Le Guin at National Book Awards

[jehane]

Ursula Le Guin's speech at the National Book Awards a few days ago. The link goes to a full transcript which contains a link to the video.

Mostly she talks about the commodification of books, but there's also a dig at the literary establishment over SF/F.

[fjtorres]

We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience and writers threatened by corporate fatwa, and I see a lot of us, the producers who write the books, and make the books, accepting this. Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish and what to write.

Seriously?
Right down there with Wiley and the despicable ISIS comparison.

[tompe]

Good speech.

[DiapDealer]

Dumb speech.

Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant

How should they sell you? Like pretzels? Craft beer? A high-end SUV?

[bgalbrecht]

I'm confused, is she referring to Amazon or Barnes & Noble? After all, B&N did the same thing to S&S last year that Amazon did to Hatchette. I'm not in the book business, but it's been my impression that besides a few national review columns/magazines, the buyers at big chain booksellers (B&N, formerly Borders, B Daltons, etc.) are the arbiters of content. It's been my impression that Amazon has basically just been pressuring the publishers on price, not content. Does anyone have any anecdotes showing that Amazon exerts pressure on the publishers based on content?

[murg]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I'm confused, is she referring to Amazon or Barnes & Noble?

She may be talking about the agents. There was a recent post on either here or The Digital Reader about the agents only being interesting in the genres that are currently selling.

I don't see Amazon trying to tell authors what to write, they only seem interested in the pricing, being that they are pretty much happy to sell anything.

Then again, maybe she's talking about the publishers...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murg

She may be talking about the agents. There was a recent post on either here or The Digital Reader about the agents only being interesting in the genres that are currently selling.

I don't see Amazon trying to tell authors what to write, they only seem interested in the pricing, being that they are pretty much happy to sell anything.

Then again, maybe she's talking about the publishers...

Nope.
She is talking Amazon.

This is her third swipe at Amazon in the last six weeks.
She thinks Amazon censors books and decides what gets published or not.
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/18/ursu...get_published/

Appparently she lives in a very different and nastier world than this.
Probably the one where Spock wears a beard and Amazon has secret death squads that disappear authors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/bu...=top-news&_r=1

“We’re talking about censorship: deliberately making a book hard or impossible to get, ‘disappearing’ an author,” Ms. Le Guin wrote in an email. “Governments use censorship for moral and political ends, justifiable or not. Amazon is using censorship to gain total market control so they can dictate to publishers what they can publish, to authors what they can write, to readers what they can buy. This is more than unjustifiable, it is intolerable.”

That clearly isn't the same world we live in, right?
In this world, Amazon is guilty of fostering a tsunami of crap by making it possible for everybody and anybody to publish anything.

[JSWolf]

The best way to get back at her for this atrocity is to not buy her books.

[Fbone]

Letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant,

I took Le Guin's comment as that she laments how books have become dollar store items.

A look at Kindle's current bestseller list shows us that 23 of the top 100 are $0.99 and the average price is $3.06. Of course, this doesn't include the free titles.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I took Le Guin's comment as that she laments how books have become dollar store items.

A look at Kindle's current bestseller list shows us that 23 of the top 100 are $0.99 and the average price is $3.06. Of course, this doesn't include the free titles.

Has anyone seen the remainder table at B&N recently? These prices may not be that far off those for pBooks.

And they are in line with used book prices, especially older books.

[khalleron]

Amazon sells more books than anyone else on the planet, so they must be an enemy of literacy, right?

I have my beefs with some of the things Amazon does, but darn it, Ursula, that's just stupid.

Unless her real beef is that Amazon DOES allow anyone to publish there, reducing her special snowflake status. After all, we can't have the proles reading and writing stuff, that might lead to thinking and then where will we be?

EDIT: between this and the Daniel Handler fiasco, the NB awards must have been quite the venue for awkward and insulting speeches.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by khalleron

Amazon sells more books than anyone else on the planet, so they must be an enemy of literacy, right?

Amazon sells more books than Xinhua, the dominant bookstore chain in China? Do you have statistics on this?

Also, Le Guin doesn't claim Amazon is against literacy. And I'm sure Xinhua is also for literacy, so long it isn't used to read books critical of the regime.

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Does anyone have any anecdotes showing that Amazon exerts pressure on the publishers based on content?

The best known anecdote concerns special treatment of a book by a powerful American political figure:

http://www.mhpbooks.com/why-does-ama...uglas-preston/

I also see content implications in Amazon's attempt to get all eBooks sold for $9.99 or less except for a small number of specialized titles. This favors content that can be quickly written as opposed to books requiring multiple years of research.

[murg]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

The best known anecdote concerns special treatment of a book by a powerful American political figure:

http://www.mhpbooks.com/why-does-ama...uglas-preston/

This isn't about Amazon pressuring the publisher.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I also see content implications in Amazon's attempt to get all eBooks sold for $9.99 or less except for a small number of specialized titles. This favors content that can be quickly written as opposed to books requiring multiple years of research.

My understanding is that the $9.99 price primarily is for fiction.

And Amazon understands that you will sell proportionally more at a lower price, so that the revenue to the publisher, and thence to the author is increased.

[GeoffR]

Crazy SF author, she must be thinking of one of those imaginary worlds where maximising things like quality and fairness is more important than maximising corporate revenue.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by murg

Has anyone seen the remainder table at B&N recently? These prices may not be that far off those for pBooks.

Well, I have always seen the remainder books as commodity. People do not seem to care exactly what book it is but buy it because it is cheap.