Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
That is the whole point Amazon is making: they know more about retailing than Hachette ever will and it is going to be a cold day in the Amazon jungle when they let Hachette tell them how to run their business. They can have no-discount Agency on Amazon's terms or not at all. (And they'd be wisest to choose "not at all".
That release looks fairly mild but there's several implied threats in there that need to be taken seriously. Bringing in the subject of author royalties is a big escalation. If Hachette's royalty accounting is anything less than pristine Amazon can mess them up big with just one PR release.
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The questions that I have are why go public with it and why now?
This statement is clearly to get the public on Amazon's side but it is surely going to get Hachette's back up (not to mention the other big publishers). I don't think the statement was intended to help close off the negotiations, I think it's a final recognition that Hachette has no desire to close off the negotiations so Amazon is finally fighting back. Joe Consumer is going to agree with everything that Amazon said and consider the author's anti Amazon rants as greed. The PR campaign will try to spin it but it's hard to get the public on your side that you need higher prices.
