

Writers Feel an Amazon-Hachette Spat - pinarsezer
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/technology/writers-feel-an-amazon-hachette-spat.html

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cstross
This isn't the first time this has happened. They whacked on Hachette a couple
of years ago in the UK (delisting titles on amazon.co.uk) -- I'm told that
what made Amazon back down was Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series of
all things. (The TV series was running, all the books were in the top 30
bestsellers, and it wound up costing Amazon a fortune.)

They've also done this to Macmillan and Penguin, to my knowledge.

It's worth noting that the Big Five publishers in the US have a combined
turnover about a fifth of Amazon's, and individually none of them are even 10%
of Amazon's size. Amazon's behavior towards its suppliers is basically
bullying -- this isn't just in publishing -- and they're also tax dodgers
(although I note the UK treasury has finally taken steps to close the VAT
loophole they were exploiting to charge their suppliers 20% VAT while paying
out only 3% to the Luxembourg government).

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gabemart
This sounds reminiscent of similar accusations regarding books from Lightning
Source being sold on Amazon being given long delivery estimates.

Lightning source is a print-on-demand publishing service from Ingram that
competes with Amazon's CreateSpace PoD service.

[http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/09/amazon-and-
lightning-...](http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/09/amazon-and-lightning-
source-the-end-of-an-era/)

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codecondo
really, Amazon placed a BANNER saying "go buy other books"... the editor needs
to realize that changing up words and terminology can really make a huge
difference on how people perceive a story...

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robotys
Amazon need to increase its profit. The best way without increasing price from
the already steep discount compared listing price are have better discount
from huge volume publisher. Publisher balk as their profit margin will be
affected. Amazon increase price due to no better term. That is purely logical
business decision.

However, the extending shipping time as a punishment part from amazon is not.

(Disclaimer: i work for publisher and a writer myself)

(Edit:typo)

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ZenPro
The TL:DR version

Among Amazon’s tactics against Hachette, some of which it has been employing
for months, are charging more for its books and suggesting that readers might
enjoy instead a book from another author. If customers for some reason persist
and buy a Hachette book anyway, Amazon is saying it will take weeks to deliver
it.

The scorched-earth tactics arose out of failed contract negotiations. Amazon
was seeking better terms, Hachette was balking, so Amazon began cutting it
off. Writers from Malcolm Gladwell to J. D. Salinger are affected, although
some Hachette authors were unscathed.

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gress
Luckily the justice department protected competition in ebooks so this will
take care of itself...

Oh.. wait.

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pervycreeper
Reads like a hit piece. People involved in legacy media perceive that they
lack the nimbleness and cleverness of the technology industry, and they
(rightly) feel threatened.

~~~
girvo
I'm as pro-tech and pro-disruption as the next entrepreneur, but come on.
Amazon is an 800lb gorilla, not a start-up struggling to find traction, and if
the acusations in this piece are true (and what I can find suggests they are),
then that's anti-consumer behaviour: Amazon own 1/3 the entire market for
books. This affects us, the consumers, and hurts authors, all because Amazon
pushed for better terms and Hachette didn't want to give them.

Regardless of the company, I dislike it when tactics like this are used.
Comcast's net neutrality issues are another great example.

~~~
revelation
This seems to be a very positive interpretation for Hachette, which is
incidentally exactly what the article seems to push for, while claiming Amazon
is acting maliciously.

The interest of authors is very clear: sell as many books as possible. They
are paid a meagre sum per book (a dollar, maybe?) so they really don't care
about the price other than that it is as low as possible to stimulate sales,
but they have no control over pricing regardless.

Hachette, meanwhile, needs to keep prices up since any reduction would come
directly from their margin, given that they pay authors a very low and fixed
sum.

Amazon of course, as any other distributor, wants to get better conditions
from Hachette and naturally uses its customer base to put weight behind what
they are asking for. When the deal failed, they presumably had to continue
buying books under, to them, unacceptable conditions, so they did two things
to consolidate their losses:

1) slash discounts from Hachette books 2) buy less Hachette books

I'm not including the recommendations for other books, because if you have
used Amazon at all in the last 10 years, this is just how their website
functions regardless if the product at hand is a book from Hachette or a
sponge.

If you want to blame someone here, blame Hachette or the relationship between
traditional publishers and authors. As I've pointed out above, the interests
of the two parties are not well aligned at all. Maybe it is true that Amazon
pushes for deals hard to swallow for publishers, but if they are paying
authors a dollar on a $10 book sale, that is hard to believe. If their
overhead is that large, capitalism demands they are put out of business, and
this time it is just Amazon picking up the slack, when it could have been any
distributor.

~~~
cstross
_They are paid a meagre sum per book (a dollar, maybe?) so they really don 't
care about the price other than that it is as low as possible to stimulate
sales_

Wrong.

We are paid a royalty which is a _percentage cut_ of the sale price. Often a
percentage of the net receipts the publisher gets for the books. So amazon's
tactics come _directly_ out of our pockets.

Hachette do not pay authors "a very low and fixed sum". We're in a profit-
sharing arrangement with them. No profits for Hachette? No profits for the
authors, either.

Please refrain from disseminating information on HN about a business you
aren't actively involved in without first engaging in some fact-checking.

(Disclaimer: I am a full-time professional author and Hachette is one of my
publishers in the UK.)

