Has Amazon "Duned" Publishing?

[kennyc]

Ha!

In Dune (1965), the best-selling science fiction work of all time, the late Seattle-area author Frank Herbert described a corporation that controlled commerce across the Known Universe – though it still relied on UPS to make deliveries and is almost destroyed by a religious cult:

[Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles] is business and business follows profits…Few products escape the CHOAM touch…Logs, donkeys, horses, cows, lumber, dung, sharks, whale fur — the most prosaic and the most exotic…a regional cartel in Star Jewels…even our poor pundi rice from Caladan. Anything the [Spacing] Guild will transport, the art forms of Ecaz, the machines of Richese and Ix… inkvines, shigawire, Ixian artifacts and entertainers, trade in people and places…swordmasters, twisted mentats from Tleilax, conditioned medics from the Suk school, and fincap accountants…But the important thing is to consider all the Houses that depend on CHOAM profits…[CHOAM is] a constant ferment, intrigue within intrigue, a play of powers where the shift of one duodecimal point in interest payments could change the ownership of an entire planet.

The specter of an Amazon monopoly is continually trotted out by the Seattle Times in part two of its series. The paper quotes a digital-media consultant saying, “Publishers are doing what they can to ensure that Amazon doesn't become to e-books what Apple became to music downloads. Otherwise, Amazon can call the shots.” This conjecture rests on the phantasmagorical idea that Apple calls the shots in music or has anything approaching a consumer unfriendly monopoly. In actuality, the increasing unreliability and restrictions of Apple digital products (as well as its lackluster attempts to expand into digital media) indicate that Apple is unable to control the destiny of sound, let alone light. Apple’s attempts to tighten a proprietary grip around digital products has only resulted in better and cheaper ways to crack their encoding to allow consumers to fully own the products they have purchased.

With the passing of the Steve Jobs, the spell he cast over the media has begun to ebb, and Apple’s move to collude with publishers to raise the price on digital media (the “agency model”) is proving to be their undoing, and inadvertently causes increasing numbers of observers to declare Jeff Bezos the new Steve Jobs. However, while both titans have no compunctions about eating their own children, they are as different as Hyperion and Phoebe in other arenas. While many of Amazon’s detractors have their heads up Uranus and believe they see a monopoly on the setting horizon, the modern titans believe that it is dawn on the horizon -- and Bezos famously declares it “Day One” every chance he gets. The common fear born of recent experience among technology and retail companies is of being overthrown by one of their progeny. The paranoid drive to survive is less a sign of the End of Days for the industry as the Seattle Times asserts, and is something more like a realization that Amazon is experiencing Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day.
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People do not shop at Amazon because its part of some constructed fantasy that makes them feel good about themselves (which is Apple’s main business proposition right now). People shop at Amazon because it has Wal-Mart prices, Costco quality, and Amazon service.
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Another titan that rode rivers to fortune, Cornelius Vanderbilt spent much of his career undermining monopolies by offering customers lower and lower prices coupled with better and better quality until finally people started taking for granted the services he offered because they had become such a regular part of their lives. By making Amazon not only an indispensible tool, but a helpful service in the process, Bezos is positioning himself to be the next Vanderbilt for a global society where everyone is an artist and no one wants to learn how to construct a canvas.

Some publishers just do not want to admit that “their fair share” is what stands in the way of progress, “When you have a book that your gut tells you is going to sell 400 or 500 copies, you don't have any room to move on pricing. You're already cut to the bone,” says one small firm owner that sells mostly to libraries. Perhaps thirty years of working with government and quasi-government entities has dulled his ability to improve on his business. Moreover, by eliminating the publisher’s take all together (as Amazon has done), it is amazing how much more fat there is on the bone. More exciting is what people are going to do with that fat.

Still, Amazon’s spiritual patriarch Frank Herbert ends with a cautionary note:

The failure of CHOAM? Quite simple: They ignore the fact that larger commercial powers wait at the edges of their activities, powers that could swallow them the way a slig swallows garbage. This is the true threat of the Scattering—to them and to us all.

More:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47204644.../#.T5sbacWQgoM

[AndrewH]

Interesting interpretation, but Amazon has a long way to go before it resembles CHOAM.

LOL at the Spacing Guild being likened to UPS.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

Interesting interpretation, but Amazon has a long way to go before it resembles CHOAM.

LOL at the Spacing Guild being likened to UPS.

That was cute but I would have argued for FEDEx.

[RainingLemur]

Ebooks must flow.

[Penforhire]

I'm not worried until Bezos calls himself Kwisatz Haderach.

[fjtorres]

Flaky Dune metaphor aside, there are a couple of interesting points there.
The Vanderbilt comparison, for one.
And this:

Some publishers just do not want to admit that “their fair share” is what stands in the way of progress, “When you have a book that your gut tells you is going to sell 400 or 500 copies, you don't have any room to move on pricing. You're already cut to the bone,” says one small firm owner that sells mostly to libraries. Perhaps thirty years of working with government and quasi-government entities has dulled his ability to improve on his business.

I dunno...
Why would a publisher take on a book that "their gut" tells them is only good for 400 or 500 copies? More, having taken on such a project, how can they *not* do better than that? Sounds like "thirty years of working with government and quasi-government entities" has in fact dulled his ability to actually *market* a product. Even a crappy turkey of a book should be good for more than 500 copies...?

What do they do? Mimeograph a list of titles, mail them to the libraries, and wait to see if anybody notices?

BTW, at first glance I thought the thread title was asking if Amazon had *Dunned* publishing...

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

What do they do? Mimeograph a list of titles, mail them to the libraries, and wait to see if anybody notices?

Actually, they do. The catalog usually includes a short blurb and excerpt.

[silasgreenback]

If Amazon is CHOAM and UPS the Spacing Guild, does it make BPHs the witches of the Bene Gesserit? And is Apple House Harkonnen?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Actually, they do. The catalog usually includes a short blurb and excerpt.

How... 60's...

[bgalbrecht]

The publishers crying the loudest about the dangers of a CHOAM/Amazon monopoly are not the ones hoping to sell 300-400 copies of their book. It's the ones hoping to sell 40k hardcovers, 100k massmarket paperbacks for a midlist book, and 5-10 times as much for a best seller, and whatever number of ebooks that they are forced to sell to readers who have switched from paper to ereaders.