

Four Open Letters To The Book Industry - dmytton
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/01/31/four-open-letters-to-the-book-industry/

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Tichy
OK, I am not very deep into the Kindle vs publishers thing, but isn't it a bit
dangerous to root for Amazon to build their monopoly? As an avid reader, I am
not sure I want one company to be in control of "my drug".

Not saying the publishers are necessarily the good guys (probably aren't). But
this isn't about loving books, this is about market dominance and control. Not
exacty the thing that inspires me to write a love letter to Amazon (though I
usually buy from them and I like their service).

Ultimately, do we really need Amazon for a proper ebooks distribution? It
seems to me in theory every author could put their books on a web site right
now, using whatever payment system he likes. The Kindle seems more like a
Trojan horse to me - we let it into our lives, and then we can't get rid of it
anymore, unless we are willing to let go of the 1000 books we bought, too.

I, as a reader, don't want to be held hostage, neither by Amazon nor by book
publishers.

~~~
patio11
Personal anecdotes incoming:

I live in a Japanese apartment. Like many Japanese folks, I read a lot and
cannot possibly keep all the books I read here. Most go in the garbage when
I'm done. I have no particular desire for ownership but, if I did, I own the
bits on my Kindle in a much more durable fashion than I own the atoms in my
trash bag right now. (Thirty volumes just got evicted.)

 _It seems to me in theory every author could put their books on a web site
right now, using whatever payment system he likes._

This has been true in ten of the last ten years, and I have never bought a
single book through it. The experience matters, and the Kindle is an
_amazingly_ better experience for me than reading on my screen is. (Amazon
also beats the stuffings out of Google for book discovery, which is what I'd
have to do to get to your website if you sold it directly. I can't very well
Google [sci-fi I would enjoy], but Amazon will give me four titles fitting
that bill on my front page. And they're pretty good at it, too -- Amazon
probably has a better handle on my tastes than anybody except my siblings.)

~~~
jbm
Just out of curiousity, why don't you just give them to Hard-Off / Book Off or
donate them to the local library?

(I only ask because I was having the exact same conversation with my
girlfriend yesterday)

~~~
frossie
I often suggest people donate unwanted books to the local library, and they
say "oh it's not library material". Just to be clear, libraries don't put
books that you donate on the shelves - they sell them and use the money to
fund their programs. So (at least in the US) they're just as happy to take
your "low-brow" stuff. Perhaps things are different in Japan (where the up-
thread poster is)

------
ssp
Amazon is behaving like Walmart here: squeezing suppliers in order to provide
lower prices.

Walmart is certainly not good for Walmart suppliers, because if you want to
sell there, your profit margins will go down and down, and you will need
higher and higher volume and lower and lower marginal costs. It's what Walmart
does. The resulting type of product is generally known as _junk_.

Is it good for consumers? Probably, because low prices are good, and if you
don't want junk, you can go elsewhere. If the same thing eventually happens
for books, then Amazon will be selling mostly cheap and trashy stuff, while
other, more expensive, online bookstores will show up and get exclusive deals
with better authors.

In such a scenario, Patrick's comment:

 _I will buy books from authors willing to sell them to me. I might get a
little depressed over not being able to read my favorites, but if you haven’t
noticed, I read a lot faster than you can possibly write and that makes me
promiscuous by nature._

strikes me as wrong. While you may substitute other good stuff for good stuff,
you won't substitute _The Duke's Boardroom Affair_ for _Pride and Prejudice_.

~~~
patio11
_The resulting type of product is generally known as junk._

I know I'm supposed to feel class disdain for poor people because their
Chinese-factory-made T-shirts cost a fifth of what my name brand Chinese-
factory-made T-shirts do, but my brain has never been good at mental
gymnastics. It is even less good at them when I can do bitwise comparisons of
the two products and be guaranteed of equality.

~~~
ssp
Note that I didn't say Walmart is bad. In fact I said: 'Is it good for
consumers? Probably', and I mean that.

I called their goods junk, just as I'm willing to call _The Duke's Boardroom
Affair_ junk, because that's how those products are seen, even by people who
buy them. That doesn't imply any disdain for people who buy Chinese-factory-
made T-shirts, or people who read romance novels.

(If you consider the number of people who buy Chinese-factory-made T-shirts or
read romance novels, you'd have to feel disdain for an _extremely_ large
percentage of people).

The point is simply that what Amazon is doing could turn them into the Walmart
of bookstores, for better or worse.

~~~
adamc
Razor blades are junk? Toothpaste is junk? No. They are commodities. Wal-Mart
traffics in commodities, selling them at commodity prices, squeezing suppliers
but generally benefiting their customers.

If MacMillan can't work out a deal with Amazon and sells their books
elsewhere, bully for them. If enough publishers did that, maybe Amazon would
have to capitulate. But I suspect that Patrick was right, and that most of us
would just buy other books, most of the time. The reality is that there is an
enormous ocean of good to great books, more than I can ever read, and Amazon's
conveniences are likely more significant than which authors get published on
Amazon.

------
michael_dorfman
_I just posted this to the comments of Patrick's blog_

I think you’re misreading the publishers, Patrick-- I haven’t seen any of them
proposing "windowing", except as a retaliatory move against Amazon. Instead,
the main point of disagreement is about the price-point, and your post
provides support to the publisher’s position.

Amazon is trying to set a universal $9.99 price point for e-books, similar to
iTunes $.99 price point for songs. Macmillan, on the other hand, wants a
sliding system with e-books starting out at $12-$15, and gradually dropping in
price over time (similar to the current system, whereby the price drops as
books move from Hardcover to Trade Paperback to Mass Market paperback to
Remainders.)

~~~
patio11
_I think you’re misreading the publishers, Patrick-- I haven’t seen any of
them proposing "windowing", except as a retaliatory move against Amazon_

You're incorrect. From the horse's mouth:

 _This past Thursday I [John Sargent, from Macmilla]n met with Amazon in
Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the
agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told
them they could stay with their old terms of sale [i.e. the ones where Amazon
acts as a wholesaler and can set prices], but that this would involve
extensive and deep windowing of titles._

~~~
michael_dorfman
Look again, Patrick.

The windowing only would apply to the "old terms of sale", where Amazon can
arbitrarily set the prices. Macmillan wants new terms, with prices to be set
according to a sliding scale.

"Windowing" is being used as a threat here, to push Amazon to the new terms--
it's not what Macmillan wants. (Amazon in turn retaliated by opening the
ultimate window-- delisting Macmillan altogether.)

------
patio11
Fair warning: not my usual software marketing beat, at all. I saw all the
Amazon/Macmillan flap today and wanted to chime in in more depth than a HN-
friendly comment.

~~~
daeken
100% on the same page with these letters. It frankly astounds me how out of
touch the media companies are with their respective customer bases, and this
Amazon v. publishers battle is just more evidence of that. Sadly, it
_shouldn't_ astound me that this is going on, since I've been it time and
again. Maybe Publishers 2.0 will get this right...

------
heyitsnick
And I thought the first letter was going to be an F.

------
dpapathanasiou
I'm curious about your loyalty to Amazon: if there were another marketplace of
ebooks for your Kindle, would you consider using it as well?

~~~
pchristensen
He already describes himself as promiscuous to authors and publishers, so I
doubt he would have any qualms about leaving Amazon for another company that
beat the experience of a) finding, b) buying, and c) reading books.

------
lionhearted
Patrick, I love you mate.

And I'm with you by the way. Kindle is changing the way I read. I'm not sure
if I like it or not - I'm jumping around a lot more, because I don't have to
worry about finishing a book to take off the large stack of books I'm
traveling with. So I'm reading a little history, a little philosophy, a little
fiction, and so on.

Anyways, while we're on the topic, may I recommend Gutenberg.org if you
haven't already thoroughly perused it?

Here's a few you might like.

Their top 100:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top>

History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/731>

Japanese literature including Genji Monogatari:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19264>

Complete Sherlock Holmes:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1661>

On War:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1946>

All of Shakespeare:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a65>

Thus Spake Zarathustra:

<http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1998>

Oh my, Gutenberg is just awesome. That's just the beginning of what I got. If
you like literature, definitely try out Genji. If you haven't read On War, you
simply _must_ check it out - it teaches you how to think. At least read the
first 20 pages, it's that valuable. Very incredible even if you don't care
about history or military science, it's definitely been more valuable to me
than Sun Tzu, and a lot of people like him.

As for Nietzsche... he's an odd duck, isn't he? Anyway, check out Zarathustra,
you'll either love it or hate or both. I find myself disagreeing with quite a
lot of it, but then occasionally he explains himself so completely perfectly
and explains reality so succinctly and accurately. The good parts of
Zarathustra are like Individualism Crack, it's a huge high reading and getting
excited at.

There's lots more on Gutenberg, too! Almost everything out of print that's
well known. I got 53 books from Gutenberg the day I got my Kindle so there's
quite a lot I haven't gone through yet. Got copies of a lot of the
foundational science texts to skim later for inspiration, etc. Really great
stuff, highly recommend you spend some time on Gutenberg if you're the
voracious reader.

