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Please, don't buy my book on Amazon (pleasedontbuymybookonamazon.com)
81 points by pmtarantino on Sept 26, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 106 comments



This argument makes no sense.

Small presses fail because they generate the bulk of their sales from Amazon, but the margins are too thin when they sell on Amazon. Presumably if they don't sell on Amazon the margins would be healthier, but sales would drop precipitously. So if you can't make money with Amazon and you can't make money without Amazon it seems to me Amazon isn't the problem.

It's true Amazon took the fat margins, but it gave them to consumers. I suppose this guy is just asking nicely to get them back to support his sclerotic business model. But in the long run it's unlikely that people are going to pay more for a worse product.

(On the other hand maybe he could sell the book at the locally-grown organic farm stand.)


Amazon isn't the whole problem, it's just that Amazon was the winner.

It used to be that most towns had a bookstore, and larger towns or cities had several. Eventually they were displaced by chains: Waldenbooks and B. Dalton, Borders and Barnes & Noble. First the chains chased out the independent bookstores by being able to cut costs and order more efficiently; then the chains ate each other at the same time that Amazon was cutting costs even further. Now there's one limping chain, B&N, and some specialized chains -- mostly religious, secondhand or otherwise discount -- and Amazon.

Efficiency is best served by a single distribution system with maximum economies of scale. That isn't actually a desirable outcome for customers or producers, though.


I think the key thing is that efficiency isn't the same as a free market, but people tend to equate the two things. It's a rectangle/square problem: free markets drive efficiency, but efficiency doesn't drive free markets.

When an efficient competitor "wins" and drives the competition out of business, everyone loses, as that competitor eventually turns into an entrenched toll-taker. As a consumer, you want your vendors fighting each other all of the time. The situation in books, where Amazon tolerates the existence of B&N, and doesn't give a hoot about Jesus books isn't good for anyone.


I don't think its fair to say that "it isn't good for anyone." I remember buying books before Borders, the big Barnes & Nobles and Amazon. It sucked. The selection was poor, it was impossible to order, because it was very hard to know what was available.

I even used order books by mail order. (In particular Dover published a catalog which had a lot of their math and science reprints. You'd fill in an order form and send it with a check through the mail; 4-6 weeks later your books would arrive.)

The current situation for the consumer is much better.


Agreed. Too sweeping of a statement.

I should have said "in the long run, it isn't good for anyone". I used to camp alot in the Adirondacks in upstate NY. There was one grocery store that was basically the only store in a 50 mile radius. Guess what? The store hours sucked, and milk was $4/half gallon.

Even now, it's difficult to resolve situations with Amazon -- good luck figuring out how to contact a human to resolve a complex problem.


Agreed, book publishers need to work on their marketing and sales. If they were able to target their audience more directly and efficiently, they wouldn't need to rely on Amazon. No Starch Press (nostarchpress.com) did a fine job selling "Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good!" (and their other programming titles) without Amazon.com


> Now there's one limping chain, B&N, and some specialized chains -- mostly religious, secondhand or otherwise discount -- and Amazon.

That's not true, there are many online book sellers out there, and I'm guessing not all of them are in danger of going out of business. Amazon is the biggest player, but what has played out is that book selling is too low-margin to be viable as a meat-space transaction.


Why is this not a desirable outcome for customers?


It's desirable on the way there, as costs get pushed down as disruptions happen. The problem is that once one company controls most of the market, their incentives change. It starts to make the most economic sense for them to lobby for anti-competitive policies (often under the guise of regulations) that increase the costs to upstarts (as they can't stay as lean with increased compliance). It's here that the benefits of a free market start to disappear, not because of the free market system, but because the winner in the freer market has a strong incentive to make the market less free, and has the money to lobby for it.


Because once a company obtains a monopoly, their interests and those of the customer diverge, and there's no longer any control imposed by the market, because there is no market - just one initially efficient supplier with no incentive to remain efficient and every incentive to boost their margins at the expense of producers and customers.

This is why we have a regulated market, and rules about monopolies.


That assumes that a company can maintain the monopoly while gradually making its service worse and worse. Other companies can spring up which take advantage of its margins (as Jeff Bezos may have said, "my margin is your opportunity").

What Amazon would have to do to maintain a monopoly is to continuously locate and destroy startups which try to compete with it, by using its scale. You're saying that, while it's doing this, it may make things worse for the consumer. Perhaps, but that's REALLY tough to do (until someone writes software to do it).

One thing is for sure though - regardless of how good the service is to consumers, the demand for human labor will erode further and the comparative advantage of local economies will erode all over the world - not just for books but tons of products and services. As a result, we will need an ever greater welfare state so that many out-of-work people can be paid to be consumers and send price signals back into the economy, even if they are unable to make much money themselves (because presumably robots would be employed instead).


This reminds me of one of Russell's essays, "In Praise of Idleness". Despite the fact that collectively, we would be extremely comfortable working very little if we all worked the same amount, in reality some of us work extremely hard while others work not at all. So an innovation that makes work less necessary is seen as an evil (reduces the number of jobs), where it could instead reduce work for everyone uniformly in principle (assuming massive job training and education opportunities). I think it's an interesting argument.

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html


Yeah. I think most people in HN don't view automation as a bad force. But we do have to note there's no guarantee that jobs will come back for EVERYONE and that over time the demand for human labor won't decrease. Most people already don't concern themselves with growing/hunting food, obtaining water, warming/cooling themselves, etc. We've moved on to other things, freed up by advances in technology. Perhaps the current "busywork" of blogging, accountants, lawyers etc. is the future. But ultimately, outside the engineers that build and take care of the technology, there are tons of people whose jobs are being disrupted. There should be a way to make sure these people remain consumers and don't starve.


I think it's a natural outgrowth of specialization. Right now the largest bottleneck our society has is the fact that knowledge is painfully difficult to transfer. You can send a kid to school for four years and he still more economically useful than a plumber's apprentice. If you take work away from the busy people and give it to the less busy people, the net result is an overall lowering of quality.

This problem does not seem to be surmountable with the level of social infrastructure we have. I doubt even more societies with a greater level of public organization, like Norway, could do this. Knowledge and experience are just best when hoarded.


I assume because monopolists can demand economic rents.

But I imagine that Amazon is continuously under competitive pressure -- consider the disruption e-books caused. Had that caught Amazon flat-footed, it could have decimated their book business.


Because a monopoly leads to zero competitive pressure - no matter how much we believe in Bezos' ethos.


Because you end up with a monopoly.


Monopoly is just a description of a market situation. You're using it as a pejorative term without actually explaining why, in this particular case, it's a bad thing.


Monopolies are bad only because the winner in a monopoly nearly always uses their market position to increase the barrier to entry to upstarts, often by lobbying for increased regulations (costs) in the market that didn't exist when they started. If monopolies (at least some - Amazon works as an example) operated in the same way they did on their way up - looking for ways to disrupt and improve on the status quo rather than looking for ways to ensure the status quo does not change, they wouldn't be nearly the negative force that they generally are.


I think it makes sense, but is simply unrealistic. Like when community members protest the opening of a Wal-Mart, pleading with people to support small businesses that provide fewer choices for more money. Then the Wal-Mart opens and everyone is actually happier. Well at least they must be, because they start shopping at Wal-Mart all the time.


> Then the Wal-Mart opens and everyone is actually happier.

Yes, they shop at Wal-Mart, and it's much more convenient for them.

Then a couple of years later they wonder where all the local businesses went, why all the towns look the same, why there are fewer jobs.

It's naive to think that stopping the odd Wal-Mart or Amazon here and there will help, but it's also naive to think that just because a company is popular that it is doing good on a grander scale.


This happened in suburban London. The supermarket was king.

Then along came delivered groceries and everyone does that and just uses new "local supermarkets" to pick up a few impulse purchases and medicines.

As a result, every row of shops is saturated with takeaways. There are very few traditional local businesses left.

However, everyone is happier as they are not slaves to the requirement to drag stuff around themselves and can concentrate on more interesting things. No tears have been shed. We're all better off.

People just need to now get used to the fact that there isn't a job for everyone as we've reached a pretty good efficiency ceiling.


> We're all better off.

No, we're all more comfortable, while the economy is going to shit.

> People just need to now get used to the fact that there isn't a job for everyone

Please think about what you're saying.


That's always been the case.

I did think about what I'm saying. Not everyone has a useful function in society. It's a total fallacy that jobs are available for all and that it's a good metric for the success of a society.


> Not everyone has a useful function in society. It's a total fallacy that jobs are available for all and that it's a good metric for the success of a society.

Ah right, I misunderstood your comment. You're taking the position that it's always been like this and the wall marts and amazons of this world are not part of the reason things are like this, and moreover you're saying that societies can be considered successful even with high or rising unemployment.

It seemed to me like you were acknowledging that unemployment was rising and saying that people just had to get used to being jobless.

Have I now understood your position correctly?


Spot on - yes you have.


I'm intrigued as to how a society could be considered successful (or sustainable) with rising unemployment.

Let's see. My axioms (and bear in mind these are written in half an hour) are:

1) People cannot ever be equal.

2) Things are not of equal value.

3) People need and want things.

4) It is not possible for everyone to have everything they want.

5) People want to own things.

6) It would be simpler if people did not want to own things ;)

7) People are fickle.

8) Given 5 and 7, trade will naturally arise.

9) Barter is impractical at scale

10) Barter is impractical across nonlocal distances.

11) Given 8, 9 and 10, money will naturally arise as a token for items.

12) People do not have a constant natural supply of valuable items.

13) People do have a constant natural supply of time and energy, at least for as long as it matters.

14) To gain money, people can sell their items

15) To gain money, people can sell their time and energy

16) Given 12, 13, and 15, jobs will naturally arise as a way to gain money.

At this point I start asking questions that are beyond my knowledge of economics.

a) How does money stop having a hard relationship with the items it originally represented (aka the "Why can't I get five pounds of gold for my fiver any more" question)?

b) How is the value of money set?

c) If money is subject to (a), then doesn't trade in money critically undermine the value of money?

But those notwithstanding, how do you rate my reasoning as to why jobs are essential to society?

edit: perhaps I've only demonstrated that jobs are one way to gain wealth. That's what I'm asking really. Assuming I've not made some huge error with my axioms, what is your number (17) that allows people to acquire money without selling items or their time and energy?


17) Machines increasingly produce items in a cheaper, safer, and more robust way than people

18) In time there will be nothing worth paying a person for that a machine can't do cheaper or better

19a) People will need to work less and less as a result, and are free to pursue hobbies, be creative, enjoy nature, socialize more, and be less stressed and overall healthier as a result (if the benefits of distributed efficiency are evenly distributed)

19b) People will go hungry and homeless due to not having a source of income because of a system set in place by ignorant voters scared of socialism and communism

20) Utopia or dystopia? We choose


We've chosen 19b so far.

I disagree with 18. Would agree if "nothing" changed to "fewer things". I'm thinking of all manner of things; art, theatre, sex, the social aspect of chatting to your butcher, making better machines, responding to new market needs, etc. Machines can't replace all things, but I agree that there are lots that they can. I suppose if "cheaper or better" are mutually exclusive then I might agree with 18.

19c) People will try socialism or communism and end up being yet another depressing case study in a "failed political ideologies" book.


Reasoning is sound.

however have you considered charity and socialism (particularly marxism-leninism)?


Yes, I did wonder if that's where you were headed. I'm just not confident that they are workable.


I'm a firm believer of "yet" there :)


Amazingly, around every Wal-Mart near me there are more small businesses popping up than I want to count.

Cars, public transportation, and now the internet, did/do more damage than anything to small businesses and people are not location trapped.

Big box stores like Wal-Mart become a destination fostering business development nearby to take advantage of the situation


http://www.web.ca/~tslee/ No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, by Tom Slee

...shows why individual choice fails to give us what we want, and why we need to rely on collective action rather than individual choice to take us to where we want to be.

Don't buy it on Amazon...


Ironically, the author's first two buy-online links are for Amazon. But the book is $33 on there, so most likely there is some windfall.


Yeah except now the average wage in the town drops, because all those businesses closed and people had to either a) move or b) work for the Wal-Mart.

"Always lower prices. Always." Yepand lower wages too. The town's inhabitants are also the consumers, so basically the end result is cheaper products AND smaller wages for everyone - and greater income disparity across the country (automation helps boost capital vs labor).


But lowering wages for a grocery clerk and then lowering prices on groceries transfers the wealth from the less efficient smaller grocer to the people who now shop at Wal-Mart. And because Wal-Mart can put price pressure on manufacturers like P&G like no other company can, it squeezes the wealth out of those companies and transfers it to the people who shop there. This makes the town wealthier, enabling them to save more, buy larger houses, newer cars, better health care. One major cost center becomes less costly and in the process improves the quality of life for a lot of people. I'm certainly not saying there are no losers, but any time incumbents are pushed out there are going to be unfortunate souls who have to adjust.


Although it is true that the consumers in the town are paying less for the goods, their salaries are also smaller on average. Meanwhile, in some other town that happened to be more aligned with increasing demands for human labor (Silicon Valley) people are getting richer. When those peopl visit the small town, their income dwarfs the town's inhabitants' income.

All this is mitigated somewhat when a town can issue its own currency. But if they are forced to use the country's fiat currency, they may start defaulting on their loans. This can explain what happened with the PIGS countries' economies after they joined the EU for example.

In any event, the income disparity pushes some people around (making them move) . There is an ever greater amount of people unable to earn enough to leave their small town to a "booming center" without significant risk. Those who do are willing to put up with worse conditions in order to get a chance at the big bucks. This happened for 10 years in the Great Depression as farmers migrated to the cities and our country transitioned to be dominated by industrial sector. A sector which has been disrupted in the last 30-40 years much as the agricultural sector was before.

However, even with all that, a growing "underclass" of people becomes less economically significant. For example why develop vaccines for them? The overall pictureis that automation increasingly favors the capitalists over the wage laborers. One of the best ways that has worksd to mitigate this is to decentralize the capital, eg have wordpress and linux instead of facebook and windows. Patents work against this, though.


> it squeezes the wealth out of those companies and transfers it to the people who shop there

That's very neat. But aren't the people who shop there themselves getting lower wages, so the purchase power remains the same as before?

i.e. my grocery shop is 20% cheaper, but my wages are 20% lower.


No. Wal-Mart has distribution that makes the operations of most grocers look archaic. More man hours are devoted to managing their operations than putting a rover on fucking Mars. This makes them extraordinarily efficient. Things that don't sell are pushed out for things that do, giving people exactly what they want, when they want it.

They also know that they only need to have, on average, four checkouts open from the hours of 8-6, Monday through Friday, so there is no inefficiency when it comes to staffing, either.

Meanwhile at Mom and Pop's Five and Dime, inventory is brought in once a week on a truck, and if they got rid of cereal X and moved the milk over two aisles how much would their sales increase? Who the hell knows? They are just doing what has worked for the past 40 years. But it's okay, because shoppers in the area like them and because there isn't any meaningful competition, they can just use cost-based pricing to guarantee a satisfactory margin and keep themselves in business.

Unfortunately in this scenario, local town inhabitants are paying for this inefficiency. When Wal-Mart moves in and gives the consumers more choice at lower prices, Wal-Mart robs Mom and Pop of their margin, keeps a little of it, and gives the rest to the consumers. Your wages aren't 20% lower just because Wal-Mart ironed out a huge producer surplus. You are wealthier because you can go to the mall and buy a quality shirt for $30 that was made for about two bucks whereas before you would have had to make your own shirt which might take you most of a day. This is how economic progression works. Better business practices make society wealthier through efficiency.


> Things that don't sell are pushed out for things that do, giving people exactly what they want

Well, no. I can't find rabbit (meat, not pet) for love nor money. Because it "doesn't sell". Time was, the butcher would always have rabbits and if people didn't buy it they would go to his dogs.

> there is no inefficiency when it comes to staffing, either.

inefficiency, otherwise known as plenty of jobs.

I'm seriously not convinced that the ideal society is the one that is most efficient.

Wonderful things live in the obscure, inefficient corners of things.


I agree. I'm not a published writer, but it seems to me that the expense of selling books printed on trees might be the problem? In my naive way of thinking about it, I feel like the author should just cut out the middle-man (publisher) altogether, put together an ebook (with some kind of free tool like latex, or html, or what-have-you) and then press the "publish" button which either places it on stores like Amazon, or simply sells directly off the author's own site. This is almost zero production cost and all margin.

I'm an avid reader, and have all the walls of my apartment plastered with shelves of dead tree shavings, but I've noticed lately (like maybe within the last 3-5 years since the kindle and tablets have come out) that I don't buy physical books anymore; the reading experience on an electronic devices is sufficient, and the lower price of an ebook is attractive.

With the amount of books I buy, I'm ok with trading a little bit of nostalgia and ephemeral tactility for "2 books for the price of 1". Putting words into my head is the main thing, and authors can put words into people's heads (and make a profit) on their own now: 1. write a book, 2. convert to ebook format and make available online, 3. sprinkle with marketing voodoo (which I think any book author could do: blog, tweet, email, link to book, etc.)


This seems to be the real forward. The old distribution model for books has changed forever. While it makes it much harder for traditional independent publishers to print physical books, the barrier to entry as a publisher has been reduced so much that it really represents a step change in the industry. Anyone can publish an ebook, or release Kindle singles as a marketing strategy (or to create new forms of books closer to the old serials that Dickens and the like wrote). Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferris, Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday (just the people I know off the top of my head) have written extensively about how they have self-published their way to best seller lists. Asking people to pay you to keep your outdated business model working doesn't strike me as the best plan.


Small presses would make money if Amazon didn't exist. So really, this is a plea to put Amazon out of business, or at least get them to use their almost-monopoly power over book prices to give a little more margin back to the small guys.


it is the way you've explained it that presents his effort as making no sense.

Yes, if they don't sell on Amazon they will loose huge amount of sales because the Amazon exposure will be lost.

But in this case he's trying to avoid selling on Amazon while simultaneously making effort that he maintains the exposure by using other avenues (like how he got it on top of HN frontpage). That is not the same as someone who decides he wouldn't sell on Amazon and miraculously expects to get some exposure somehow.


If his publisher didn't want to sell on Amazon, can't they just take it off?


It doesn't have to make sense. It's social media driven viral marketing.


"Amazon's discounting policies" are the same as every other bookstore, they pay the publisher ~45% of the cover price for each book. Generally speaking, the publisher gets the same $$ whether you buy the book from Amazon or from Quirky-Bookstore-Full-of-Cats or from wherever.

If you buy directly from the publisher, then the publisher does get 100% of the price. And if they donate 50% of that to your local bookstore, they're still making more money than if you'd bought the book from that local bookstore. None of this has anything to do with Amazon.

I get that Amazon is bad for small independent bookstores (and for large chain bookstores too!), and I notice that the author just happens to own a small independent bookstore, so take his other complaints with a large grain of salt.


"and I notice that the author just happens to own a small independent bookstore"

This should probably be the top comment.


From the post:

"co-owner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston"


Yeah, this is really confusing. Small bookstores would typically get this book through a distributor like Ingram, which might take a similar or higher percentage than Amazon. This is just a misguided publicity stunt based on misinformation.


I'd like to see a reference for this statement: "For many small publishers like Roundabout, Amazon accounts for a large portion of sales, but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies."

I was under the impression that amazon could discount a book as much as they wanted, but this did not affect the fixed dollar amount that the publisher received per sale.


Yeah right. Presumably the publisher can sell the book to Amazon for whatever it wants. I guess tho that Amazon say - "we wont stock your book unless you let us have it for some price OR some specified (low) commission."


Seems like that'd solve the problem in this case better than having some nonsensical webpage pleading with customers to be inefficient.


But it makes for a bit of heart warming and noble PR on the writers part...


Great reference you provided.


I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with books or Amazon but CSS, and this website is a good example.

CSS transitions are a great feature, however, using them to make hyperlinks fade slowly over 500ms on hover is a really bad idea.

It is both distracting and not helpful, as a casual pass over a link with the mouse won't actually reveal it.

So please, please, by all means use CSS transitions for nice graphic effects, or to make the colour transition smoother over 50, or 100ms, but too much is not better.

I have the feeling CSS transitions are quickly becoming a kind of modern standard of amateur design, discreet and appealing yet annoying and distracting, like coloured scrollbars and animated mouse cursors once were.


I wish folks would just make links look like links - blue underlined text that turns purple if visited, just like the good old days - instead of making me scan through the text with my mouse just in case I miss something.


Amateur dev/designer here.

Agreed that CSS transitions are neat and easy to use but you are right about the hyperlinks being a bad place to use them. If the link in the page wasn't the URL and instead just a word in the paragraphs I wouldn't have noticed it either. When I use transitions for links or to open sub menus I usually pick a color that really stands out so they can understand they should click there. Usually 100ms will do fine, I think the transitions have their place but some people including my Manager do not like them for links or menus.


CSS transitions need to be a lot more subtle than they usually are. I've seen a few good examples (Medium comes to mind), but most sites that use them implement them very garishly.

For links, I've found that a 150ms intro animation and a 250ms outro (with the proper easing) is the maximum duration that looks good.


I buy almost all my books used on Amazon now, supporting local booksellers and getting them for much cheaper than retail price. Sorry, but this plea to not use Amazon is falling on deaf ears. I'm sorry that your business model doesn't work. Amazon's does.


Amazon's business model doesn't really work either. They just have enough runway to make sure that everyone gets out of the market then theirs will start making sense.


Amazon's business model could start working essentially overnight if they moved out of land grab mode into monetization mode. Increase the price of Kindle books by 10% across the board, increase the Prime subscription rate (or tier out Prime levels), and increase their fees for fulfillment and transaction processing. You are correct that their runway lets them operate in perpetual land grab (as well as allowed them to get to the point that they could increase all these prices and not lose all their customers), but that doesn't mean if Wall Street started seriously complaining they wouldn't be able to massively increase profits.


> For many small publishers like Roundabout, Amazon accounts for a large portion of sales, but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies.

This I don't understand. How is it possible that Amazon's discounts reduce the publisher's margin? Doesn't the publisher simply sell it to Amazon for what the publisher thinks is a fair wholesale price? Amazon can screw small bookstores by reducing their own margins to almost nothing, but surely they can't reduce the publisher's margins? If Amazon wants to pay less for the book, then surely the publisher can simply not sell through Amazon?

So what use is it to tell people not to buy from Amazon? Maybe I just don't get how the book industry works.


saw this brought up by another member. Can anyone clarify please?


So I should keep funding my local bookshop which I have to walk to, has no titles other than the paperback chart full of trash like fifty shades, takes weeks to get an order in (which I have to go and collect) and costs more?

I should also keep funding my publisher which does it's best to top slice cash, screws libraries with license agreements for texts, force DRM where possible?

I think people resent amazon in this market because it's stamped on their little castles they all built. That's business, regardless of what you sell or create.


> but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies.

And yet, I can't find any way to download his book as an ebook right now. I would love to buy from authors directly... but help me help you. You can also save lots on the production and distribution costs.


The authors concerns seemed more around making sure his publisher was paid than it was making sure he was paid.

Otherwise, I agree. It would be great if more publishers offered up eBooks directly from them. Even at a highly discounted price, they'd make more per sale than through other channels. (But if it was their only distribution channel, likely less overall.)


I actually think his main point was to save a bookseller, and not the publisher or himself - except, he owns the bookstore in this case, so it comes full circle, supporting his position to buy a physical book from not-Amazon.


On a related subject, Quartz just ran an article on how membership at the American Booksellers Association has "gone up every year for the past four years, from 1,401 in 2009 to 1,567 in 2012".

http://qz.com/127861/its-time-to-kill-the-idea-that-amazon-i...

Amazon seems to be killing its medium-sized competitors more than its smaller ones. But the article does not touch on the subject of publishers.


Plenty of small bookstores use amazon, by putting their inventory online as "used books". I'd be curious how much revenue from amazon actually supports small bookstores these days.


Why I Buy All My Books On Amazon

* They have it, always(and the newest printing of it)

* They usually have it digital, I start reading it within 60 seconds

* If it's not digital it is often available used($200 textbooks for $5? Yes, please, my "local" bookstore can keep their copies at $150 used).

* Prime shipping

* Oh, I also need new batteries, and a box of diapers? Might as well throw those in to the order and get back to things I would rather be doing than driving through town wasting my time.


"They have it, always(and the newest printing of it)"

The trouble is, Amazon knows that consumers think this way - so whenever they want to extort publishers into giving them a bigger discount they just make all that publishers' books unavailable on Amazon, knowing that everyone will just assume the books are out of print and not bother looking elsewhere.


If there's another Amazon-efficient middleman that offers superior rates to publishers/manufacturers at equal price/service to consumers, Amazon is as dead as Books-A-Million.

Amazon's retail key is its unmatched distribution network. If someone can duplicate it, they'll eventually have half of the market.


Luckily for Amazon, matching their distribution and logistics power is a billion dollar investment that will take someone like Bezos (willing to spend whatever it takes to hit his goal).


Could that be a business model for the US Postal Service?


buy my book, oh you haven't heard of it, let me put Amazon in the url and then make up some wonderfully confused reason why buying it there was wrong, but you still must buy it.

really? this comes off more like, here's my book, you haven't heard of it, but if I say something bad about Amazon I have an excuse to tell you of it.

If small publishers don't want to sell their books through Amazon then stay out of the channels where Amazon buys books. How is that not possible?


He said the distributor that ships books to local bookstores would also have to ship them to Amazon. So he can't both stay out of Amazon's channel and be in the local bookseller's channel. Presumably he wants his book in local bookstores.


I tried to buy it but it didn't look like you could preorder an e-book


I recently self-published a book and I have a different gripe with Amazon. I didn't realize (I'm sure most wouldn't know) that Amazon is basically forcing people to price ebooks at 9.99. At prices < $10, Amazon gives 70%. At prices > $10, Amazon gives 35%.

I had planned to initially offer my book at $9.99, and then raise the price to $14.99. Unfortunately, I'd basically have to stop offering Amazon as a vendor, or at the very least stop advertising it as one on my site. I may or may not do that at some point, but it's frustrating to say the least that I don't have control of the pricing of my product. I'm not willing to charge my customers more and receive less.

Shameless plug for my book - http://buildanappbusiness.com/


Might as well tell me not to buy your book at all, then.


The reason that small hard/paperback publishers are dying isn't Amazon. The reason is that physical book sales are dying, ebooks have overtaken both hardbacks and paperbacks in both total sales and revenues. Next year they'll probably be the majority of the market, within a decade physical books will be quaint.

Starting a physical book publisher in this day and age is like trying to start a radio rental business in the 80s. Your business is going to be screwed by market trends whatever you do.


There is a relevant piece over at Techcrunch this morning; it argues that it was Borders/B&N that hurt indie bookstores, not Amazon:

"Indie Bookstores Aren’t Dead Yet"

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/indie-bookstores-arent-dead...


Interesting. The end of the NetBook Agreement in the UK (1995) which opened up the era of chain book stores and the discount supermarket book has definitely had a massive, often overlooked impact. The book industry don't like or get Amazon and that's why they grumble about it so much. But there are so many other reasons as to why it's changing so rapidly.


Why is the author's book listed on Amazon if they do not wish it?


I think the answer is:

> You can’t yet order Vernon Downs directly from your local bookstore because the distributor that fills those orders would also have to fill orders to Amazon.

I'm guessing that there are no medium or large distributors that avoid amazon


Exactly. I don't understand this article. The author doesn't really explain what Amazon is doing wrong other than an oblique mention of "Amazon’s discounting policies".

How can Amazon sell a book against the publisher's wishes? If true, that's the real story here.

Maybe the intended audience is already familiar with that part.


Done. I will not buy your book on Amazon. Glad to help.


I stopped reading at "As a bookstore owner"


Don't buy any books from Amazon.

http://www.stallman.org/amazon.html


Some of the least convincing arguments I've read for not buying from Amazon, most of those could apply to any large corporate.

End of the day, mass consumers look at the bottom line, in this case cheap prices and good service.


Offer a DRM free ebook for download if you want to sell it yourself. Then let your readers know, Google Play Books lets you upload e-books to any device you have. Amazon Kindle has many restrictions when uploading books. This is how I always buy my books if I can because it gives me more freedom and I'm not locked into any eco-system.


Yeah, I'm a Kindle convert and don't read books on paper much these days... And Amazon makes it ultra efficient for me to purchase, download, and read books that way. Sorry small independent booksellers, but your time has come: you're selling vinyl LPs in the age of iTunes.


Yes, and it's undeniably nice to be able to buy books and CDs at what are effectively wholesale prices. I'm less convinced that kindle and e-ink e-readers in general are the future. Trends suggest that more and more people are reading on tablet, as opposed to specialist reading devices, the usage of which has plateaued. And I would definitely worry about what will happen to books should the day come when they are primarily read on a platform on which they must compete with other, noisier content (I'm looking at you, Angry Birds).


Left out of this argument is that The New York Times bestseller list has a bias towards physical retailers and against Amazon. Methinks this is a smart strategy towards getting on the bestseller list (which means enhanced speaker fees), disguised as a strategy towards justice in retail.


This post is lacking any supporting data regarding how amazon, other online stores, retail chains, and independent booksellers' agreements are different, and why amazon is particulary bad. As such, it's not really all that compelling as a rhetoric.


The plea to support my struggling local bookstore would be more efficacious if I had one. As it happens my only real options are to order through Amazon or take a 75 mile drive to pay more for the book in person at Barnes and Noble.


How is this argument any different from "please don't buy my books at a used book shop"? Apart from the fact that everyone loves used book shops, so that would look bad...


It sounds like instead of the author making this plea, the publisher should just withhold the books from Amazon. After all, isn't copyright still in effect in this country?


So they can't stop Amazon from selling the book?

If they really want to make a good cut, they should sell the ebook on their own web site.


If enough people bought the book (i.e., were interested in reading the book), money wouldn't be a problem.


So why don't presses offer a widget for people to buy directly from the author's site, such as this?


Except I'll pay another 63% for p&p.


I am not sure if everybody aware, but Amazon is actually losing money and bleeding cash. http://seekingalpha.com/article/1712392-how-ugly-will-amazon...


It's not like anyone's expecting Amazon to make mountains of cash. It's not bleeding, either, it's re-investing, just like it always has.

Since the very beginning.

Stop screaming about the sky falling. It's just rain.


Not realizing profits and bleeding cash are two completely separate concepts.




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