17 ms·

Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon

215 points by IBM 12y ago

WhitneyLand 12y ago
On this subject it's hard to tell if the NYT pieces are reporting or editorial. It's ironic they are painting romantic pictures of content creators toiling in sheds (who are actually wealthy) when they haven't even figured out how to secure their own long term existence as newspapers struggle. The leaked documents about their digital efforts and strategies show they are shockingly out of touch with technology, yet apparently we should assume they have the credibility to arbitrate how free markets are affected by disruptive innovation.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  Admittedly, this is a low bar, but at least they mentioned the pro-Amazon petition in passing. More than a few pieces covering the anti-Amazon petition completely forget about the other one.
alexyes 12y ago
Publishers are also corporations
- keithpeter 12y ago
  But authors and other cultural producers tend to be individuals who enter into contracts with corporations to 'outsource' the routine stuff (publishing, distribution) and to smooth out income variations (advances against royalties). As a first gen post here has pointed out authors have no control over what is happening in these essentially corporate negotiations.
- benluke 12y ago
  And they care about as much about the authors and their rights as Amazon does.
clarky07 12y ago
i was thinking i should buy this guys books in support. then i realized i'd want to get them from amazon. that won't work
- ars 12y ago
  I just checked and he has lots of book listed with Amazon. Some for immediate shipping, some for delayed shipping, but you can get them that way. Then you can support all three parties at the same time :)
Elessar 12y ago
Publishers are a dying species. With infinite shelf-space, online retailers can stock any and all books. They do not need to be curated by some value-added middleman in order to ensure only the likeliest successes will become books. I'm a big supporter for Amazon on this one. There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. Amazon is not doing that, and it is not a personal attack on any author despite what media spin they might try to put on this story.
- clarky07 12y ago
  while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. obviously all of these things can be done individually by third parties freelance and not using a publisher, but most indie books don't because they likely can't afford it and they suffer from a quality standpoint because of it. publishers can still bring plenty of value, they just need to adapt.
  - secabeen 12y ago
    Even if copy-writing, editing, marketing, cover design, and all of the like can be done by freelancers, most writers don't want to spend their time organizing all of those people, paying them, dealing with the taxes, etc. Some of the best people in those fields are staff at the publishers, and aren't even available for freelancing, nor do they want to freelance.
    - clarky07 12y ago
      I agree. that's mostly the point of my comment. :-)
  - ekianjo 12y ago
    > They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc And you know what? They are incredibly bad at most of this. I have a friend who's recently been accepted by a publisher, and he gets virtually no support from them for promotion of his books. Their sole job seems to be putting the books on the shelves in a few places. At the same time, if you were a marketing guy, you wouldn't want to waste your time working in such companies anchored in centuries of immobility.
funkyy 12y ago
I think Amazon will go with "Dont like it, dont publish to it" strategy. Amazon is platform that allows common folk to get access to whole library in their own home. I love when writers say they would love for people to have better access to literature, but when Amazon shows up with their accessible platform it turns out its back to basics - all about money. Top writers maybe dont get paid as much as with regular publishers, but: a) they do not need to publish to Amazon b) if they are really about art and accessibility they will be happy with it c) I know bills in cities like NYC are high, but hey - you decided to write books for living. You took this route with all pros but also with cons...
- fred_durst 12y ago
  c) Yeah, what assholes deciding to write books for a living. Fuck them. Should have written HFT algos instead.
  - icelancer 12y ago
    You can collect rocks or do equally other valueless things. Doesn't mean you "deserve" money.
- x0x0 12y ago
  Selling ebooks is just not that complicated; it's an open question what value amazon brings to the market (in that sense, it's the exact same problem as Spotify.) If the top publishers jumped ship and started selling ebooks directly, I'd follow. The vast majority of the self-published stuff on amazon is utter shit, demonstrating both the value of a publisher as a filter and the value of editors. Obviously there are gems, but the majority is awful. Also, to be blunt: if you think that, were amazon to put the publishers out of business and therefore gain direct publishing control over most ebooks, they wouldn't take a hatchet to writers' pay, you're incredibly stupid. Thinking that (1) writers wanting people to have more access to literature, and (2) working in their self-interest to be paid are incompatible is silly. Unless you're voluntarily giving up your salary so that more people can have access to software (or whatever else it is you do).
  - 12y ago
joshkaufman 12y ago
I'm a full-time working non-fiction author. I've worked with major publishers on past projects with excellent results, have received multiple major offers from major publishers for my upcoming projects, and have firm plans to self-publish new projects in the near future. Early in my career, I also spent time negotiating with retailers like Walmart at a large consumer goods manufacturer. I've been following this situation closely. I'm not personally affected (yet), but it's an opportunity to collect information in the interest of making better decisions about how to publish future projects. In most ways, this is a pretty standard supplier/retailer negotiation. Most of these disputes don't go public, and don't last this long, but they happen all the time. Both sides are trying to use whatever leverage they have to negotiate the best possible deal. That's normal. What's atypical about this particular negotiation is that authors are the counterparty that have the most at stake, but have no seat at the negotiating table. They're directly affected by the dispute, but have zero leverage, zero input, and zero recourse for losses incurred in the dispute. The affected authors are, quite simply, the only real leverage Hachette has in this dispute, and Hachette is using them for all they're worth. Here's the part of the NYT story that stuck out to me. It's buried close to the bottom: "About half [of Preston's] book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent." Hachette failed to come to mutually agreeable terms with their largest retail partner by dollar and unit volume. That's their most important job as a publisher, and they blew it, to the tune of permanently costing their authors 50-60%+ of sales they'll never recover. Shipping books into retail distribution in a timely manner to minimize out-of-stocks is a publisher's second most important job. Production and distribution of physical finished goods inventory into retail is a hard problem, and most publishers are reasonably well equipped to handle it at scale. When Hachette's contract with Amazon expired, Amazon (rightfully) stopped ordering advance inventory for stocking, but continued taking orders for available titles and transmitted those orders to Hachette as they arrived. From there, it's Hachette's responsibility to deliver the orders to an Amazon distribution center. Once the books arrive, Amazon packs & ships them to purchasing customers as normal. That's why, when Hachette's contract expired, all of their books were listed as "Out of stock: ships in 1 to 6 weeks" - that's how long it takes Hachette to deliver stock. That's slow as hell. Amazon didn't "boycott" or "drop" or "betray" authors or "discourage" readers from buying their books - it ceased offering retail inventory management services to a supplier whose contract had expired, and made a rational and defensible business decision when it became clear that the supplier was not negotiating in good faith to establish a new agreement. Preston has a right to be pissed off, but not at Amazon.
brianstorms 12y ago
Meanwhile, thousands of authors support Amazon, and question not only Hachette but the "Authors Guild" which only protects the 1% of super-rich authors (who, coincidentally, are mostly signers of the Preston letter.) For a different viewpoint on all this, see the posts of Barry Eisler and JA Konrath who've been covering this issue for YEARS. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
sambrand 12y ago
There's a lot of talk that Publishers are a dying breed, but I don't really think there is a status where publishers don't exist. Middlemen with more perfect information will always prosper. This is a valiant cause. There is no bad guy, it's just economics. Though I have particular respect for anyone that can and does write a book.
minusSeven 12y ago
Question: is amazon paying any money to the owners of the books every time it is being viewed. one important analogy is that the first time the library is made it has to pay to buy all the books for lending later. But an online library probably can just distribute copies instead. Can anyone highlight what laws are going to be followed here and how the authors are going to paid for using this service ? Also will authors have the right to put their books out of bounds of amazon?
facepalm 12y ago
What kind of journalism is that? They don't even say what the dispute is about. All they say is "some authors, who have no clue what is going on because they are not involved in the negotiations, think that Amazon is evil".
abc123xyz 12y ago
We the end buyers should come together and make ourselves heard: 1. Cheaper ebooks (many reasons vs pbooks) 2. No fracking DRM This whole hachette vs amazon thing is bullshit with the consumers and authors being left on the side while these middlemen argue.
lnanek2 12y ago
I still haven't seen any reply by Hachette that counters amazon's point that they will all sell more books at amazon's suggested price and make more money overall - amazon, Hachette, and authors. Article just seems a lot of silly side taking instead of logic.
- BryantD 12y ago
  I recommend http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/ (from John Scalzi), which engages directly with the math. Many relevant points.
  - taeric 12y ago
    Granted... his point one falls off if you, as he does, completely neglect the marginal costs of the books. That is, if I shouldn't consider the costs of paperback books in comparing physical books to ebooks as to why they should be cheaper, than you can't do the same for why they should be more expensive. No reason the books at the local store couldn't also be 9.99.

215 points by IBM 12y ago

On this subject it's hard to tell if the NYT pieces are reporting or editorial. It's ironic they are painting romantic pictures of content creators toiling in sheds (who are actually wealthy) when they haven't even figured out how to secure their own long term existence as newspapers struggle. The leaked documents about their digital efforts and strategies show they are shockingly out of touch with technology, yet apparently we should assume they have the credibility to arbitrate how free markets are affected by disruptive innovation.

fpgeek 12y ago
Admittedly, this is a low bar, but at least they mentioned the pro-Amazon petition in passing. More than a few pieces covering the anti-Amazon petition completely forget about the other one.

alexyes 12y ago

Publishers are also corporations

keithpeter 12y ago
But authors and other cultural producers tend to be individuals who enter into contracts with corporations to 'outsource' the routine stuff (publishing, distribution) and to smooth out income variations (advances against royalties). As a first gen post here has pointed out authors have no control over what is happening in these essentially corporate negotiations.
benluke 12y ago
And they care about as much about the authors and their rights as Amazon does.

clarky07 12y ago

i was thinking i should buy this guys books in support. then i realized i'd want to get them from amazon. that won't work

ars 12y ago
I just checked and he has lots of book listed with Amazon. Some for immediate shipping, some for delayed shipping, but you can get them that way. Then you can support all three parties at the same time :)

Elessar 12y ago

Publishers are a dying species. With infinite shelf-space, online retailers can stock any and all books. They do not need to be curated by some value-added middleman in order to ensure only the likeliest successes will become books. I'm a big supporter for Amazon on this one. There are plenty of authors that the publisher will deny the opportunity to even put a book on the shelf. Amazon is not doing that, and it is not a personal attack on any author despite what media spin they might try to put on this story.

clarky07 12y ago
while i agree with most of your comment, i think you are selling publishers a bit short of what they actually do. They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc. They also take some of the risk out of publishing. obviously all of these things can be done individually by third parties freelance and not using a publisher, but most indie books don't because they likely can't afford it and they suffer from a quality standpoint because of it. publishers can still bring plenty of value, they just need to adapt.
- secabeen 12y ago
  Even if copy-writing, editing, marketing, cover design, and all of the like can be done by freelancers, most writers don't want to spend their time organizing all of those people, paying them, dealing with the taxes, etc. Some of the best people in those fields are staff at the publishers, and aren't even available for freelancing, nor do they want to freelance.
  - clarky07 12y ago
    I agree. that's mostly the point of my comment. :-)
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > They also provide several services such as editing, marketing, designing, making ebooks, etc And you know what? They are incredibly bad at most of this. I have a friend who's recently been accepted by a publisher, and he gets virtually no support from them for promotion of his books. Their sole job seems to be putting the books on the shelves in a few places. At the same time, if you were a marketing guy, you wouldn't want to waste your time working in such companies anchored in centuries of immobility.

funkyy 12y ago

I think Amazon will go with "Dont like it, dont publish to it" strategy. Amazon is platform that allows common folk to get access to whole library in their own home. I love when writers say they would love for people to have better access to literature, but when Amazon shows up with their accessible platform it turns out its back to basics - all about money. Top writers maybe dont get paid as much as with regular publishers, but: a) they do not need to publish to Amazon b) if they are really about art and accessibility they will be happy with it c) I know bills in cities like NYC are high, but hey - you decided to write books for living. You took this route with all pros but also with cons...

fred_durst 12y ago
c) Yeah, what assholes deciding to write books for a living. Fuck them. Should have written HFT algos instead.
- icelancer 12y ago
  You can collect rocks or do equally other valueless things. Doesn't mean you "deserve" money.
x0x0 12y ago
Selling ebooks is just not that complicated; it's an open question what value amazon brings to the market (in that sense, it's the exact same problem as Spotify.) If the top publishers jumped ship and started selling ebooks directly, I'd follow. The vast majority of the self-published stuff on amazon is utter shit, demonstrating both the value of a publisher as a filter and the value of editors. Obviously there are gems, but the majority is awful. Also, to be blunt: if you think that, were amazon to put the publishers out of business and therefore gain direct publishing control over most ebooks, they wouldn't take a hatchet to writers' pay, you're incredibly stupid. Thinking that (1) writers wanting people to have more access to literature, and (2) working in their self-interest to be paid are incompatible is silly. Unless you're voluntarily giving up your salary so that more people can have access to software (or whatever else it is you do).
- 12y ago

joshkaufman 12y ago

I'm a full-time working non-fiction author. I've worked with major publishers on past projects with excellent results, have received multiple major offers from major publishers for my upcoming projects, and have firm plans to self-publish new projects in the near future. Early in my career, I also spent time negotiating with retailers like Walmart at a large consumer goods manufacturer. I've been following this situation closely. I'm not personally affected (yet), but it's an opportunity to collect information in the interest of making better decisions about how to publish future projects. In most ways, this is a pretty standard supplier/retailer negotiation. Most of these disputes don't go public, and don't last this long, but they happen all the time. Both sides are trying to use whatever leverage they have to negotiate the best possible deal. That's normal. What's atypical about this particular negotiation is that authors are the counterparty that have the most at stake, but have no seat at the negotiating table. They're directly affected by the dispute, but have zero leverage, zero input, and zero recourse for losses incurred in the dispute. The affected authors are, quite simply, the only real leverage Hachette has in this dispute, and Hachette is using them for all they're worth. Here's the part of the NYT story that stuck out to me. It's buried close to the bottom: "About half [of Preston's] book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent." Hachette failed to come to mutually agreeable terms with their largest retail partner by dollar and unit volume. That's their most important job as a publisher, and they blew it, to the tune of permanently costing their authors 50-60%+ of sales they'll never recover. Shipping books into retail distribution in a timely manner to minimize out-of-stocks is a publisher's second most important job. Production and distribution of physical finished goods inventory into retail is a hard problem, and most publishers are reasonably well equipped to handle it at scale. When Hachette's contract with Amazon expired, Amazon (rightfully) stopped ordering advance inventory for stocking, but continued taking orders for available titles and transmitted those orders to Hachette as they arrived. From there, it's Hachette's responsibility to deliver the orders to an Amazon distribution center. Once the books arrive, Amazon packs & ships them to purchasing customers as normal. That's why, when Hachette's contract expired, all of their books were listed as "Out of stock: ships in 1 to 6 weeks" - that's how long it takes Hachette to deliver stock. That's slow as hell. Amazon didn't "boycott" or "drop" or "betray" authors or "discourage" readers from buying their books - it ceased offering retail inventory management services to a supplier whose contract had expired, and made a rational and defensible business decision when it became clear that the supplier was not negotiating in good faith to establish a new agreement. Preston has a right to be pissed off, but not at Amazon.

brianstorms 12y ago

Meanwhile, thousands of authors support Amazon, and question not only Hachette but the "Authors Guild" which only protects the 1% of super-rich authors (who, coincidentally, are mostly signers of the Preston letter.) For a different viewpoint on all this, see the posts of Barry Eisler and JA Konrath who've been covering this issue for YEARS. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

sambrand 12y ago

There's a lot of talk that Publishers are a dying breed, but I don't really think there is a status where publishers don't exist. Middlemen with more perfect information will always prosper. This is a valiant cause. There is no bad guy, it's just economics. Though I have particular respect for anyone that can and does write a book.

minusSeven 12y ago

Question: is amazon paying any money to the owners of the books every time it is being viewed. one important analogy is that the first time the library is made it has to pay to buy all the books for lending later. But an online library probably can just distribute copies instead. Can anyone highlight what laws are going to be followed here and how the authors are going to paid for using this service ? Also will authors have the right to put their books out of bounds of amazon?

facepalm 12y ago

What kind of journalism is that? They don't even say what the dispute is about. All they say is "some authors, who have no clue what is going on because they are not involved in the negotiations, think that Amazon is evil".

abc123xyz 12y ago

We the end buyers should come together and make ourselves heard: 1. Cheaper ebooks (many reasons vs pbooks) 2. No fracking DRM This whole hachette vs amazon thing is bullshit with the consumers and authors being left on the side while these middlemen argue.

lnanek2 12y ago

I still haven't seen any reply by Hachette that counters amazon's point that they will all sell more books at amazon's suggested price and make more money overall - amazon, Hachette, and authors. Article just seems a lot of silly side taking instead of logic.

BryantD 12y ago
I recommend http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/ http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/ (from John Scalzi), which engages directly with the math. Many relevant points.
- taeric 12y ago
  Granted... his point one falls off if you, as he does, completely neglect the marginal costs of the books. That is, if I shouldn't consider the costs of paperback books in comparing physical books to ebooks as to why they should be cheaper, than you can't do the same for why they should be more expensive. No reason the books at the local store couldn't also be 9.99.