as far as I can tell, it's the source of the rumour. I mean, there's no evidence that Jeff Bezos is not doing it because he was ordered to by the Bavarian illuminati. For or against. I could say it was unclear, but it'd be more likely a transparent contra-play by a PR company representing someone doing something bad.
jstalin 12y ago
Conversely, I've been able to publish through Amazon's on-demand imprint, CreateSpace, books that I would have no way of publishing otherwise. I make a few hundred bucks a month and have fun with self-publishing. The Kindle editions also earn 70% royalties. I make some money, so does Amazon, and those who buy the books get what they want. Everyone wins.
spir 12y ago
Let us not fall into the peasant trap of calling a website, which you need never visit, that sells commodities, which you need never purchase, a monopoly. Amazon's strategy is price, convenience and selection. It has been since at least the famous 1997 letter to shareholders. (Of course, Kindle isn't a monopoly either. None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss for anticompetitive purposes. It's razor and blades.) First World Problems at its finest. "Those fucking starbucks guys have a MONOPOLY on good coffee!!" Suck it up or use widely-available inferior products and services.
- Anderkent 12y ago
  You're looking at it from the point of a customer. Sure, if you want to buy a book you could use a different retailer, they probably have the book too. From the point of the producer, if you're not on amazon, you're not reaching 80% of your audience. You don't have a choice.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    I've bought ebooks from people's own web sites that were not available from Amazon. They did their own promotion, such as posting reddit articles about their books. They reached a worldwide audience, and (presumably) kept 100% of the sales revenue.
    - Anderkent 12y ago
      You might have. You're hardly representative. If everyone bought books on personal web sites, amazon wouldn't have 80% market penetration.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss... Actually, this does happen from time to time when Amazon decides to promote a book for free and still pays list price royalties.
- armenarmen 12y ago
spindritf 12y ago
Neither. They pass almost all of their surplus to customers. They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned, the anti-Apple. Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers -- Matthew Yglesias In this case they are a middleman replacing another middleman. That's just capitalism. Publishers had a good run. Can Amazon turn evil? Sure. But it will be 20 years this year and they still haven't. If they do, you can replace them tomorrow. You can even read a book bought anywhere else on your Kindle. EPUB converts to MOBI just like that ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi But that won't be necessary since another book store will happily give you .mobi files. That's some monopoly they have. As to the point that somehow we will run out of books to read, there is not even the slightest chance that I will read the best 1% of the books published until today in my entire lifetime. That's assuming everyone stops writing now. And statistically I'm a heavy reader, I'm up to 2-3 not-strictly-technical books a month.
- anon1385 12y ago
  >They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned I think we must have a very different idea of 'model corporation' http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/ http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_... >The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for fear of theft >On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102 degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed. >On July 25, with temperatures in the depot reaching 110 degrees, a security guard reported to OSHA that Amazon was refusing to open garage doors to help air circulate and that he had seen two pregnant women taken to a nursing station. Calls to the local ambulance service became so frequent that for five hot days in June and July, ambulances and paramedics were stationed all day at the depot
larrys 12y ago
"So, point one is that this is not a battle of equals: it's a big-ish corporation being picked on by a Goliath more than ten times its size, in an attempt to extort better terms." This is really a stupid way to put it. The 1/10th size company is plenty big enough to hire top notch lawyers, lobbyists, PR people etc to fight this battle. The fact is this is really a battle where, past a certain point, size doesn't matter. We are not talking about a schoolyard fight. What Amazon is doing is wrong (if as reported) however making out the underdog (if you want to call it that) as a "David" as if they are some small 10 person company being picked on by, say, google (and their algorithm) is just hyperbole.
Oletros 12y ago
I would like to see any proof of that accusation of predatory pricing.
- MaysonL 12y ago
  Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling ebooks below cost.
  - Oletros 12y ago
    Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling SOME books below cost. Still waiting any proof from him about that predatory pricing accusation
WalterBright 12y ago
Oh, rubbish. I have a couple of my own books that no publisher would touch, for sale on Amazon. I have helped a couple authors get their out-of-print-that-no-publisher-would-touch books published on Amazon. Has Stross considered that maybe it's Hachette that is holding out for unreasonable terms? Maybe he could go with another publisher. He also writes: "They have a publishing subsidiary and allow me—if I want to self-publish—to use them as a sales channel, and will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms." I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous. "It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read." On the contrary, my impression is that there's been a recent explosion of new titles being released, as well as putting old out-of-print books back on the (electronic) shelf.
- craigching 12y ago
  > I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous. That's not how I read it. I read it as he gets paid extremely well if he accepts the onerous terms. What are the onerous terms? I wish he'd elaborated, but you can imagine it might have something to do with ownership once you've published with Amazon. I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure.
  - anon1385 12y ago
    >I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N >You will not, without our express, prior written permission: (a) issue any press release or make any other public disclosures regarding this Agreement or its terms
    - craigching 12y ago
      Thanks for that. I think some of the comments downstream have sated my appetite to know more as well :)
    - Oletros 12y ago
      Where are the onerous terms there?
alexeisadeski3 12y ago
Pretty obviously not a monopoly.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
Given that publishers, authors, printers, bookstore and basically the entire publishing chain has done pretty much fuck all in the 20(!) years that Amazon has been active to even remotely innovate their industry, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. Crying on the sideline about how evil Amazon is whilst doing nothing to service readers doesn't get any sympathy votes from me. And that includes Charlie Stross, who's work I love. I have money and e-reader, but if I want to buy his books, he sends me to... Amazon. To buy DRM-ed vendor-locked Kindle-only copies. Okay, Accelerando is an exception, but we're talking pretty much the most tech-savvy, open source minded fiction author out there. You can pretty much imagine the state of the rest of the industry. Amazon is the only party that innovates and tries to provide for the needs of the reader. They've earned their monopoly the hard way. Hachette is not the little guy. Hachette is a multinational that sat on its fat ass counting money for two decades.
chris123 12y ago
I don't know if I'd go so far as calling them "plain evil," but they definitely have tendencies. They are certainly a near-monopoly, and they are known to treat their employees (at least the low level ones), vendors, and customers in monopolistic (and maybe evil) ways, such as by basically dictating "everything," for one. That said, I am not at all unbiased. In fact, I strongly dislike Amazon after a bad experience with them as a marketplace seller: Amazon suspended my seller account for life, without opportunity to appeal for an honest mistake I fixed myself before they even noticed it. Details on Ripoff Report: http://goo.gl/xgbelU http://goo.gl/xgbelU

131 points by cstross 12y ago

And Amazon is interested in driving Charlie Stross out of business because? By the logic of the article everybody who negotiates a price is evil because they want to drive the other party out of business by aiming for lower and lower prices.

stcredzero 12y ago
Such tendencies are fine in your typical market. Monopolies make it a problem.
- facepalm 12y ago
  Even if Amazon was a monopoly it would still need authors to create books.
  - KJasper 12y ago
    Ofcourse, but imagine that most/all publishers are out of business and Amazon will give you a very low margin, because they can...
    - facepalm 12y ago
      It's quite impossible in this day and age to put all publishers out of business. Everybody can be a publisher, a server costs just 10$/month.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    And there will be; it's just that it might be a different population of authors than we have today, e.g., Charlie Stross might not be among them. As another poster pointed out upthread, there will always be plenty of people who will write even if they get paid very poorly. Charlie Stross might not be one of them; if the pay he can get from writing goes down enough, he might, as he says in his article, have to stop writing and find another job that pays more. But there will be plenty of authors who will continue to write even under Amazon's self-publishing terms.
    - facepalm 12y ago
      That's just baseless scaremongering. If people value Stross' work enough, they will pay. Amazon can not become a monopoly, there are always other ways (like printed books, buying directly from the author, whatever). I don't think it would be in Amazon's interest to encourage alternate channels by driving quality authors away. They probably also can not just sell any crap that calls itself a book, so they need good authors (assuming books are even significant revenue for them anyway).
      - pdonis 12y ago
        > That's just baseless scaremongering. I didn't say this will happen, nor did I say it would necessarily be a good thing if it happened. I just said it might happen. Stross himself appears to agree that it might; see below. > If people value Stross' work enough, they will pay. And if they don't, they won't. More precisely, the more it costs to get Stross' work, the fewer people are likely to pay. Will there be enough at a higher cost (such as buying printed books or buying direct from the author) for Stross to make a living at it? Stross himself didn't seem too hopeful in his article; if you think otherwise, perhaps you should tell him, not me. > I don't think it would be in Amazon's interest to encourage alternate channels by driving quality authors away. I don't think Amazon cares about quality authors as such; I think they care about selling what the public has shown, by its buying choices, that it wants to buy. If the public wants to buy the work of quality authors, Amazon will sell it--and try to undercut everyone else's price. If the public wants trash, Amazon will sell that--and try to undercut everyone else's price. > They probably also can not just sell any crap that calls itself a book, so they need good authors Maybe, maybe not. See above. It's not Amazon that's ultimately deciding this; it's us, the readers. > (assuming books are even significant revenue for them anyway). I don't know about revenue, but I think it's quite possible that books, or at least e-books, might be a significant portion of their profits. They have distribution costs down extremely low for anything digital, and the prices in the Kindle store indicate to me that there could be quite a bit of margin there.
- cjy 12y ago
  Actually, a monopoly should remove problems like these. If Amazon is the only firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future. Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long term profit. For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will tend to overfish. They can't leave fish in the ocean to reproduce because other boats will catch them. If there is just one boat (or all boats are owned by the same company) it will take out the optimal number of fish so that the fishery remains healthy and pays the highest dividends in the future.
  - SapphireSun 12y ago
    w.r.t. fishing, I remember reading about this and while that approach works in theory, in practice people are subject to careerist tendencies. The fact that they will not be around as long as the company will be incentivizes them to extract wealth as fast as possible. I tried looking for the article that talked about this, but I couldn't find it. The conclusion of the article was that some form of regulation was necessary. My gut feeling is that the monopolist strategy can work, but only if the company's board implements strong internal controls and the executives don't get them changed. I feel that this is a bit of a gamble though as you have two powerful diametrically opposed forces. Also, members of the board could be looking for a quick exit from time to time as well. On another note, while I was looking for the article, I found this interesting article on the necessary characteristics for a Marine Protected Area to work: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature13053.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature1...
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    If Amazon is the only firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future. What are you saying? That media always tends towards higher quality, especially after consolidation? Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long term profit. There's no reason why this would preclude vast oceans of swill produced by isolated independent artists, from which a few mega-hits arise from time to time. (App Stores?) For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will tend to overfish. The problem here, is that in this discussion it seems that fish correspond to authors. I don't think that's correct. Authors of a given "species" aren't a partially fungible resource that is "killed" when utilized. (Unless the authorial landscape turns into a vast ocean of swill from which a few megahit one-hit wonders sometimes arise.) Please cite just one historical example where a media monopoly increased the quality of authorship in its domain.
- mattchew 12y ago
  I don't think Amazon is a monopoly in the sense of controlling the market. They're certainly the dominant player, but it's easy enough to buy an ebook from somewhere else. I do not see how Amazon starts squeezing authors hard without losing them to somewhere else.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  Fortunately amazon isn't a monopoly. They are just popular.

stcredzero 12y ago

monopsony It's always a good sign when an article expands one's vocabulary. (Yes, look it up!)

rahimnathwani 12y ago
The first example of a monopsony I was taught at school was that of the market for teachers if all schools are run by the state. Then teachers can only be employed by the state (if they want to remain teachers).

icebraining 12y ago

if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse. Is this claim backed up by any actual evidence? Does Amazon pressure self-published authors the same way they pressure publishers?

danmaz74 12y ago
Isn't there a cause where you get MUCH better conditions if you price your ebook under $10?
- icebraining 12y ago
  I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Is there?
  - Arkadir 12y ago
    https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0 https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0 If your list price is above $9.99, you get 35% royalties instead of 70%.
michaelt 12y ago
Even if Amazon doesn't pressure self-publishers on price today, a career writer has to think about where the market will be 10 or 15 years from now. The claim is not that Amazon is pressuring self-publishing authors today - it's that they could start in the future, as an ebook monopoly would give them have the means, motive and opportunity.
- icebraining 12y ago
  Amazon will never be a true monopoly, because shipping ebooks has no real barriers. There's no way that writers will be unable to sell their works elsewhere, and as Stross himself writes, novels are not commodities that can be undercut by another producer. The only authors that have to fear that future are those that produce works uninteresting enough that people won't look for them outside of the Amazon store.

mark_l_watson 12y ago

It is ironic that all of Charlie's books that I have bought have been on Kindle. That said, I basically agree with the premise of this article. When the price is comparable I prefer buying eBooks from publishers, with an advantage of getting multiple formats. Yesterday I bought one book on Kindle and another directly from the publisher. The book I bought on Kindle was unfortunately much cheaper from Amazon than the publisher's direct price.

edanm 12y ago

Great article, and I love getting an update on one of the more influential articles I've read about Amazon that has stuck with me over the years. But I'm left with a question - is Amazon stupid? They rely on new works coming out just as much as authors and publishers. Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term? It looks like a losing strategy for them.

tormeh 12y ago
Writing is like music: Someone will always do it, even if it doesn't pay. You can take the author's money and he'll still write. Being passionate about your job (which most artists are) in a market with abundant supply (which art has) means you are a career sucker. While art is not fungible in the sense that a free market would drive the margins to zero, a monopolist could still twist artists pretty bad before a significant portion of them stop writing.
- pizza234 12y ago
  Yes and no; exactly like music, and say, cinema, artists will still produce without money, but quantity and quality will become mutually exclusive. In the article Stross says that "after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job".
- WalterBright 12y ago
  My father wrote and had published a couple of books (obscure historical topics). He spent years writing them. He didn't care about making money off of them, he wrote them to establish his professional reputation. He's happy that people read them and cite them.
Turing_Machine 12y ago
"Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term?" Paying authors 70% rather than 15% is going to "drive them off"? Okay.

avoutthere 12y ago

Amazon is a great American success story that has improved the lives of many around the world. Only those of a particular political persuasion would characterize them as evil.

juniorcopywrt 12y ago

Ugh more whining from Stross. What a headline: Betteridge's Law and "Amazon, have you stopped beating your wife yet?" combined in one. Amazon's negotiating tactics are not unique and don't make them evil. B&N pulled the same tricks when negotiating with Simon & Schuster last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schuster-and-barnes-noble-reach-a-deal.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schus... It's a common incident in the television industry as well. Time Warner dropped CBS last year while negotiating a fee dispute: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-blackout-idUSBRE97309G20130804 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-... It doesn't matter that one party is in a stronger negotiating position than the other. That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game. p.s. The DOJ anti-trust lawyers never had a focus on preventing monopolies before the '80s. Their focus has always been on the prevention of the abuse of market power whether by monopolists or oligopolies. If Amazon should be targeted for having an ebook monopoly then Apple would have been on the hitlist first for having a digital music monopoly that they managed for half a decade before the Kindle.

Anderkent 12y ago
> That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game Well, yes, the point is that the game is broken.
gress 12y ago
> That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game. Try some other words in there and see how you feel: "That's fascism; don't hate the player, hate the game." At least it's clear that you wish to resolve corporations from responsibility for what they do.
- pja 12y ago
  absolve?
  - gress 12y ago
    Thanks - that looks like it was an autocorrect typo and the edit window has closed.

ilamont 12y ago

One issue I seldom see mentioned in articles about ebook monopolies is how Apple -- which has many of the pieces in place to be a strong competitor -- has really dropped the ball. When I first began testing different ebook formats a few years ago, not only was the iPad hardware superior to the Kindles and Nook, the ePub reading experience in iBooks was vastly better than the same ePub on the Nook or the .mobi equivalent in the Kindles. Where Apple failed was in the purchasing experience (the iBookstore/iTunes mess) and some of the back-end tools for publishing. Other than updating the iTunes Producer interface for submitting new titles, and improving iBooks Author for Apple-only rich media ebooks, I haven't seen any significant improvements for readers or publishers who want to use the Apple platform over the past two years. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire has brought Amazon customers a slick alternative to the iPad at a much lower price point. I don't like having an Amazon monopoly, but some of the blame should be assigned to the erstwhile competitors who can't seem to get it together.

BugBrother 12y ago
It has been argued for years that network services is a weak spot for Apple (maps, network drives, etc). They hopefully will do better in the future. Personally, as a happy Amazon customer, one aspect is funny. I get insight into how satisfied Microsoft users must have felt in the 90s when the monopolistic criminality became widely known. :-) Edit: Any suggested alternative stores, which deliver paper books all over EU? (Sigh, I am happy with Amazon.)
- tramtaram 12y ago
  http://www.bookdepository.com http://www.bookdepository.com is quite good. Might not be the cheapest though.
  - klackerz 12y ago
    Book Depository is also owned by Amazon though their worldwide delivery is awesome.
    - 12y ago

Turing_Machine 12y ago

"they supply editorial, production, packaging, marketing, accounting, and sales services and pay me a percentage of the revenue....I could do this myself, and self-publish, but I don't want to be a publisher, I want to be a writer: we have this thing called "the division of labour"" You can hire that done for a flat rate, without giving up 85% of your money in perpetuity. "will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms." What are these "extremely onerous terms"? There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month. No exclusive contracts. No Byzantine "royalty statements". Their accounting is quite clear. No signing over your copyrights forever. "if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse" This, of course, is pure nonsense. It may eventually come about that Amazon starts abusing authors, but that's certainly not the case now.

Turing_Machine 12y ago
P.S. "rely on DRM on the walled garden of the Kindle store to lock consumers onto their platform," This is also nonsense. If your Kindle books are DRMed it's because your publisher insists on it. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. Amazon doesn't actually care if you add DRM or not.
- rubinelli 12y ago
  How do you tell if a Kindle book has DRM or not? I searched all over the product pages and couldn't find it anywhere.
  - extesy 12y ago
    Here's an example of a book with DRM (look at the last line of book description): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DA6YEKS http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DA6YEKS
    - Turing_Machine 12y ago
      Actually that's an example of a book without DRM. :-)

vertex-four 12y ago

So, here's something that I want as an occasional reader. I want a service that'll let me buy a different small-ish bundle of e-books of various genres every week/month/whatever, Humble Bundle style. I've had a look for such things, and haven't really found anything which does it properly.

7799862 12y ago
So you want a Humble Bundle, but for books? Maybe they could call it the "Humble Book Bundle"! And maybe they could give it a humblebundle.com URL too! Oh, it already exists... https://www.humblebundle.com/books https://www.humblebundle.com/books
- furyofantares 12y ago
  There is no need to use sarcasm, you can just inform the person you are replying to without trying to belittle them
  - aidanf 12y ago
    The parent's tone doesn't come across as belittling to me - it seems more like a playful, joking form of sarcasm - although I guess tone is difficult to decipher on the web. Nevertheless, there's no harm in a little humour, and I prefer to give parent the benefit of the doubt.
- sp332 12y ago
  Thanks, I've bought things from several Humble Bundles but I'd never heard of this one.
- vertex-four 12y ago
  The Humble Book Bundle has only appeared fairly rarely (maybe that's changed now?), and tends to stick to "geeky" books, unfortunately.

hershel 12y ago

If they fear being left alone against amazon, why don't authors use their union to start directly collectively bargaining, or even starting business activities together ? In a world where a book store is just an app, there are a lot of opportunities open to authors, and they really hold the power in the book market, at least with regards to ebooks.

Anderkent 12y ago
Because they don't want to be publishers, they want to be writers. As said in the article.
- hershel 12y ago
  They don't have to be publishers. They just vote once in a while, pay their dues , and the union does the rest.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    Union might not be the best example. Maybe a "writers' cooperative".

rwmj 12y ago

And what stops Charlie Stross from selling eBooks through his own website and taking PayPal as payment?

moomin 12y ago
His agreement with Hachette, which, as he has explained, he believes to be an agreement in his best interest. Seriously, has it been so long since Microsoft that people can't recognise straight up abuse of market position anymore?
- rwmj 12y ago
  At one time you could practically not buy a computer without buying a Microsoft license. It's not as if you can't get internet without being forced to buy everything through Amazon. Anyone can still set up a website.
  - yardie 12y ago
    You could always buy a computer without a Microsoft license. What you could not buy was a computer minus the price of that license (small independent shops excluded). You can sell your books through Amazon. But you can't sell your books anywhere else cheaper than Amazon.
    - WalterBright 12y ago
      You can sell your books through your own web site and set your own prices. The internet is the great democratizer of commerce.
      - moomin 12y ago
        I think you misunderstand what's involved in selling a book. A website that takes orders isn't enough, you've got to actually stock and deliver them. This is what Amazon is developing a stranglehold on.

wjnc 12y ago

The thing that resonates in this story for me, is that these monopsonies mostly harm producers (writers, musicians), not consumers. The monopsonists keep prices quite low and service quite high, compared to monopolists. It really feels like a problem for Stross, but not too generally for mankind (Stross-fans aside). Troubles on the producer side might force some producers out, but since this is in the creative sphere we cannot really know which Shakespeare we've missed because he "became a banker". I do feel sorry for Stross the writer that might have to switch publisher, or the artist who gets .002 cents per download, but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value. Other comments rightly add that in the transition from monopsony to oligopsony (: say Apple enters) producers might be able to retain more value, but then again, these producers still have to deal with the middle men. You have this stacked market here where each party would blame the others for not getting his / her 'appropriate' level of reward: producer (creative, high-risk endeavor, superstar effects) <--> publishing house (makes market, creates prints, less risky endeavor, but has competition in picking winners) <--> *platform Amazon (delivers product, makes userbase, pays per sale: least risk but low added value per sale)

zcrar70 12y ago
> but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value. They won't if there are no more good books to read/music to listen to, because the gains aren't worth the effort that goes into producing them. I don't think danger is books or music disappearing, but that the quality goes down, as the incentives for authors/musicians/composers to invest significant time and effort producing high quality work are reduced. This particularly applies to the 'avant-guarde' works which push the envelope creatively/intellectually, but typically don't correlate with high volumes.
epsylon 12y ago
It mostly harms the big name producers. There are plenty of niche writers and small-time musicians who are super happy to be published on Amazon and iTunes.

vosper 12y ago

There's a particularly good link to an insightful counter-argument from another author way down in the comments: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hachette-dont-believe-the-spin/ http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hache...

moomin 12y ago
I note that even after he includes other media in the size of these behemoths, the numbers he's quoting are factors of 5 or 6 smaller than Amazon (a number notably missing from his analysis) Yes, on many occasions these guys would be the scariest 12-year old in the playground. But this time they're getting picked on by Mike Tyson.
- vosper 12y ago
  You're right that he doesn't mention that Amazon's revenues dwarf the publishers' revenues, though this [1] Guardian article suggests that Amazon's book revenues may be as low as 7% of the revenue figure that Stross cited. At any rate, the most interesting points in the blog post were that firstly it's not clear that Hachette aren't playing some shenanigans of their own with delivery times, and secondly that there's this whole background of court-ordered deal renegotiation that Stross didn't mention. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-escalates-battle-hachette-publishing http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-esc...
  - moomin 12y ago
    The problem is, as far as I can tell, it's the source of the rumour. I mean, there's no evidence that Jeff Bezos is not doing it because he was ordered to by the Bavarian illuminati. For or against. I could say it was unclear, but it'd be more likely a transparent contra-play by a PR company representing someone doing something bad.

jstalin 12y ago

Conversely, I've been able to publish through Amazon's on-demand imprint, CreateSpace, books that I would have no way of publishing otherwise. I make a few hundred bucks a month and have fun with self-publishing. The Kindle editions also earn 70% royalties. I make some money, so does Amazon, and those who buy the books get what they want. Everyone wins.

spir 12y ago

Let us not fall into the peasant trap of calling a website, which you need never visit, that sells commodities, which you need never purchase, a monopoly. Amazon's strategy is price, convenience and selection. It has been since at least the famous 1997 letter to shareholders. (Of course, Kindle isn't a monopoly either. None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss for anticompetitive purposes. It's razor and blades.) First World Problems at its finest. "Those fucking starbucks guys have a MONOPOLY on good coffee!!" Suck it up or use widely-available inferior products and services.

Anderkent 12y ago
You're looking at it from the point of a customer. Sure, if you want to buy a book you could use a different retailer, they probably have the book too. From the point of the producer, if you're not on amazon, you're not reaching 80% of your audience. You don't have a choice.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  I've bought ebooks from people's own web sites that were not available from Amazon. They did their own promotion, such as posting reddit articles about their books. They reached a worldwide audience, and (presumably) kept 100% of the sales revenue.
  - Anderkent 12y ago
    You might have. You're hardly representative. If everyone bought books on personal web sites, amazon wouldn't have 80% market penetration.
nitrogen 12y ago
None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss... Actually, this does happen from time to time when Amazon decides to promote a book for free and still pays list price royalties.
armenarmen 12y ago

spindritf 12y ago

Neither. They pass almost all of their surplus to customers. They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned, the anti-Apple. Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers -- Matthew Yglesias In this case they are a middleman replacing another middleman. That's just capitalism. Publishers had a good run. Can Amazon turn evil? Sure. But it will be 20 years this year and they still haven't. If they do, you can replace them tomorrow. You can even read a book bought anywhere else on your Kindle. EPUB converts to MOBI just like that ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi But that won't be necessary since another book store will happily give you .mobi files. That's some monopoly they have. As to the point that somehow we will run out of books to read, there is not even the slightest chance that I will read the best 1% of the books published until today in my entire lifetime. That's assuming everyone stops writing now. And statistically I'm a heavy reader, I'm up to 2-3 not-strictly-technical books a month.

anon1385 12y ago
>They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned I think we must have a very different idea of 'model corporation' http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/ http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_... >The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for fear of theft >On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102 degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed. >On July 25, with temperatures in the depot reaching 110 degrees, a security guard reported to OSHA that Amazon was refusing to open garage doors to help air circulate and that he had seen two pregnant women taken to a nursing station. Calls to the local ambulance service became so frequent that for five hot days in June and July, ambulances and paramedics were stationed all day at the depot

larrys 12y ago

"So, point one is that this is not a battle of equals: it's a big-ish corporation being picked on by a Goliath more than ten times its size, in an attempt to extort better terms." This is really a stupid way to put it. The 1/10th size company is plenty big enough to hire top notch lawyers, lobbyists, PR people etc to fight this battle. The fact is this is really a battle where, past a certain point, size doesn't matter. We are not talking about a schoolyard fight. What Amazon is doing is wrong (if as reported) however making out the underdog (if you want to call it that) as a "David" as if they are some small 10 person company being picked on by, say, google (and their algorithm) is just hyperbole.

Oletros 12y ago

I would like to see any proof of that accusation of predatory pricing.

MaysonL 12y ago
Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling ebooks below cost.
- Oletros 12y ago
  Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling SOME books below cost. Still waiting any proof from him about that predatory pricing accusation

WalterBright 12y ago

Oh, rubbish. I have a couple of my own books that no publisher would touch, for sale on Amazon. I have helped a couple authors get their out-of-print-that-no-publisher-would-touch books published on Amazon. Has Stross considered that maybe it's Hachette that is holding out for unreasonable terms? Maybe he could go with another publisher. He also writes: "They have a publishing subsidiary and allow me—if I want to self-publish—to use them as a sales channel, and will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms." I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous. "It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read." On the contrary, my impression is that there's been a recent explosion of new titles being released, as well as putting old out-of-print books back on the (electronic) shelf.

craigching 12y ago
> I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous. That's not how I read it. I read it as he gets paid extremely well if he accepts the onerous terms. What are the onerous terms? I wish he'd elaborated, but you can imagine it might have something to do with ownership once you've published with Amazon. I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure.
- anon1385 12y ago
  >I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N >You will not, without our express, prior written permission: (a) issue any press release or make any other public disclosures regarding this Agreement or its terms
  - craigching 12y ago
    Thanks for that. I think some of the comments downstream have sated my appetite to know more as well :)
  - Oletros 12y ago
    Where are the onerous terms there?

alexeisadeski3 12y ago

Pretty obviously not a monopoly.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

Given that publishers, authors, printers, bookstore and basically the entire publishing chain has done pretty much fuck all in the 20(!) years that Amazon has been active to even remotely innovate their industry, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them. Crying on the sideline about how evil Amazon is whilst doing nothing to service readers doesn't get any sympathy votes from me. And that includes Charlie Stross, who's work I love. I have money and e-reader, but if I want to buy his books, he sends me to... Amazon. To buy DRM-ed vendor-locked Kindle-only copies. Okay, Accelerando is an exception, but we're talking pretty much the most tech-savvy, open source minded fiction author out there. You can pretty much imagine the state of the rest of the industry. Amazon is the only party that innovates and tries to provide for the needs of the reader. They've earned their monopoly the hard way. Hachette is not the little guy. Hachette is a multinational that sat on its fat ass counting money for two decades.

chris123 12y ago

I don't know if I'd go so far as calling them "plain evil," but they definitely have tendencies. They are certainly a near-monopoly, and they are known to treat their employees (at least the low level ones), vendors, and customers in monopolistic (and maybe evil) ways, such as by basically dictating "everything," for one. That said, I am not at all unbiased. In fact, I strongly dislike Amazon after a bad experience with them as a marketplace seller: Amazon suspended my seller account for life, without opportunity to appeal for an honest mistake I fixed myself before they even noticed it. Details on Ripoff Report: http://goo.gl/xgbelU http://goo.gl/xgbelU