[QUOTE=greencat;1303750]I might be wrong, I frequently am, but hasn't Amazon prevented unionisation amongst its employees in the past?
[I haven't heard about this, and a quick google check only found an article from 10 years ago, so I would suspect no. (One of the articles indicated that a union lost a ballot in a distribution center in the UK, which is not the same thing).
Quote:
On a personal level - Amazon have always been pretty straight up with me. Borked Kindle - I emailed and someone rang me straight away, was extremely competent and I had a new Kindle next day. Similarly as a occasional seller of secondhand stuff - always got paid. Ditto as a publisher. Unfortunately I can't point to another internet based company with the same level of service across such a range of channels. Email Google and often the query'll be lost forever. eBay/Paypal - I've actually lost a decent amount of money because of them.
|
This is why they are so popular, and why claims of "evil" ring false to so many people: Amazon are just outstandingly fair to deal with as a customer: prices are good, delivery is fast and reliable, and Amazon is very quick and helpful if something goes wrong.
Quote:
Amazon certainly aren't perfect though. Secrecy is definitely one of their problems. As a publisher I found out about loaning myself by visiting a book listing. Didn't get an email from them until 8 hours later. While the geek in me loves their data driven approach - it rankles a tad that somewhere someone ran the numbers and figured it wasn't worth letting their publishers know in advance.
|
I'm not a publisher, author, etc.; I'm a customer. And as a customer, I'm very happy with Amazon. I was also happy with their pre-Agency $9.99 pricing, even if publishers didn't like it.
Quote:
Their tendency to change their terms and conditions in drastic ways on the turn of a dime means I'd never rely on them as my main source of income. If you are a business owner or author depending on Amazon - you could be unemployed tomorrow with no rights or pay off. I couldn't sleep with that.
|
Well, what do you do if they become your main source of income, though? Pull your books? J.A. Konrath famously reported that his Amazon books were outselling iBooks 60-1. With numbers like that, I'm not sure what you do - cut 98% of your income?
Quote:
They are also part of a corporate globalisation, wealth concentration, outsourcing & automation trend which is hurting a lot of people. It's mostly small retailers and the low skilled which are affected at the moment. But Amazon et al are gradually moving up the skills ladder and I think most of us will end up poorer for it. I don't blame Amazon, in particular, for this and it's probably unavoidable but they are definitely part of it.
|
Hard to argue with this, although I don't see many successful companies that aren't doing this. At least indie authors don't yet have to deal with competition from Chinese writers selling books for 20c.