Quote:
Originally Posted by Manabi
We're withholding judgement till we actually have some unbiased facts to judge by. Either party (or even both, which is most likely) could be to blame.
|
That is only reasonable.
Of course, when it comes to discussions on Amazon and the holy publishers reason rarely enters into. It is all about emotions and especially fear (of Amazon domination of the poor pitififul glass tower multinationals who do carefully "nurture" their authors).
We do know some facts:
- Amazon is Hachette's most profitable distribution channel (via Shatzkin:
http://www.idealog.com/blog/inevitab...ng-publishers/)
- Amazon normally places big books orders, presumably to cover long periods worth of sales (and make up for Hachette's normal fulfillment lag)
- Amazon does very little, if any, book returns so, as a rule, any books they order stay in their warehouses until they sell
- Amazon warehousing large numbers of books for extended periods shifts warehousing costs from the publisher to Amazon
- Amazon and Hachette have been quietly negotiating a new distribution agreement since at least November 2013 without reaching agreement.
- Hachette ended the quietly part, Amazon hasn't, so all we see in the media is Hachette's side filtered through channels with known Amazon antipathy (NYT, SALON, PW, DBW, etc).
- Hachette's friendly sources (PW in particular) have reported that Hachette's goal is to put limits on Amazon book discounting so that Amazon competitors can take market share from them. (Not too thinly veiled in the PW report. Worth reading.)
I would say that witholding judgment until we know more, preferably from unbiased sources (if any can be found).
That said, it can be safely inferred that Amazon does not like Hachette's negotiating position (I wonder why?
) and has adopted a pretty clear strategy of doing them no favors.
Doing them no favors means:
- reducing or eliminating discounts, which come from Amazon's share of the price, not Hachette's
- reducing (or eliminating?) the warehousing costs of stockpiling large Hachette book orders by switching to smaller book orders, possibly only ordering titles after on-hand stock is depleted
- reducing (or eliminating?) promotion efforts on behalf of at least some Hachette titles. This includes pre-orders, apparently.
It may very well that Hachette is, in fact, fullfilling orders as fast as they can and that the lag has been obscured in the past by Amazon's warehousing system. (The few times I special-ordered titles through my favorite, now dead, indie bookstore it took over a month to arrive and I've seen no evidence that BPH small order fullfilment processes have improved any.) There is a reason why the BPHs have for decades favored the big chains like Walden, Borders, B&N, and BAM with their centralized buying and warehouses over indie bookstores: they allowed them to outsource to them a good chunk of their warehousing and distribution costs.
So it may be that three to six weeks is as fast as Hachette's warehouses can get books to market when their retailers aren't helping out.
Getting large amounts of *any* product to market in a timely fashion across a market as big and decentralized as the US requires massive logistics efforts from the producer, the distributor, and/or retailer. Usually all three. When any of them slacks off, for any reason, the pipeline can easily be disrupted for months or even years. Which is why big retailers have so much power over their suppliers and suppliers learn it is not wise to antagonize them in private, much less in public.
In this case I, myself, think that Hachette--like the other BPHs--over the decades got so used to being the gatekeepers of books that they forgot that retailers are *their* gatekeepers until, in their finite wisdom, they helped Borders and B&N kill off hordes of indie bookstores and gave them, and later Amazon, shared control over their market access. And, of course, the BPHs compounded their problems by pushing Borders into liquidation and removing nearly a quarter of available market shelf space.
The result is a very asymmetrical negotiation. Hachette is trying to bell the cat without a collar or a bell.
(Seeing just how bad Hachette's negotiating position is, especially now that they took it public, requires a whole post of links. Maybe later.)