Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
There is no guarantee when you order a book before release that it will actually be published on time, or ever. This is true, contract or no contract.
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Then one might say it could actually be considered silly--if not downright irresponsible (at the very least; risky)--for someone to
offer customers the ability to pre-order unpublished titles
at all. Yet this is exactly one of the "services" that Hachette authors, AU, and their sympathizers are taking Amazon to task for NOT providing. It can't simultaneously be mission-critical AND have zero value at the bargaining table.
The pre-order service carries a risk and has value for publishers/authors (the added value is undeniable). The fact that no book sellers, to date, have
asked to be compensated for this premium service is not, in of itself, a very convincing argument that compensation for such a service is not warranted or even deserved.
"Because we've never had to pay for such a service before;" is quite a lame argument in general. Things change. I never used to be charged for the air to fill up my tires at the gas-station before either.