
Amazon's Plan to Conquer the World of Publishing - ekovarski
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/amazons-plan-take-over-world-publishing/595630/
======
vfc1
Last time I checked, Amazon was essentially forcing you to sell your 1000 page
years of work e-book for $9.99 or less, taking "only" 35% of the price sale
(used to be 30% a couple of years ago).

If you want to sell it above $10, then their commission becomes 70%!

Also, if your ebook is not exclusive to Amazon, then you don't get access to
important marketing tools (KDP program) like free promotions, which are
essential to build up social proof and get initial reviews.

Without a prior audience and without those tools your ebook is dead on
arrival.

If this is not a horrific monopoly and flat ou author extortion, then I don't
know what is. $9.99 is just too low, many books are worth more than that.

Also, they will send emails to your readers suggesting ebooks from competing
authors. I think the Amazon stranglehold on authors is preventing a lot of
books from even being written, as the authors know that they won't be able to
make a living ou of them.

For technical and instructional books, self-publishing is a much better
option, with organic marketing done via blogging. You can sell the ebook for
say $49, get the whole price sale and the customer email.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
I wrote an academic book several years ago with a traditional publisher. I was
supposed to get a royalty of 10% but I probably never understood the legal
mumbo-jumbo (it's not something I make significant income out of, so I didn't
bother to inform myself much), because the book ended up selling for around
$100 (!) while I was getting around one dollar per unit. In the electronic
version, I think the price was a bit less ridiculous (around $50) and I was
still getting $1 or less per unit.

Other academics I know have similar experiences. So getting 30% of the sales
price comparably looks like a good deal to me...

~~~
dmix
I’ve taken two writing courses and both professors were best selling authors
and claimed not to make a penny besides the advance, even though they made the
list.

Writing a book, for the vast majority of authors, is a money losing enterprise
that comes back in various other ways. Such as speaking and consulting gigs as
a domain expert.

A lot of the books I’ve seen self published on amazon wouldn’t get a juicy
book deal anyway. Most of it is garbage and quantity over quality.

------
thr0waway98121
I don't ever post on HN, but this article convinced me to create an account
and respond.

>But experts who spoke with me said that the publishing house serves not
authors but another master—Amazon Prime.

This is intentionally written in a way that describes Amazon and APub as being
nefarious.

I worked in APub for almost 4 years before moving to a different FANG. It was
a fantastic place to work. I'm sure engineers in other parts of Amazon get
paged all the time. There was essentially no on-call burden for my team. We
got to launch some really cool programs and learn about the publishing
workflows end to end (ideation all the way to an ebook or physical title).
This company was where I became a really strong engineer (my previous job was
at a non-tech company building small scale CRUD apps).

First and foremost, authors were our customers. We did anything and everything
for authors - it was meant to be a VIP experience.

Does Amazon want to increase Prime subscriptions? Absolutely. But portraying
that I or my team "served another master" is disingenuous horse shit.

~~~
jacobolus
The article seems pretty well Amazon-friendly to me, generally spinning Amazon
Publishing positively and quoting only supporters and one neutral analyst.

Amazon is a monopoly which (a) exerts huge control over the whole culture’s
literary output, and (b) has driven / is driving many competitors and
suppliers at every stage of the publishing process out of business, using its
combination of vertical integration, scale, and ruthless contract negotiation.

I’m not sure “nefarious” is the right word. But it is dangerous having
unaccountable private institutions wield such power. Some of Amazon’s business
practices seem to me like violations of anti-trust law (disclaimer: I am not a
lawyer or legal expert), but the past few decades of Supreme Court precedent
have reinterpreted/eroded antitrust laws to the point that there will probably
be nothing done about it.

I don’t see what their treatment of engineers making the software has to do
with the business model or larger cultural impact. (But if you’re worried
about labor relations, how do you feel about Amazon’s mistreatment of
warehouse workers?)

~~~
jillesvangurp
Amazon has been great for authors and for readers. I've read several books by
authors that started out by self publishing on Amazon. People like Andy Weir,
Hugh Howey, Ernest Cline, John Scalzi, and indeed Robert Dugoni. Of course it
doesn't work out for everyone but lowering the barrier of entry to the market
for authors is a good thing.

Of course for serious authors, marketing and editing are still essential and
there seems to be a notion of successful self published authors quickly
getting deals from publishers for exactly that reason. But undeniably the
middle men industry is being affected. I'm not even sure that's a bad thing.
Marketing and PR is a function that you can pay people to do. Dead tree
production and associated logistics is a service as well. Same with editing.
There's no need to get all of these things under the same roof.

~~~
mrec
> _I 've read several books by authors that started out by self publishing on
> Amazon. People like Andy Weir, Hugh Howey, Ernest Cline, John Scalzi, and
> indeed Robert Dugoni._

Scalzi's first novel was _Agent to the Stars_ (1997), which was indeed self-
published but via his own website, not Amazon. His breakout novel was _Old Man
's War_ (2005) which was published traditionally by Tor.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Right, I did not read everything he wrote. Amazon was barely a thing in 1997.

------
dmix
I worked at a startup that was doing NLP/AI stuff on Amazon books for a while
(a "smart" email newsletter book recommendation service).

You'd be surprised at some of the books that top those Amazon sales charts.
The biggest consumers are middle-aged women and Amazon self-publishing is
where the giant harlequin novel industry moved to.

One of the more bizarre books that popped up included a Dinosaur/cave girl
love story [1] and some other fantasy related themes mixed with romance. Each
of those would have tons of real reviews.

There was also tons of sketchy business books and self-help stuff.

I'm sure this stuff was really popular before too, but people tend to be less
shy and far higher quantity when buying 'anonymously' online with a Kindle.
Bookstores would only carry 'respectable' titles'. So the quiet online
bestsellers look very different than NYTimes list just from consumer behaviour
alone.

[1] NSFW
[https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dinosaur+romance](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=dinosaur+romance)

~~~
kranner
I cannot believe what I just read. The top search result was shortlisted for a
Hugo award (for Best Short Story). Pasting from Wikipedia with some light
censoring:

> In April 2016, _Space Raptor B??? Invasion_ was shortlisted for a Hugo Award
> for Best Short Story in the prestigious Hugo Awards for science fiction.
> This stemmed from a campaign by the alt-right "Rabid Puppies" group, a
> faction of the Sad Puppies movement that laments the perceived
> politicization of science fiction. However, Tingle disavowed the campaign,
> saying via his Twitter account that it was the work of "devils", and that if
> his book were to win, video game designer and anti-harassment activist Zoë
> Quinn would accept the award on his behalf. His story did not win. Tingle
> subsequently published _Pounded in the B??? by My Hugo Award Loss_.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
That was a sort of glorious fiasco in the annals of science fiction. The Rabid
Puppies basically decided to troll the Hugos (anyone who purchases at least a
supporting membership to the World Science Fiction Convention that year can
make a nomination). It apparently never occurred to them that someone who
wrote books with titles like "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" just might be better
at trolling than they were.

~~~
cperciva
In a similar vein of authors trolling the trolls, after receiving complaints
about his decision to use female sysadmins as examples in his tech books (IIRC
he usually alternates genders in examples), Michael Lucas published a "Manly
McManface" edition of Ed Mastery which has an all-male cast of sysadmins... at
a much higher price.

~~~
astura
This is pretty funny

>Every so often, men contact the author complaining that his books use both
male and female pronouns. This special edition, using only male third-person
pronouns, is for those special people. As the market is so much smaller, it’s
u̶n̶f̶o̶r̶t̶u̶n̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ priced higher.

>For each copy of the Manly McManface edition sold, the author will donate one
dollar to his local chapter of Soroptomists International.

This is what Soroptomists International is

>A global volunteer organization that improves the lives of women and girls
through programs leading to social and economic empowerment.

------
rikroots
I have no relationship with Amazon Publishing, nor am I ever likely to. My
experience of publishing with Amazon is entirely restricted to their (now
defunct) CreateSpace platform and its successor, Kindle Direct Publishing,
alongside publishing works on 3rd party self-publishing platforms and
attempting to get those books listed on Amazon.

My personal view, developed over a number of years, is that Amazon is a toxic
environment for self-publishing authors:

\- Their price modelling is designed to undercut other self-publishing
platforms to the point of damaging them. If an author publishes on a 3rd party
platform, Amazon will demand that the price point for the book is double the
viable price listing on Amazon - so that they can offer the book to readers at
a 50% discount (from day 1 of listing). Authors have no control over when the
discount is applied, or the level of discount, or for how long it will last.
The last time I checked (several years ago, things may have changed since)
authors were paid a percentage of the price at which the book was sold, not
its original price point.

\- Publishing both on Amazon and on a 3rd party platform is not prohibited;
however Amazon demand that the list pricing on their platform must be as cheap
(or preferably cheaper) than on those other sites (before any discounts are
applied). If they find a book listed elsewhere at a cheaper price they will
automatically price-match without warning the author. Running a temporary
price reduction promotion for a book on another platform can lead to a
permanent price reduction for the book on Amazon.

\- If an author wants to give away a book for free, this is possible on other
platforms, but not on Amazon - unless the author enrolls the book in their KDP
Select program, which will allow the author to offer strictly time-limited
free giveaway windows ...

\- Except an author can only enroll a book on KDP Select if they remove that
book from all other platforms and agree to publish exclusively on Amazon. This
includes removing the book from profitable venues such as Google Play and
Apple Books (which are ideal for iPad/iPhone and Android devices).

\- I could go on (but won't).

Many people will disagree with my personal 'toxic environment' view. That's
fine. Self-publishing on the Amazon platforms is often enough to meet the
needs of many self-published authors, and quite often profitable for them too.

But for me the above points all indicate that Amazon is interested only in
killing diversity and creating a readership monopoly, which in the longer run
will damage self-publishing and prove to be toxic to both authors and readers
alike.

------
despera
How about start with fixing the completely garbled by the OCR science ebooks
they already selling through kindle platform before trying to conquer the
universe of publishing and be taken seriously?

------
alexis_fr
Amazon’s self-publishing product is horrible. Basically there is only 1 type
of book that can be made from it (i.e. no color, only 1 type of cover, only 1
type of paper... only 1 font). Im surpried they wouldn’t start with proper
options, if they want to conquer the world.

~~~
jillesvangurp
Sounds like they save a lot of cost by pointless variation in the process.

