Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Yup.
After the hysteria ends.
Not before.
Amazon simply cannot afford to agree to anything until the PR campaign is over.
Afterwards they can sit down to discuss warehouse rent, coop promotion, and whatever.
But once Hachette took it public the negotiations died.
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I'm not as confident as you are on this. It's true that Amazon can afford to not sell Hachette books and it's a small percentage of their total sales. It's also true that they've already taken the PR hit from the smear campaign so there's an argument that if you've already paid the price you might as well hold out. This hasn't impacted Amazon's customers yet though and Amazon's mantra has always been "focus on the customers and ignore the media". Beyond the $ value of losing the sale they really don't want to piss off their customer's that just wants to one click buy the latest JK Rowling's book.
I do believe that Amazon's BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) is stronger then Hachette's BATNA but I don't know what the disagreements are and how important they are to Amazon or Hachette in the long run. I'm sure that Amazon understands that they're really negotiating with all of the big publishers in this and they're all discussing terms in their NY lunches so it is possible they'll hold out. I don't buy from either of them though so I can just watch and laugh.
