Thinking before you speak
Feb. 1st, 2010 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateI don't know how many of you have been following the Amazon vs MacMillan nonsense over the weekend... probably the best link round ups I've seen were on Making light: before and after. In any case, the brief sum-up is that Amazon has been trying to corner the e-book market by forcing its proprietary DRM on all Kindle books (see below) and insisting on a $10 maximum price point. They are willing to take a loss on as many e-books as necessary to artificially engineer that price point and create a Kindle monopoly on the e-book market. They can afford to do this because as the major online retailer, they're standing in for both the distributor to whom the publisher sells and the retailer from whom the customer buys, and thus taking two cuts of the standard price per book. This is also why they can offer things for a little bit lower than anywhere else and still come out ahead.
(re: DRM: As I understand it, while they have done away with the expiring file problems that deleted paid-for e-books after a fixed span, they continue to use contractually proprietary format never-to-be-converted to be usable on some other sort of device. Please forgive my complete lack of knowing the proper terminology for this, but I am told that it is a DRM issue.)
On the other side, MacMillan is one of the big publishing giants, running a large corporation on the very slim profit margins of book publishing. It takes a heck of a lot of people to produce a decent book, and not a one of them is liable to get rich at it without massive amounts of luck... if you're interested, I can point you in the direction of several authors' explanations of how even getting to the best seller's list is no guarantee you'll make an above poverty level income from writing. The publisher makes most of its money to cover overhead costs off of its bestsellers, and even when you're looking at e-books that are put out simultaneously with a print edition, proper formatting and proofing of the e-book itself is another job requiring more money put into it separately. Currently, e-book sales are quite low, and thus it's pretty difficult to recoup that extra cost. Over time this will change, but in the mean time, MacMillan (and others) want to be able to price bestsellers and new hardbacks at up to $15 for the e-book edition when they first come out, and reduce that later on to bring in the people who are patient, poor, or just don't think that e-book is worth so much to them.
Whatever side of this you're on, pricing-wise, DRM-wise, whatever, the upsetting part is that in the middle of ordinary negotiations, Amazon up and said "Oh, we can't deal with this!" and pulled from sale every single title published by MacMillan. This is at least the third or fourth time they've used a similar tactic, generally over a weekend so that the customers start screaming about it before anyone can officially do anything. And ultimately, it's the authors who have been published by the "big evil publishing company" and the readers who want to buy their books who suffer from nonsense like this. I... have been reading mostly people's articles, and avoiding the commentary, but what I'm seeing is a whole lot of people explaining how the publishing industry works in response to angry reactions against authors whose works they can't obtain. Which is downright ridiculous.
I had a conversation with a one-time friend a few months ago, which went somewhat thus:
him: How's it going? What's new with you?
me: Well, I'm volunteering at the Aquarium...
him: Oh? And what's that like?
me: [two sentence description]
him: So, does that take up all your time?
me: No, it's once a week.
him: Oh, so what else are you doing?
me: Well, I'm writing a novel. [It was November. I hold it to be self-evident that anyone who has known me for a few years and pays any attention knows that I'll be writing a novel in November.]
him: Oh, and have you got a publisher lined up for that?
And then he smirked at me and walked off before I could decide whether I wanted to punch him for belittling my choice of lifestyle (we've had conversations before that make it clear he thinks all adults should make enough money to support themselves, which admittedly I haven't since 2003) or for disparaging me without having the faintest idea how the publishing industry works. 'Cause there ain't no publisher in the world who's going to pay an unknown writer for an unfinished first novel.
Oh, and a commentary on Amazon's public statement upon backing down, as through all this they've been trying to paint themselves as consumer-advocates. I found it amusing, at any rate.
(re: DRM: As I understand it, while they have done away with the expiring file problems that deleted paid-for e-books after a fixed span, they continue to use contractually proprietary format never-to-be-converted to be usable on some other sort of device. Please forgive my complete lack of knowing the proper terminology for this, but I am told that it is a DRM issue.)
On the other side, MacMillan is one of the big publishing giants, running a large corporation on the very slim profit margins of book publishing. It takes a heck of a lot of people to produce a decent book, and not a one of them is liable to get rich at it without massive amounts of luck... if you're interested, I can point you in the direction of several authors' explanations of how even getting to the best seller's list is no guarantee you'll make an above poverty level income from writing. The publisher makes most of its money to cover overhead costs off of its bestsellers, and even when you're looking at e-books that are put out simultaneously with a print edition, proper formatting and proofing of the e-book itself is another job requiring more money put into it separately. Currently, e-book sales are quite low, and thus it's pretty difficult to recoup that extra cost. Over time this will change, but in the mean time, MacMillan (and others) want to be able to price bestsellers and new hardbacks at up to $15 for the e-book edition when they first come out, and reduce that later on to bring in the people who are patient, poor, or just don't think that e-book is worth so much to them.
Whatever side of this you're on, pricing-wise, DRM-wise, whatever, the upsetting part is that in the middle of ordinary negotiations, Amazon up and said "Oh, we can't deal with this!" and pulled from sale every single title published by MacMillan. This is at least the third or fourth time they've used a similar tactic, generally over a weekend so that the customers start screaming about it before anyone can officially do anything. And ultimately, it's the authors who have been published by the "big evil publishing company" and the readers who want to buy their books who suffer from nonsense like this. I... have been reading mostly people's articles, and avoiding the commentary, but what I'm seeing is a whole lot of people explaining how the publishing industry works in response to angry reactions against authors whose works they can't obtain. Which is downright ridiculous.
I had a conversation with a one-time friend a few months ago, which went somewhat thus:
him: How's it going? What's new with you?
me: Well, I'm volunteering at the Aquarium...
him: Oh? And what's that like?
me: [two sentence description]
him: So, does that take up all your time?
me: No, it's once a week.
him: Oh, so what else are you doing?
me: Well, I'm writing a novel. [It was November. I hold it to be self-evident that anyone who has known me for a few years and pays any attention knows that I'll be writing a novel in November.]
him: Oh, and have you got a publisher lined up for that?
And then he smirked at me and walked off before I could decide whether I wanted to punch him for belittling my choice of lifestyle (we've had conversations before that make it clear he thinks all adults should make enough money to support themselves, which admittedly I haven't since 2003) or for disparaging me without having the faintest idea how the publishing industry works. 'Cause there ain't no publisher in the world who's going to pay an unknown writer for an unfinished first novel.
Oh, and a commentary on Amazon's public statement upon backing down, as through all this they've been trying to paint themselves as consumer-advocates. I found it amusing, at any rate.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 10:55 pm (UTC)Cheap is great, but I don't want a retailer who's going to start throwing a hissy-fit at one of their main suppliers any time they don't get their way. This kind of tactic is extremely unprofessional, not to mention stupid in that every time they offend a whole bunch more people, they lose sales and gain more nay-sayers. If Amazon weren't trying to push the kindle, the reasonable capitalist approach would be to give MacMillan enough rope to hang itself with and move on. (see: what John Scalzi had to say at the beginning of all this. (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/30/a-quick-note-on-ebook-pricing/))
(For the record, I mainly believe in supporting independents when they've got something to offer that the big corporations don't. Some people talk about independent bookstores as being a social venue, or a place to find someone knowledgeable to recommend things; I can't say whether this is true, since if I've ever had a local SF/F bookstore I've yet to find it. But I distrust it when large chains claim they're "helping the consumer" because that is not particularly capitalist, either. They're there as much to make money as anyone else.)