Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
Meh, I'm not really convinced by that. A modern accounting department should have no trouble keeping track of linked products. They aren't recording their prices on slips of paper, and the failure to maintain parallel pricing windows is sheer incompetence, though I'd accept that part of the responsibility lies with the retailers.
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It would be nice if they
had modern accounting departments. Or modern systems, period.
I mentioned upthread the experience of an old friend years back consulting with a PB house to re-invigorate their SF line. It took him seven months simply to determine who they had under contract for what, another five months to dot Is, cross Ts, and get new contracts in place, and they still lost valuable properties because they had forgotten they had the rights to a book, but the author's or author's agents had not, and sent a formal request that the rights revert as soon as the contract was up.
You would think a publisher could at least keep track of what books they had under contract and when the rights would lapse, but you would have been wrong.
It
was years ago, and systems have gotten much better since, but the best system in the world is no use if it isn't properly applied.
And publishers aren't retailers. Amazon is a retailer. They have the systems, and an incentive to use them properly. I expect them to have a properly designed and maintained database, with people whose full time responsibility is to make sure that things like proper product linkages are maintained and that linked prices are correct. Publishers don't have that level of incentive, nor the underlying database, nor the people devoted to its maintenance. (You can argue that they
should, but they won't want to spend the money required.)
In many cases, it
is sheer incompetence.
______
Dennis