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It seems like this is the real clinch of their message: [Hachette] believes they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle. e.g. they are accusing

It seems like this is the real clinch of their message: [Hachette] believes they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle. e.g. they are accusing Hachette of putting pain to their own authors with the hope of said authors mobilizing against Amazon in retaliation

jamesaguilar 12y ago
Hard to see how else to read hachette's actions, unless amazon is straight out lying about the proposals they made and hachette's response (not likely).
- BryantD 12y ago
  Amazon is much bigger than Hachette. They can absorb losses due to these proposals more easily. If a guy making $50 a day tells a guy making $10 a day that it's fair for them to both make $5 less per day, he's wrong. Note that Amazon is being semantic when they say ebooks are 1% of income. That's for the Lagardere group as a whole. Hachette is a subsidiary and doesn't have the flexibility to just tell the other subsidiaries to absorb their losses. http://www.lagardere.com/businesses/lagardere-publishing/overview-and-priorities-600028.html http://www.lagardere.com/businesses/lagardere-publishing/ove...
fain 12y ago
This made me sign up for HN. I just finished reading it and needed to see who was discussing it. While I agree with some other commenters that it seemed a tad manipulative, it seems that the authors seem to be against Hachette in this instance. I read the comments as of the Author's Guild post as suggested and there were some pretty strong feelings about it. Basically the small time authors are getting screwed while the big time authors aren't really bothered. This doesn't really affect me but it'd be fun and great if Hachette did accept that second offer and author's got 100% of the sales, if only for a short while. As also stated, I don't really get why or how Amazon can change the pricing of Hachette's books. If someone would kindly explain that.

jamesaguilar 12y ago

Hard to see how else to read hachette's actions, unless amazon is straight out lying about the proposals they made and hachette's response (not likely).

BryantD 12y ago
Amazon is much bigger than Hachette. They can absorb losses due to these proposals more easily. If a guy making $50 a day tells a guy making $10 a day that it's fair for them to both make $5 less per day, he's wrong. Note that Amazon is being semantic when they say ebooks are 1% of income. That's for the Lagardere group as a whole. Hachette is a subsidiary and doesn't have the flexibility to just tell the other subsidiaries to absorb their losses. http://www.lagardere.com/businesses/lagardere-publishing/overview-and-priorities-600028.html http://www.lagardere.com/businesses/lagardere-publishing/ove...

fain 12y ago

This made me sign up for HN. I just finished reading it and needed to see who was discussing it. While I agree with some other commenters that it seemed a tad manipulative, it seems that the authors seem to be against Hachette in this instance. I read the comments as of the Author's Guild post as suggested and there were some pretty strong feelings about it. Basically the small time authors are getting screwed while the big time authors aren't really bothered. This doesn't really affect me but it'd be fun and great if Hachette did accept that second offer and author's got 100% of the sales, if only for a short while. As also stated, I don't really get why or how Amazon can change the pricing of Hachette's books. If someone would kindly explain that.