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Originally Posted by fjtorres
Hachette already rejected it.
Took only ten minutes, give or take.
(Why free the hostages before the SWAT force drops in?)
It is pretty clear at this point that they want to run out the clock until their settlement prohibition against no-discount agency expires.
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Amazon making the overture about giving the authors 100% of proceeds of book sales is fascinating stuff. As you mentioned on Nate's site, the truly astonishing part of the story is: Amazon has had no contract with Hachette since March. They would have been well within their rights to remove the buy buttons four months ago. I wonder if they're thinking (hindsight is always 20/20) that they should have done that, pulled the buy buttons. Would the circus have been just as bad? Yes, probably even worse. Amazon actually handled it about as well as could be expected.
However, I don't think they would have let it drag on this long, had they realized Hachette was holding the ball and probably ALWAYS intended to wait out the Agency clock. (Hey DoJ! Can we get a shot clock violation call on Hachette??) Speaking of the DoJ, it's a 100% certainty that they know everything that's been happening. The interesting little story (several weeks ago) about the DoJ letters written to Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster "Hey guys, are you still colluding?" gives me the impression they know a LOT more than the general public. When the DoJ gets enough evidence, there will be a new antitrust lawsuit filed and this one won't be settled so easily.