Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Well, yes. Hachette demanded agency pricing, and afterward, Amazon demanded something right back. So as I said, who started this?
If you are going to continue arguing with me, at some point I will want to see you actually acknowledge what I say. Your continued pretending that Hatchette just woke up one day with Amazon knocking on the door saying "give us more money" is getting really tiresome. Your arguments say nothing new and shed no light on anything down to and including your thought processes. You continually give the same one-sided view of things and do not even take into consideration the idea that there may be two sides to the issue, and until you do, we cannot possibly have a meaningful discussion.
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Oh I've acknowledge what you are saying. You are saying that since Hachette wants agency pricing, that Amazon wants something back. I don't think that is correct. My understanding is that Amazon is telling Hachette, not only are we not going to give you agency pricing, we want to reduce how much we pay you for ebooks so we can make money at the $10 price point that we prefer. I don't pretend that Hachette just woke up one day with Amazon knocking on the door saying "give us more money". I'm sure that Hachette fully expected Amazon to do this. It's a natural progression from Amazon's preferred price point and Judge Cote's decree that the publishers have to negotiate in a staggered fashion. It is also standard hardball negotiation by Amazon.
Now that I've acknowledged all that, how about you acknowledge that Hachette has a legitimate concern that Amazon is devaluing Hachette's product by selling it at a price point lower than Hachette thinks it's worth? The issue here isn't that Amazon is evil and Hachette is good. It isn't even that Amazon is good and the publishers are evil, regardless how some may feel. It's that Amazon's business model isn't necessarily in the best interest of the publishers (or authors) and that the publishers have a legitimate right to try to negotiate a contract that works for them rather than simply roll over and take whatever Amazon wants to give them.