Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
Fantastic first post. Of course, your suggested course of action for Hachette and the others should have been followed many years ago for it to have reasonable prospects of success.
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(Still on painkillers for dentistry. If this is nutty, you've been warned.)
@darryl:
Not necessarily. It's really pretty simple; if they withhold their products from Amazon, assuming that people want them, they'll buy them from BPHLLC. If BPHLLC continues to sell on Amazon, well, then...no, a BPHLLC venture shan't work. That much is inarguable. What's arguable is whether or not they can sell their own books, from their own (joint, I should think) website, and make AS MUCH MONEY as they do from Amazon, with their ease of shopping, customer service, TECH SUPPORT, et al.
It's a gamble. But this is BUSINESS. Inasmuch as some people on this thread, and in MR, and the world, want to make this about "art" versus evil capitalistic pecuniary practices, publishing IS BUSINESS. These folks aren't publishers for their good health. (And, in fact, although my business is
not a publisher, and thus, I cannot speak to their
precise end, I can tell you, from the parts that we do deal with, it's CERTAINLY NOT for their health. I can also relay that I've yet to meet a single trade-pubbed author that EVER thought that their publisher did enough for them, or who didn't think that the publisher had skimmed their due royalties. It is precisely those sentiments which have prevented me from being daft enough to enter that end of the biz. I have a hard time believing that in this day and age, the money is worth the agita.)
Therefore, if their belief is that they would be better off had Amazon ne'er hatched, then they need to take direct action on that, and withhold their products. I do not see this as more complicated than that. They have pretty significant financial resources; they can certainly build a spiffy e-commerce site; put the Gillian Flynns, et al, of the world, on their OWN site. Do their OWN fulfillment. Hire nerds for tech support, for the endless emails and phone calls from those folks who can't make carts work, or download files.
Bob's yer uncle. That's the whole equation: risk-->reward. They either try it, or they play by Amazon's rules in Amazon's playground. It's simplicity itself.
All the other arguments are just noise about literati versus not, whether or not capitalists are intrinsically evil, yadda yadda yadda. The social thing: are "real" publishers elitists versus self-pubs being (eeek!) for the masses...I mean, really, c'mon, now. Let's all stop playing silly buggers.
This is PUBLISHING. This is about MONEY.
Grown-up stuff. If it was about ART, "for art's sake," (ye gods, I wish I'd never heard that term!), then everybody would be putting their books up for FREE on Smashwords and Scribd, right? People who write just to write are on Goodreads and Wattpad, those places. People who want MONEY are on Amazon. Poof, there it is.
Hitch