Amazon's assult on Intellectual Freedom

[hidari]

Read this today.... maybe interesting to some:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2012...gan130312.html

and so it goes...

[Blue Tyson]

"We were too dumb to learn to sell directly to readers and we didn't want to either. Guess that wasn't too clever."

[crossi]

"pulled the plug" on their books? Idiots. No distributor can sell a product without a contract to do so. If the terms of the contract can't be agreed on no sales can possibly take place. Legally anyway. If Amazon had continued to sell their products it would have opened them to a major lawsuit about their illegal behavior.

[howyoudoin]

One can choose to buy ebooks from BN.com or from almost any independent bookstore rather than Amazon. One can buy directly from IPG. A free app will allow one to read those books on a Kindle.

So, the article ends with a contradiction to the claims of Amazon being a monopoly that forces draconian rules onto independent publishers, thereby invalidating the premise of the entire article up to this point.

[HappyMartin]

Stupid article based more on emotion that anything else. How hard is it to sell a book without Amazon?

[JoeD]

Not a big deal? Imagine that Walmart controls everything you eat, and Walmart decides to stop selling fish because it thinks that fishermen are making too much profit. Amazon is the Walmart of online bookselling.

Not a big deal. Soon after Walmart did that (assuming there was no other supermarket left in existence) it'd open a niche across the country for fishmongers, having no competition in the fish market they'd be able to charge a nice price too, although if they charge too much they'll open the door to additional competition. That's just how business works.

That's also with a product that has a larger setup cost/time to get a b&m store established, suppliers organised and so on. For ebooks, if Amazon don't take it and assume there's not a single store left in the internet that sells ebooks, you open your own. It's not hard to sell a book direct if you skip DRM, provide multiple formats and don't mind losing a small % to a payment processor like paypal/google.

But wait, if it's not on Amazon how will your readers ever find it? Well, even if it's on Amazon unless it's a top 10 book it'll likely vanish under the mass of other books anyway and be up to your own marketing skills to get the word out.

If you don't like what amazon is doing, don't do business with them, there's plenty of alternatives. We sell apps but because we don't agree with Amazons T&C we don't do business with them. No loss to us, no loss to them. If they change their T&C in the future then we'll re-evaluate. You should however NEVER put all your eggs in one basket and rely on a single company for your business. That goes for paypal too, ensure that should paypal decide to cancel your account, you can easily change to another processor.

[darryl]

Thank you for posting this thread. After reading the Original Post and the linked article my feeling is one of frustration. The article reads like the usual Publishers propaganda and is written by an interested party very clearly from his own point of view. That is fine because it is clearly disclosed, and certainly does not per se mean that the article is inaccurate, despite its Chicken Little type "threat to intellectual freedom" and the hysterical tone.

So I went in search of further information. I found many similar propaganda type pieces, but remarkably could not find the terms which Amazon attempted to impose. One account said that such terms had not in fact been disclosed. Another indicated that the dispute was over terms for ebooks and print books were not affected. Perhaps it's simply my poor searching skills. So I ask, is anyone able to enlighter me as to what the new terms are that Amazon sought to impose which are so objectionable?

As you can gather from the tone of this post, I am sceptical. Surely if someone with a vested interest puts out a statement complaining of an attack on intellectual freedom by the worlds largest book retailer the detailed particulars of this attack should be included in bold highlighted capitals, and not left out altogether with no explanation for the omission. I am open to be convinced, but please give me some facts!

[JeremyR]

There is no monopoly - publishers could simply choose to publish and sell DRM free files, and any e-reader on the planet could read them.

But they choose to limit themselves with DRM, thus need to tie themselves with DRMed sellers.

If anything, Amazon's existence is what is keeping Adobe's DRM from gaining a monopoly. By having two different competing systems, it means there is a stalemate.

[Solicitous]

Not a big deal? Imagine that Walmart controls everything you eat, and Walmart decides to stop selling fish because it thinks that fishermen are making too much profit. Amazon is the Walmart of online bookselling.

Not sure of how things are operated in the US, but certainly here in Australia that practice happens. Woolworths and Coles (major supermarket chains) are renowned for talking to suppliers and setting the price at which they will buy it at, usually at or just below cost to produce.

I find it a little ironic that as a consumer we are well within our rights to shop around and buy from where we like at a price that suits. If big business start doing that they are evil as all sin. I understand the concept of a monopoly, but come on, in this digital age anyone can compete. Not like these publishers have one shop outlet and are fighting against a chain of 50+ stores. Amazon have an online ebook store, other publisher *could* if they so chose to start their own online ebook store.

[DiapDealer]

*Yawn*

I remember how this same strategy worked out for Chicken Little.

[ucfgrad93]

Yawn, another Amazon is evil article.

[ProfCrash]

Sounds like a Publisher is losing money by not selling on Amazon and is complaining because it does not like Amazons terms.

I get that both sides wnat terms that will suit them, the Publisher and Amazon. I get that the Publisher does not like Amazon's terms and is taking a principled stand. I read between the lines and get that the Publisher is losing a good amount of sales and is hoping that enough complaining about Amazon will get Amazon to back down. I read between the lines and get that Jeff Bezos is going "Who are these folks?"

[Kali Yuga]

Wow. Just... wow.

Wing Press (owned by the author of the article) is very small and is benefitting greatly from ebooks. We're not talking about Random House here, or a publisher who steadfastly refuses to get into ebooks.

IPG is a consortium of small publishers. Working with IPG gives a small press like Wing better access to distribution and retailers.

Is merely the act of being a "publisher" -- regardless of size, specialty and attitude towards ebooks -- sufficient to brand them as "stupid," and subject to whatever whims a huge retailer like Amazon imposes?

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

"We were too dumb to learn to sell directly to readers and we didn't want to either. Guess that wasn't too clever."

Wing does have its own ebook store and does sell directly to the public.

That strategy doesn't work well anyway, unless you're catering to a niche market like SF (Baen) or technical guides (O'Reilly) or romance (eHarlequin). Random House has top market share, at around 18%; a Random House ebook store would have roughly 1/4 of the top sellers. Why would that be a prime retail destination?

The real problem is that Amazon has such a lock on the market, that getting booted has cut Wing's sales by 40%. If the publishers get replaced by Amazon and 1 or 2 other big retailers, we're going to end up with a far more consolidated industry than we've already got.

I don't know if this will truly strangle output or content. But it doesn't seem like the kind of thing folks 'round here usually want.

Originally Posted by crossi

"pulled the plug" on their books? Idiots.... If Amazon had continued to sell their products it would have opened them to a major lawsuit about their illegal behavior.

Yes, Amazon is legally entitled to remove the titles. What Milligan is protesting is not that fact, but that Amazon is demanding what he regards as an unacceptably high cut of sales. He also believes that Amazon is trying to kill off small/indie publishers (which may or may not be the case).

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

So, the article ends with a contradiction to the claims of Amazon being a monopoly that forces draconian rules onto independent publishers, thereby invalidating the premise of the entire article up to this point.

The article is trying to say, "Don't buy exclusively from Amazon, don't let them have a monopoly." There is no contradiction.

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

How hard is it to sell a book without Amazon?

Pretty tough. Amazon allegedly has 60-70% of the ebook market.

Originally Posted by JoeD

If you don't like what amazon is doing, don't do business with them, there's plenty of alternatives. We sell apps but because we don't agree with Amazons T&C we don't do business with them. No loss to us, no loss to them.

There are alternatives, but that doesn't change the fact that Amazon is a big player in the ebook market, and losing access to Amazon as a retailer means leaving lots of money on the table.

It'd be like pulling an iOS version of your app and only selling an Android version, because Apple demanded two or three times its current cut of your sales. It's your choice to decide whether to handle that stoically or discuss it in public, yes?

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

How hard is it to sell a book without Amazon?

Not very, in my estimation. But, I think it's a bit more difficult to find a wider audience without such a large distributor.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

There are alternatives, but that doesn't change the fact that Amazon is a big player in the ebook market, and losing access to Amazon as a retailer means leaving lots of money on the table.

Yes if Amazon won't sell your product you don't have direct access to their customer base which could impact your income, I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is the claim that

There is an undeclared war going on in the United States that threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom. In a statement worthy of Cassandra, Noah Davis wrote in Business Insider last October, "Amazon is coming for the book publishing industry. And not just the e-book world, either."

That's just not true. There's nothing stopping any author setting up a store to sell ebooks as long as amazon allow reading of non-drm content. If you disagree with what amazon is doing, don't sell via them.

Now, if amazon turn around and say that's it, kindles will only work with content bought from our store, then I'd be more inclined to agree.

I'm also disputing the wallmart analogy. If amazon did pull a book or entire genre from their store that doesn't mean customers will never be able to access that content again, it just means there's now a niche opened for a new business to enter the market, assuming the niche is of sufficient size to make it economically viable..

They wanted a better deal, amazon told them no this is our offer, take it or leave it. Sure they can complain that they don't think the offer is fair, but to say it's a war that "threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom" is complete and utter tripe when they can just setup and sell direct or use alternative outlets.

It'd be like pulling an iOS version of your app and only selling an Android version, because Apple demanded two or three times its current cut of your sales. It's your choice to decide whether to handle that stoically or discuss it in public, yes?

Not really.

If apple decide that rather than taking 30% of sales they're now taking 80% I doubt anyone would pull their apps, since money is money, it costs nothing to leave an already existing app on the store, so why pull it and cut off a source of income (albeit now a smaller one).

There would be a choice to be made though for _future_ apps. Do you want to make/sell an app knowing you're now only going to get 20% for it, well that's a business choice to make based on how much money you think you'll get from Apple vs the cost to develop for it and yes I agree people will be vocal about saying they're not accepting those terms and won't be selling future apps via Apple.

If Apple decided to pull all your existing apps because you refuse to sell future apps with them, that would be a different matter. But from my understanding of the blog post, that's not what's happening, Amazon are trying to get a better rate for the existing stuff they sell, the supplier doesn't accept that rate. That's their choice and with books at least they can pull their product and still sell it, with Apple and apps you may as well just accept the reduced rate and leave existing apps on sale but not make new apps for it.

Now the situation is slightly different with books to apps, as with books you can sell direct and the cost to take a the format you submitted to amazon and convert to epub/mobi to sell direct or stick on other stores is negligible. So where it wouldn't make sense to pull your app products, it may make sense to pull your ebooks and sell those elsewhere/direct where profit margins are better. You still have access to amazon's customer base indirectly. In that regard, Authors are in a much better position vs Amazon than developers are vs Apple.

tl;dr version, it's not so much what the blogger is saying that I take issue with, it's the way they've embellished it as "threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom" among other choice phases.

They don't agree with what amazon is doing, they want to tell others about what amazon is doing, all fair enough, but don't try to twist this into an issue it isn't. Amazon don't want their books for the price they had before, fine, if you don't accept amazons new price don't sell via them. Sure it may impact your bottom line making it a business decision and yes you can blog about it, but don't try to turn it into a "freedom" issue when it isn't.