

Macmillan books still missing from Amazon following spat - cwan
http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/02/macmillan_books_still_missing_from_amazon_authors_guild_backs_publisher.html

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joubert
It doesn't seem to affect publishing houses that Macmillan owns, e.g. "Farrar,
Straus and Giroux". The book of friends of mine is still available:
<http://www.amazon.com/Our-Life-Gardens-Joe-Eck/dp/0374160317>

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electromagnetic
Very fortunate for your friends, however it has affected many of their
imprints. However, not _all_ books on their imprints seem affected.

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electromagnetic
I must say congratulations to Amazon, punish the authors in the midst of a
recession whilst having no effect on the publisher. Bravo!

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boredguy8
Authors don't have to publish via Macmillan. I honestly don't understand why
so many people see Amazon as being a moral failure here.

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rgrove
That's an incredibly short-sighted viewpoint. The vast majority of authors
don't get to choose their publisher, and are very lucky if _any_ publisher
agrees to publish their work.

Furthermore, authors tend to build long-lasting relationships with their
publisher, so even a well established and popular author isn't exactly free to
just switch to another publisher that Amazon has decided gets to continue to
exist.

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boredguy8
Why are we talking about this as though we still live in a world where it
takes a Macmillan-like relationship in order to publish? Why do people love
their print publishers, but music publishers get ranted at?

And in the world of blogs, in the world of independent publishers, and in the
world of self-publishing (whether through Amazon or some other resource),
holding fast to a publisher like people seem enamored of doing--it's just
confusing.

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electromagnetic
Please get a grip, this isn't web 2.0 bullshit, for the authors affected here
it's their lives. No one worth a damn self-publishes for very simple reasons,
self-publishing doesn't pay out over a years salary in a single check to
enable you to work on your next title. Self-publishing doesn't pay for your
advertising and publicity or even getting your books into a single bookstore
anywhere on the face of the planet.

For most authors their job is to write, that's what they're good at and hence
is why they do it. They're not marketers, advertisers, or anything. They're
writers by definition and occupation.

Macmillan is trying to increase the prices it can sell its ebooks for to what
they're considering realistic prices. Whether this is true or not isn't the
matter of debate here.

The question here is the unethical behavior of preventing the distribution of
titles from ~25 publishing houses, all subdivisions of the Macmillan
Publishers group, despite already agreeing to said groups terms. Amazon has
already quite clearly stated they're accepting raised prices. Obviously this
bargaining ploy was never going to hurt Macmillan in the first place, but it's
seriously hurting many genre writers who rely on the online booksellers like
Amazon to provide the selection mortar-based stores cannot.

Macmillan has bestsellers for sale, which are predominantly bought off the
shelves in mortar-stores. Either in real bookstores or through Walmart, and
even drug stores. However, it's the genre writers who have relied on Amazon to
distribute their books to their fans, search their websites and, until now,
their titles would most likely have been exclusively amazon-linked. Amazon,
well aware it sells the predominant amount of Genre books on the market, was
willing to pull Macmillan books, including its imprints like Tor/Forge,
Minotaur, Griffin, etc. who cater exclusively to genre.

You come off as simply ignorant of the publishing world if you truly believe
'self-publishing' is an alternative to mainstream writers. It never will be an
alternative. Novels published exclusively as E-books in the near future will
still go through an update of the original process where advances are paid, or
it'll never catch on as anything more than a tertiary market like audio books.

