Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Why? Amazon cut off access to the author's paper books, and was thus impacted by the way Amazon chose to handle the situation.
Besides, I know not many MR posters realize this, but not all authors despise their publishers, nor should they unless they're treated poorly.
|
Most of the authors I've talked to don't despise their publishers, and actually have very good relationships with their editors. However, almost every author I know whose works are in print but not available as ebooks are unhappy that the publisher has purchased the rights for the ebook and won't publish them. They know that there's a growing market segment that only wants to buy ebooks, and they're losing out on that market. These authors don't even know for sure whether they lost any sales by Amazon not selling MacMillan directly, because Amazon was still selling new (and used) books by other booksellers, as were all of Amazon's competitors. I don't know what percentage of these authors books are random buys, but I doubt that anyone specifically looking for their works were stymied by the Amazon boycott.
I've purchased all of Charlie Stross' books, except for the ones sold by MacMillan, because MacMillan hasn't released any of them as ebooks. I bought The Family Trade used in paperback, so Charlie never actually saw any money from it from me. Had MacMillan sold them as ebooks, I would have bought the series instead of checking it out from the library. Even though I buy very few books at Amazon, and fewer ebooks there, I probably won't buy any of Charlie's Merchant Princes series in ebook should MacMillan ever release them.