Quote:
Originally Posted by curtw
My reading is that Scalzi is simply pointing out the MANY ways in which Amazon screwed up. He's not saying that Macmillan is in the right; he's ridiculing Amazon for a knee-jerk reaction that harmed both readers and writers, and which makes Amazon, not Macmillan, look like the "bad guy."
That's pretty much three strikes against Amazon in failing to understand their electronic publishing market (Kindle text-to-speech, the "1984" fiasco, and now this).
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Huh?
The TTS issue was a ridiculous legal issue raised by the Writer's Guild, claiming that TTS constitutes a "public performance". And then pressed by the publishers, Amazon caved. They were between a rock and a hard place, with the interest groups for the blind and the ADA, the WG, and the publishers.
The "1984" fiasco, while handled poorly, dealt with an illegal sale of the work.
As far as "this": I don't think Amazon should have yanked the print versions of Macmillan titles. But nobody seems to consider the fact that Amazon may not have had a legal basis to yank the ebook titles and leave the paper titles. They may have been forced to yank everything even if all they wanted to yank were the ebook versions.
Macmillan are in the wrong. Amazon are in the wrong (regardless of need or rationale). Several rather vocal authors are in the wrong (though I'm considering reversing my stance on Stross, since his latest post seems to suggest I misinterpreted his earlier position).
They're all the "bad guys". And the only losers here are the customers, and those authors who wound up being collateral damage. Personally, I believe those authors should sue Macmillan for material breach of contract, but that's just me.