
George Orwell is Amazon's latest target in battle against Hachette - kevingadd
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/orwell-is-amazons-latest-target-in-battle-against-hachette
======
facepalm
Orwell was not an economist. I think this is really silly. How about instead
of quoting random opinions, let's look into what actually happened in the real
world? For one thing I don't think the book industry has suffered much since
the introduction of the Penguin books?

This reminds me of the piracy debate. Was Microsoft helped or hurt by the
rampant piracy of the Windows OS? I'm pretty sure they were helped a lot (how
else achieve 99% lock in), but presumably the point could be argued back and
forth indefinitely (people who would argue either point would be plentiful to
find).

Also the discussion is completely besides the point. Two businesses can't
agree on a price. Neither of the two has a moral obligation to sell books for
a certain price. If they don't agree, they simply don't sell books to each
other. Why does that even concern anybody else?

------
__Joker
Neither Amazon nor Hachette have interest of reader or writer. They are just
trying to side on the reader or picture their interest as a interest to reader
or writer.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Making your customers happy is important.

Amazon's customers are readers.

Hachette's customers are large bookstores.

------
revelation
The NYT has really gone off the rails on this topic.

~~~
jonnathanson
It's a big stretch for the NYT to jump on the Orwell reference and make it the
basis of an entire article, even if it's for their blog and not their paper.
That said, it was crass of Amazon to invoke Orwell in the first place. They
referenced him largely of context, cherry picked a quote, and dredged him up
primarily for the emotional connotations of his name. Someone was going to
call them out on it.

Because "1984" is the first and only thing 99% of people know about George
Orwell, bringing his name into a discussion has long been the literary
equivalent of _reductio ad Hitlerum_. "Even George Orwell said...," or "George
Orwell himself wrote..." are often the hallmarks of lazy and facile arguments.
Amazon's Orwell reference was similarly lame.

I have no love for Hachette in this battle. At the same time, I don't find
Amazon to be a wholly likable or compelling protagonist. Its PR strategies
have been hamfisted, ceding a lot of moral appeal to Hachette that Hachette
has not earned and does not deserve.

That this whole thing plays out, day by day, in a paper of record like the NYT
is a consequence of the NYT's close orbit to the publishing world. Many of its
writers are represented by the same agencies that rep Hachette's writers, and
some are probably Hachette writers themselves.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Also, a group headed by Hachette author Douglas Preston just bought a $100K
full-page ad in the NYT.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

~~~
jonnathanson
In fairness, I don't think $100k buys you the opinion of the NYT. I give the
paper a little bit more credit than that. Besides, it's been airing this blow-
by-blow for months now, long before that ad buy.

To the extent the NYT is inclined to take Hachette's side of the fight, that's
largely because its staff and editors are much closer to Hachette,
geographically, professionally, and socially. It's still not a great reason,
of course, but it's not pay-for-play.

~~~
Turing_Machine
There's also the fluff piece the NYT ran on Preston a couple of days ago about
poor little Preston, channeling Thoreau and fighting the evil 'Zon from his
"writing shack" (that just happens to be located on 300 acres of land that
also features a luxury home and is located in a Maine community where a
"cottage" goes for $1.5 million).

If Amazon is dishonest for invoking Orwell, it pales in comparison to the
David and Goliath spin that the Times has been putting on this story, where
David consists of millionaire celeb authors like Preston, James Patterson, et
al and mega-billion conglomerates like Lagadere (Hachette), Bertelsmann, CBS,
and Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp.

You're right that this is largely New York "literary" snobbery at work. I just
wish they wouldn't use the "poor little author" spin.

Note that Amazon has made three separate offers to mitigate the effect of this
dispute on authors. Hachette has rejected all three, and has offered none of
its own.

It's pretty clear who's really "hurting authors" here.

Actually that's been clear for quite a long time, given that Amazon pays
authors who deal with them direct 70% of retail and doesn't require that the
author sign up for the life of the copyright, while Hachette and their ilk
typically pay 12%-15% of retail and do require the authors to sign over their
rights for the life of the copyright.

~~~
jonnathanson
Yeah, like I said, I'm not very sympathetic to Hachette's position. Especially
with the revelation that a large part of its ebook margins come not just from
cost savings over print, but from disproportionately higher cuts of what could
be authors' royalties.

This certainly isn't a case of David vs. Goliath. This is a case of an
elderly, infirm Goliath having its lunch eaten by a younger, hungrier, smarter
Goliath. The reason I'm not completely sympathetic to Amazon, either, is that,
as a writer, I'm not in favor of _any_ Goliath's controlling the market.
Trading one master for another is progress of a sort, and it's necessary
progress. But time will tell if Amazon's new world order is indeed better for
writers.

Many writers _are_ being held hostage in this battle, especially those in
Hachette's fold. It's one thing for folks like Patterson and Preston to take
up Hachette's call to arms from their ivory towers, but the vast majority of
writers are struggling to get by. Even the majority of successfully published
writers. For every James Patterson, making tens of millions of dollars a year,
you have thousands of midlisters who are lucky to make $50k. You even have
"bestsellers" who are struggling to get by. (Indeed, the concept of
"bestseller" differs remarkably from genre to genre, and category to category.
Let us not assume that anyone who's earned the title "NYT Bestselling Author"
is making James Patterson scratch.)

As a group, authors have never held a lot of influence over their own fates.
That just seems to be the way the market forces work. I can tell you that a
lot of writers would rather take their chances in a crowded field with a 70%
cut than in a beauty contest with a 10-15% cut. At the same time, they're
scared about the prospect of monopoly over distribution. For them, this is
sort of like a choice between the devil they know and the devil they don't.

